BRUCE BUCKINGHAM: This is shuttle Launch Control at T-3 hours and holding,
with about 54 minutes remaining in our scheduled built-in hold.
I have with me at this time astronaut, NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman. Garrett, thanks for joining us.
GARRETT REISMAN: It's my pleasure, Bruce. Great to be here.
BUCKINGHAM: Great. Garrett, you've been an astronaut since 1998, and I know you're looking forward to continuing
your training in the astronaut corps. And I appreciate you joining us today to talk to some of these tapes that we have,
as well as to talk us through some of the crew activities as the astronauts get on board.
REISMAN: Thanks. Thanks. It's real exciting. It's a great opportunity for me to see what things are like here on
the day of launch and watch this place really come alive.
It's launch days like this that this place becomes a really, really special place to be.
BUCKINGHAM: Well, we're certainly looking forward to the launch tonight, and as we heard recently,
the weather is still somewhat dicey. Looking at some low clouds, I guess, and some other issues.
Possibly some rainstorms in the area, but we're going to continue to
monitor that through the afternoon and evening, until we get to our launch time at 9:35.
At this time, we're going to play a tape. It's a short, three-minute tape that is an overview of
activities that we had put together here at Kennedy Space Center to prepare the Discovery for its mission.
So let's go and go ahead and roll that tape, and Garrett, help me as we walk through it.
REISMAN: Sure, I'd be happy to.
BUCKINGHAM: This is the Canadarm, which we installed into the orbiter's payload bay,
and that is something that we'll be carrying up onto the station to assist us with our activities.
REISMAN: Looks like the arrival of the external tank, which comes in by barge
from the Michoud facility just outside of New Orleans.
BUCKINGHAM: Of course, we take the external tank into the Vehicle Assembly Building,
and then, in the meantime, we've been stacking the solid rocket boosters.
REISMAN: This is a really exciting process. This is when they put the whole stack together,
first starting with the solid rocket boosters which you see right there, then the tank,
and then they actually use a gigantic crane which I think we might see in the video soon.
And they lift the entire orbiter and do a bit of a backflip as they place it up
against the external tank and bolt it into place. It's really a pretty amazing feat of construction work.
BUCKINGHAM: Absolutely. And of course, the external tank that we're seeing here is, is the only part of the vehicle,
the shuttle that's not reused. This is the orbiter Discovery as it's being backed out of the Orbiter Processing Facility.
Still got window covers on the windows, but we'll remove those once we get to the pad. And of course,
taking it via the orbiter transporter into the VAB where, as you mentioned,
it will be hooked up to a huge crane and lifted and attached to the external tank.
REISMAN: Here you see the giant crane lifting the entire orbiter into position and, and doing this intricate maneuver.
My understanding is this is necessitated in large part because the Vehicle Assembly
Building was really built and designed for the Saturn V rockets, and we had to make this choreographed and intricate
lifting process so that we could fit this winged orbiter into what previously was a hangar for a very large rocket.
BUCKINGHAM: In fact, the same Vehicle Assembly Building which is very versatile is going to be used to help us
construct and prep the next launch vehicle, the Ares V. But for now, we've got the Space Shuttle Discovery attached
to the external tank and it makes its slow motion out of the VAB on its way to the launch pad.
REISMAN: There you see the, the crawler and each of those treads, I think, weighs about two tons,
or roughly the size of, or the weight of a pickup truck. Each one of those treads.
BUCKINGHAM: And it's, of course, a very large construct going out to the launch pad, Launch Pad 39B. Of course,
getting out early in the morning. This will be the, the final planned launch from 39B as we expect to turn this
particular launch pad over to the Constellation Program to prepare for the Ares I launch in as early as 2009.