GEORGE DILLER: Now joining us here in the MissionDirector's Center is Dave Breedlove, who is the
Mission Integration Manager for NOAA-N. Dave, first of all, tell us briefly what it is that the Mission
Integration Manager does. You're very much involved on both sides of the aisle, the vehicle and the
spacecraft. Is that right? MR. BREEDLOVE: That's true, George. We have a team of people, highly skilled
team of people who help us get to meet with the spacecraft counterparts and make sure all the requirements
are met in order to mate them to the vehicle. In this case, it went very smoothly. So it's
been about a three, four year journey to this point to get that done. MR. DILLER: Here at the end, of course,
is the -- where the rubber meets the road and we get the Delta II ready for launch and get NOAA-N ready.
And we have some video now that we're going to show of some of that activity. And, Dave, if you can tell
us what we're seeing as we go along. MR. BREEDLOVE: Okay, George, this looks like the spacecraft
arriving at Vandenberg. They use an aircraft, the C5, to get here on the strip out here
at the airport. They transport the spacecraft directly over to Building 1610 and put it inside and begin their
processing. You can see it's transported horizontally in the can and moving inside the building, make sure
everything is clean for their -- to their requirements. It takes about a day or so to get everything ready and a
couple of days before they take the can off and start processing. So, you know, that's a very careful
operation. Here you see the spacecraft, of course, getting lifted out of its can. And they're going to put it on
a rotation fixture, bolt it down. And we'll probably see that rotate to the vertical position and hopefully here
-- there it goes. So this is the beginning of their processing here at Vandenberg after a great deal of testing at
their -- their facility in Sunnyvale, California. MR. DILLER: And who builds NOAA-N?
MR. BREEDLOVE: NOAA-N is built by Lockheed Martin in Sunnyvale, just about couple hundred miles
north of here. And they put -- they build the satellite very early. It's a satellite in a long series of satellites.
Put it together very early, test it, put it in storage. Sometimes comes out of storage to retest, depending on if
a satellite on orbit has had a -- suffered a failure of some kind. So they've taken good care of it for a very
long time. In the meantime, for us, the launch vehicle side, we build the vehicle kind of in the same way for
this mission, which is unique, in that we built it and put it in storage. And when we were called up by our
customer, we take it out of storage. This is what you're seeing. We put the booster up on the stand. This is
first stage of the Delta. We put that up in January. And at that time, we were getting ready for a March
launch opportunity, if you recall. And we had to wait shortly after that for our NOAA customer to repair a
transmitter that they had failed on board the spacecraft. And that moved us into the May timeframe.
Booster here comes horizontally, like the NOAA, put it up vertical and put it on the launch mount. You know, the
first stage contains two tanks, one for RP1 and one for liquid oxygen, which we're loading now. And that
fuels the main engine there at the bottom. Next we should be seeing the -- well, we're still doing the first
stage here. This is the inter stage that comes in. It mounts to the top of the first stage and, primarily, houses
the second stage nozzle extension, which we'll see in a little bit. So that's the next step. This is a structural
part of the vehicle. It's very important. Second stage sits on top. And the bottom of this portion is on -- right
at the top of the first stage. MR. DILLER: So the second stage engine is actually going to go right down
inside there. MR. BREEDLOVE: Right down inside. You'll see, the nozzle extension is pretty long. It's
almost as long as the stage itself. We'll see that in a little bit here. But before that, we erect the solid rocket
motors. These motors for this mission, there's only three of these motors required because of the mass of the
spacecraft and the orbit requirement that we only need three. As you know, the Delta can fly as many as
nine. For this mission three are put on the vehicle. And all three are ignited at T-zero, and jettisoned some
68 seconds into flight. Put these engines one at time. They rotate them around into the proper position and
then bolt them down. Next we should see the second stage of the Delta. You can see the long nozzle
extension here, it'll be better when it goes to the vertical position. What's covered there is back end. And
what looks like foil is the nozzle extension. Then you put the hook on it, get it vertical very carefully so they
don't hit that nozzle extension on the ground, which would be a very bad day. There you go. Now it's
vertical. You can see the length of it. And it fits -- as we go up the tower here, they'll show the stage going
down into the inner stage section or the beer can, that's what they call it here, the local guys.
MR. DILLER: These are all Boeing folks? MR. BREEDLOVE: They're Boeing and some NASA folks. In
fact, I recognize a couple of the NASA folks there. And we're always monitoring the activities, especially
hazardous activities, which all these are. Next you'll see the payload fairing, two halves of the payload
fairing that eventually will go around the spacecraft. These are hoisted up into the tower and put in a storage
position in the tower awaiting the spacecraft to come out. They are -- they do have electrical harnesses and
they do go through some testing. They have ordinance on board the payload fairing to separate the two halves.
So they are up there and they're connected up and they're involved in some of the processing and
some of the testing that goes on. MR. DILLER: Fairing is about how big? How wide? MR. BREEDLOVE:
The fairing is a ten foot in diameter fairing. It narrows down a little bit to eight feet at the second stage.
Second stage is eight feet. So we're at -- where it comes out is -- at its widest point is ten feet. And that's to
accommodate the spacecraft. Next you'll see the next part in the process is the spacecraft. Spacecraft is
canned in the facility we saw it go in a little while before. It's canned up, it's brought out very early in the
morning in order to avoid any winds. We can't put it at the tower. It's very low level winds. We can't tolerate
much more than ten knots or so. The spacecraft goes into the tower and it's bolted to the second stage of the
Delta, top of the second stage. It's the next part in the stack. You can see the second stage there. The --
they're bringing it down. Well, now it looks like we've gone to fairing encapsulation. We do this very
carefully, bring the fairing halves around the spacecraft and set it down on the second stage rail. And the
next one went on, I'm sure. Everything went pretty well with those activities. MR. DILLER: So you're
looking, of course, to the end of a long road on this one. But do you -- will you be working with the next
one that's coming down the line? MR. BREEDLOVE: Currently I'm assigned to the NOAA-N Prime. So,
yes. And that's scheduled for a December '07 launch right now.
MR. DILLER: All right. Thank you, Dave, very much. MR. BREEDLOVE: I'd like to personally thank the
members of the integration team that worked with our spacecraft counterparts throughout the last few years.
They did a great job and they know who they are. MR. DILLER: Very good. Thank you very much, Dave.
At T minus 37 minutes, 41 seconds and counting, this is Delta Launch Control.