George Diller/Ares I-X Commentator: We're joined now in the Mission Director's Center by Jon Cowart,
who is the Ares I-X deputy mission manager from the Kennedy Space Center. And Jon, welcome, but first of all,
I wonder if you could kind of give us a status? Give us an update on where we stand in the countdown and the activities?
Jon Cowart/Deputy Mission Manager: Well, George, right now we're somewhere in the neighborhood of about a half-hour down.
We've, once again, we've been -- this is a band-new rocket doing things that we don't normally do.
So, the team is moving very methodically through the process right now.
And so, with that -- and probably some of you have heard -- we had what's called a torque-tip failure.
They had to run and go get a replacement as they were putting on one of the doors.
Just these things build up over time. It's a natural occurrence. And we're working our way through it.
And you can see on some of the cameras right now they're retracting platforms, getting some of the final preps too.
Once those platforms are full back and secured, they'll move the old -- what we used to call the GOX vent arm,
or the GVA -- that's our highest access point into the rocket.
You know, we've removed that GOX vent hood that we had and put a platform in there, as well as a purge air duct.
Get those things retracted and pulled back. But we're only about a half-hour down, like I said, as it stands right now.
And what I anticipate is that this really won't affect our launch time of T-0, of 8 o'clock.
George Diller/Ares I-X Commentator: Well, give us a little bit more information about how
the launch pad was modified -- reconfigured from the shuttle program for Ares I-X.
Jon Cowart/Deputy Mission Manager: Well, there are a few very obvious things. The first one, of course,
I just mentioned -- was that that old beanie cap that we had that supported the shuttle -- that was, as you know,
since it went over the very top of the external tank, that was the highest point on the shuttle right there.
Well, that provided us access to a door, which is really only about half way up the rocket on us.
So, that's one of the mods we've done.
As I said, gave you a platform to go in there, as well as a purge air duct.
A little further on down we had to remove -- in order to put up another structure -- we had to remove the orbiter access arm,
which is at what we used to call the 195-foot level on the fixed service structure. Once that was removed,
we were able to put into place the vehicle stabilization system.
These are the two big arms that you can see on some of your channels right now.
These actually hold on to two -- for lack of a better term -- two trailer balls that we installed on the side of the rocket.
These are obviously very expensive and very beefy trailer balls that allow us to hold the
rocket very steady when it's out at the pad in winds up to 65 knots.
So, we did that modification right there.
And then off of the rotating service structure -- just once again, we're trying to be as efficient with
what we had out there at the pad already and not build any more structure than we have to.
There was one more access point we needed to build off of the rotating service
structure that got us access into what we call the FSAM,
or the first stage avionics module, area. With those modifications done, we now have three points where we can get into the rocket.
One there in the upper stage, one for the FSAM, and then the last one is an existing one that we're using left over from shuttle,
and that gets you to the igniter at the top of the solid rocket booster.
You have to go in there and do some final closeout preparations in there right before we go fly. And so, we've done that.
In fact, as far as the upper stage and the FSAM access,
there was really no intent when we got to the pad to go in there and do any normal operations.
But we wanted to maintain that capability, so if there was something that required us to go
in there we didn't have to roll all the way back to the VAB.
So, we did the most rudimentary things we could do in order to get us the access that
we might need and keep operations as simple as possible.
George Diller/Ares I-X Commentator: Alright, Jon, thanks very much.
And we're going to be listening to this weather briefing shortly.
And they're getting ready to pull back the rotating service structure. So, we've got some activity coming up here.
And we'll be talking with you a little bit later about how we got the vehicle out to the pad.
Jon Cowart/Deputy Mission Manager: OK, George, thank you.
George Diller/Ares I-X Commentator: Thanks very much. At T-1 hour, 11 minutes,
26 seconds and counting, here's the upper stage access arm retracting.
Just as we were concluding, they began to put that, put that in work.
Alright, again, we're now at T-1 hour, 10 minutes, 38 seconds and counting, this is Ares I-X Launch Control.