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Joe Matus: We are developing a

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space craft adapter to adapt an

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Orion spacecraft to a Delta IV

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heavy-launch vehicle for the

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Exploration Flight Test One-mission

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that will fly in the

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2014 time frame.  This unit that

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we just moved today is our first

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step in making that piece of

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flight hardware. This is called

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the 'Pathfinder'. It's an article

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that our welding shop has put

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together to develop their

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processes and techniques for

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assembling the flight unit and

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to give us practice in order to

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make a better product when it

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comes time to make the actual

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flight unit.

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Jon Street: Behind me is the

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cone segment where we weld up

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three segments. We'll process

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it through here with NDE -

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non-destructive testing. We'll

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continue on lifting that

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structure into the robotic weld

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tool, which will do the

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circumferential welds, all this

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in support of the flight articles.

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We're really excited about it.

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The end result is to have a full

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understanding of the capability

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of the tooling and be ready to

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go build flight hardware.

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Hansel Gill: The stage adapter

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that we are manufacturing in house

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at the Marshall Space Flight Center

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is intended to support a launch of

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2014 for an Orion flight test. The

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adapter is the hardware that

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connects the Orion spacecraft to

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the Delta IV launch system and this

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adapter pathfinder that we are

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working on here today is preparing

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us to process the flight hardware.

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What we want to do with this hardware

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is prove our processing in welding,

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thermal protection system application

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in some of our machining operations

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and what we have an opportunity to do

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with this hardware that you can see

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behind us here is to prove these

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processes so that we have everything

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in place to accept the flight hardware.

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The interface for the Orion flight

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test is the same interface that we

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will use for our SLS adapter. What

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this has allowed us to do is design

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the hardware one time and build it