Rising to the Occasion - Pad Abort 1

By Brent Cobleigh, Director, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

I know that there is a perception in the general public about the traditional government worker who has no incentive or desire to work hard. I haven’t found too many of those people working at NASA, and there certainly aren’t any of them on the Orion Abort Flight Test Project. On an average day NASA Dryden has 30 to 50 people, stationed at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, preparing for the big event: the first test launch of the Orion Abort Flight Test system. 

Our team is joined by the Flight Test management team from the NASA Johnson Space Center (Houston, TX), engineers and technicians from the NASA Langley Research Center (Hampton, VA), support personnel from the NASA White Sands Test Facility (Las Cruces, NM), safety personnel from the NASA Kennedy Space Center, and numerous contractors including prime contractor Lockheed Martin.

One of the biggest issues for managers has been trying to decide when to “throttle back” this incredible team to keep them from overworking themselves.  Anytime you have a dangerous work environment and high-value flight hardware, we enforce work-hour limitations designed to keep people and one-of-a-kind test hardware safe.  It’s always a tough balance between the can-do attitude of our team and the need to keep everyone safe.

And safety is key, since we are getting close to igniting a half million pounds of solid rocket thrust that will pull the 31,600-pound Launch Abort Vehicle (which is comprised of the crew module and the launch abort system) to an altitude of about one mile. Two other, smaller solid rockets will be used to steer the test article and then jettison the launch abort system from the crew module before three enormous parachutes inflate to slow the crew module to a survivable descent rate prior to landing (see animated video http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Movie/Orion/HTML/EM-0099-08.html).

During the past three months our combined test team has been completing final component installations and integrated system checks.  Just last week, the team completed a mission rehearsal to verify the functionality of every element that will be used on launch day: from the crew completing pre-launch procedures, to chilling the solid rockets to proper temperatures, to full staffing of the mobile control room, to power-up of every telemetry antenna, radar and tracking camera, to launch of weather balloons and more. This test has helped us iron out the details of the day-of-flight checklists in preparation for the Pad Abort 1 launch.

So as we all follow the progress of this on NASA-TV and the NASA website, let's not forget the people behind the projects.... I am proud to support an exceptional team of technicians, mechanics, engineers and many other mission support staff that are about to write that next chapter in American space history.