WEBVTT

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BRUCE BUCKINGHAM: This is shuttle Launch Control at T-3 hours and holding,

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with about 54 minutes remaining in our scheduled built-in hold.

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I have with me at this time astronaut, NASA astronaut Garrett Reisman. Garrett, thanks for joining us.

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GARRETT REISMAN: It's my pleasure, Bruce. Great to be here.

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BUCKINGHAM: Great. Garrett, you've been an astronaut since 1998, and I know you're looking forward to continuing

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your training in the astronaut corps. And I appreciate you joining us today to talk to some of these tapes that we have,

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as well as to talk us through some of the crew activities as the astronauts get on board.

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REISMAN: Thanks. Thanks. It's real exciting. It's a great opportunity for me to see what things are like here on

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the day of launch and watch this place really come alive.

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It's launch days like this that this place becomes a really, really special place to be.

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BUCKINGHAM: Well, we're certainly looking forward to the launch tonight, and as we heard recently,

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the weather is still somewhat dicey. Looking at some low clouds, I guess, and some other issues.

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Possibly some rainstorms in the area, but we're going to continue to

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monitor that through the afternoon and evening, until we get to our launch time at 9:35.

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At this time, we're going to play a tape. It's a short, three-minute tape that is an overview of

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activities that we had put together here at Kennedy Space Center to prepare the Discovery for its mission.

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So let's go and go ahead and roll that tape, and Garrett, help me as we walk through it.

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REISMAN: Sure, I'd be happy to.

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BUCKINGHAM: This is the Canadarm, which we installed into the orbiter's payload bay,

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and that is something that we'll be carrying up onto the station to assist us with our activities.

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REISMAN: Looks like the arrival of the external tank, which comes in by barge

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from the Michoud facility just outside of New Orleans.

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BUCKINGHAM: Of course, we take the external tank into the Vehicle Assembly Building,

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and then, in the meantime, we've been stacking the solid rocket boosters.

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REISMAN: This is a really exciting process. This is when they put the whole stack together,

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first starting with the solid rocket boosters which you see right there, then the tank,

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and then they actually use a gigantic crane which I think we might see in the video soon.

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And they lift the entire orbiter and do a bit of a backflip as they place it up

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against the external tank and bolt it into place. It's really a pretty amazing feat of construction work.

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BUCKINGHAM: Absolutely. And of course, the external tank that we're seeing here is, is the only part of the vehicle,

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the shuttle that's not reused. This is the orbiter Discovery as it's being backed out of the Orbiter Processing Facility.

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Still got window covers on the windows, but we'll remove those once we get to the pad. And of course,

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taking it via the orbiter transporter into the VAB where, as you mentioned,

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it will be hooked up to a huge crane and lifted and attached to the external tank.

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REISMAN: Here you see the giant crane lifting the entire orbiter into position and, and doing this intricate maneuver.

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My understanding is this is necessitated in large part because the Vehicle Assembly

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Building was really built and designed for the Saturn V rockets, and we had to make this choreographed and intricate

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lifting process so that we could fit this winged orbiter into what previously was a hangar for a very large rocket.

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BUCKINGHAM: In fact, the same Vehicle Assembly Building which is very versatile is going to be used to help us

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construct and prep the next launch vehicle, the Ares V. But for now, we've got the Space Shuttle Discovery attached

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to the external tank and it makes its slow motion out of the VAB on its way to the launch pad.

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REISMAN: There you see the, the crawler and each of those treads, I think, weighs about two tons,

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or roughly the size of, or the weight of a pickup truck. Each one of those treads.

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BUCKINGHAM: And it's, of course, a very large construct going out to the launch pad, Launch Pad 39B. Of course,

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getting out early in the morning. This will be the, the final planned launch from 39B as we expect to turn this

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particular launch pad over to the Constellation Program to prepare for the Ares I launch in as early as 2009.

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