I
you
that gives you sort of a quick rundown
on the payload and what we anticipate to
happen this morning this vehicle those
of you they haven't seen it before it
gets off the rail very fast it's not
quite like watching a liquid one of the
NASA launches that sort of climb out
reasonably slowly this this one gets off
like a missile because that's what the
first stage basically is you'll see the
first stage put out the order of six
seconds then you'll see our coast face
and then you will see the second stage
ignite after we have reached the right
dynamic pressures to do that the
sustainer motor or second stage is a
fairly long long time so you'll see that
climb out as as the plume of the vehicle
claims out through any wind shears don't
don't think there are too many today
you'll see the plume sort of scatter
around a little bit that's not the
vehicle maneuvering like that the
vehicle hopefully is going straight down
range so that's just the plume being
hashed about when you who is doing the
count for us she give us the plus count
and a T plus 12 seconds Asuma announce
second stage ignition that's an analogy
of three point seven five miles and then
I'd be a plus count t plus 18 that will
hear that means the end of the s 19
boosts guidance system that occurs at
about six miles altitude t plus 44 is
the max count that's the end of the
second stage ignition like a second
stage burn and that's about 30 miles
altitude t plus 52 we have the payload d
spend that means the
yeah vehicle that were spinning up due
to the bin ken hangul set in to give us
a spin stabilized vehicle we have of
that we call a yo-yo d spin which is
simply some weights that come out on
long wires much like a a ice skater puts
our arms out to stop the spin when she
spent it on the ice it changes the
moment of inertia in technical terms and
then as she puts our arms down she'll
spend up but we will put this D spend yo
yo D spin system out and that
essentially takes all the spin right out
of the vehicle to make us ready to enter
the microgravity condition for the
experiments we will get a pair of
separation at t + 58 that's a 48
nautical miles or excuse me not nautical
miles miles t plus 7 affair we have the
beginning of the microgravity period and
at t-plus two hundred ninety seconds we
have a pudgy which is actually 198 miles
for this mission but close enough to
turn about 200 miles out you t plus 5 06
seconds the end of microgravity at 68
miles such as we are over t plus 6 2 22
seconds the main chute will deploy will
get an indication of that you're not
going to see that today and that's a
through miles altitude and then t plus
eight seventy eight seconds we will have
a payload landing 50 nautical miles
downrange so it's it's about a 15-minute
flight it's so 878 seconds I'm so high
rocky quietiy an hour were close to to
the launch condition I think
and nine eight seven six five four three
two
a consumption for materials Devon and
space at the university of alabama in
huntsville was formed in September of
1985 when the university received a NASA
grant from the office of commercial
programs the intent of the consortium is
to promote commercial activities in
space and to enhance a technological
position of the United States for
foreign trade we are attending to run
experiments and we are performing
experiments in the low gravity of space
so that we can learn things about
materials make new materials learn
things about processes that we can't
learn on earth where they are masked by
Earth's gravitational pull the nice part
about a sounding rocket like this is
that it can be done approximately every
six months or so our first launched in
march of 1989 consulate one was a
successful launch in which all of the
experiments worked and worked very well
that payload was built entirely by UAH
and integrated by McDonnell Douglas
Space Systems Division in hospital
Alabama on consular three then is
experiments not only from the UAH
Consortium for materials development in
space but also for from three other NASA
centers for the commercial development
of space from mattel in columbus ohio
from penn state university and from the
university of colorado we also can
change experiments very close to launch
time as opposed to if you're flying on a
man rated vehicle like the shuttle there
are a considerable amount of
documentation that you have to go
through safety documentation to assure
the launch people and assure the
astronauts that we are not in any way
compromising their health and well-being
the phone formation experiment is
looking at the billion dollar a year a
home insulation market as one
application it's also looking at
building structures on the moon for
going in a lunar Mars moon or mars types
of missions the e for information in
this particular experiment will have
aluminum particles in it so that we can
see what the effect of aluminum is on
some of the acoustical properties of the
material the reason we want to study the
foams are that if we can make a small
amount of improvement in the way that
foams are currently built with there
being such a large market for it any
small improvement can have a large
potential savings in energy and also in
production costs
our interest in the project starts from
some general observations that have been
made for every cell tissue human animal
it's gone into space that is that there
are a series of subtle changes in
physiology that have been observed maybe
roughly categorized as changes in cell
secretion or changes in hormone response
while these might be quite unimportant
one really doesn't know the importance
of these over some long-term experience
in the microgravity arena the other
intriguing part is these problems that
are seen in microgravity are also very
clearly related in our minds at least
two general unsolved Aziz states on
earth such as cystic fibrosis diabetes
and so forth so the question for us
became one of can we get double money
out of our experiments here where we can
use micro gravity as a test tube in
order to learn something about these
important diseases in order to do that
we have to sample a microgravity
experience we have to learn something
then about the behavior of cells in this
situation this is why we've constructed
what we call the Penn State bio module
which starts from a molec modular set of
about eight experiments the size of an
eraser and in this we can put solutions
in the various side arms and cells and
tissues of interest in the main chamber
this becomes the fundamental unit that
we work with these then can be assembled
according to the geometry demanded by
the payload onto a baseplate here we see
a base plate with our little computer
auxiliary electronics put underneath and
place for four separate vial modules and
this is what we'll be flying in the
concert pre-flight but we pick the
chameleon skin and tadpole skin problem
basically everyone seemed the color
change it occurs in chameleons they've
may have seen the spot changes that
occur in tadpoles these color changes
although they are very many are very
similar in overall respects to much more
complex processes involved in humans now
the value of these systems are the
tissues are very robust they're easy for
us to prepare and we can do meaningful
experiments in this particular
environment so what we're setting up
here is to test proof of principle the
question we're trying to ask then is
some place over 6.5 billion years of
evolution cells have learned to handle
gravity as a settling force within them
and I've I have made use of that we
believe for
other processes that are involved we're
trying to ask simple questions like when
the chameleon kin goes into space and if
it's challenged with an appropriate
hormone does it change color in a manner
that one would predict this is the
spirit that we're going to follow as the
payload integrators for consort three
mcdonnell douglas has a number of
responsibilities we've worked on this
particular payload for four months most
of that in Huntsville beginning with the
understanding and the implementation of
the experiment package requirements and
the build up and check out in integrated
testing of each of the experiments in
the payload there are 12 experiments in
there and several other pieces of
supporting hardware accelerometers power
supplies power distribution systems
computers accelerometers all these
things have to work together one hundred
percent to to conduct the mission and
our job is to see that that happens
seemed duty well
like it beats probably kept you up to
speed on what's happened here I don't
know exactly we had a couple small
problems down Eric courts may have 10
minute old at the end which is a rage
problem the radar went down and we
finally got an alternate radar online
and went ahead we also had a gyro
problem again and we had a noise signal
at her pitch gyro and we scratched her
head pretty hard there for a while to
whether we should scrub or not mark
ended up talking to the factory guys we
consulted with NASA and finally
concluded that we could fly safely we
did so all in all it looks like it's a
good flight we don't know of any
anomalies during flight at this point
the vehicle and it bring the sand up
there should be an excellent shape we
believe that the D eyes got all of the
data that they were looking for I think
there's indications one experiment may
have malfunction a little bit but at
least everything flew exactly the way
it's supposed to fly so at this point
we're very happy
move it Hannah's rocket companies that
one more time they they have to limit
three on the number of their experiments
some of them they don't get the data on
till a land but there are some functions
that show up on a telemetry believe this
was a foam experiment but I'd rather not
speak to that actually Fran wessling ER
dr. Len twister one of the people should
discuss that if we're really not
qualified to speak on her behalf on it
far as we know everything went just fine
the attitude stayed we only had three
thrusters fire during the whole
zero-gravity period so that should have
got some excellent gravity which is the
purpose of the flight of course
bird
what's next well we're working on a
whole variety of launches we have a crew
back in houston now working on a
proposal for NASA which is entities or
orbital flights 10 orbitals there's a
Air Force proposal coming out here and
within the month for another 40 flights
we're working on some these are all
orbital also we're working on a number
of programs that involves suborbital
such as you saw here today so we've got
a lot of stuff out there ahead of us and
we're working God and they're very
confident that we're going to end up
doing
we got we got more proposals and we can
handle her between new and launches but
that's a nice problem to have we don't
object to that at all
well yeah today's right certainly
anytime you have a success it's
obviously helpful it's I guess if you
fail is prone to give you a more
negative than a success is to give you
positive unfortunately but there was
obviously a big help to us we think
everybody in the industry actually to
have a success it doesn't help anybody
missed industry for anybody to fail so
we're happy to see anybody succeed and
of course special when we do
well we don't get too tense we've been
involved in a lot of them here with that
guy's line item songs your unmanned the
worst that can happen you know it's not
too bad but now that we were we were not
tense but we had a you know some serious
discussions there about whether we
should or shouldn't until we got more
data but we were a little bit concerned
there we might in fact after scrub and
if we did we were looking at anywhere
from two to six days of slippage so we
were happy we didn't have to do that but
on the other hand we weren't about to do
anything dumb we wanted to be very
confident that it was going to go good
before we went to that final three
minutes of the count
been very frustrating and then at this
point really
well you're right but the last one
wasn't was a kind of a weird thing I
guess in this business you know you
apply a lot of skill and cunning is
right choice of words and do the best
you can but Brazil is that one percent
or two out there that's pure luck and
once in a while you have bad luck and it
happens to everybody in the business and
this is just a case where I think
everybody had done everything he could
reasonably expect them to do the same
system and flowing a number of times and
exactly that configuration we just
happened to get bit by so it was an
accident air waiting in somebody we just
run fortunate rather frustrating part of
that one of course is we're only half a
second away from a successful flight
we'd have kept flying one half second
more in the last night we'd had a good
flight just like this one so you'll just
die closer doing successful failure in
this business
yes it is that's yeah the hardware we
use the the guidance package and the
recovery system are reused to refurbish
at the factory in this system we flew
today i believe is our third flight
we've flown that hard work so
no I think we're not concerned about
worrying things out if that's a sense to
your question no that's always possible
but now we send it back to the factory
get it refurbished Andhra verified and
this basically comes out as new new
equipment from a functional point of
view yes it does you bet yep
actually we only missed about two miles
worst mark mark daniel has got the exact
number but i believe we we were targeted
for 52 miles and we we landed it about
54 so this is well within the limits
he'd expected Marc Marquez running
continual wind checks and launching
settings throughout the count and he
gave him the last one mark you want a
quarter a second here's our program
manager mark Daniels he's the guy that
really made this work and they were
wondering how we did on the impact
royalty to predictions well we were
right on the money with our impact
predictions we were predicting about 50
miles north of here and six miles west
and we impacted 54 north and 11 west so
that's about as close as you can get to
being on the money
that's correct 54 miles north of the
launcher so we were about as happy as I
think you can get with everything that
all the systems and the performance
today it's a signal coming through on
the TM electronic noise the wiper arm
that goes against the gyro itself we
think there was some contamination error
on that and so it was interrupting the
electrical signal and this would have
given you a feedback into the servos
which would be its represent herself as
a chatter in a control system we
concluded that even if it had in fact
happened in flight it probably would not
have reacted into the vehicle we'd had
enough filtering an electronic system
plus dynamic damping in the vehicle
itself that it would have not been a
problem that is you can imagine we're
pretty conservative at this point and we
weren't going to gamble do we convince
ourselves that it was really not a
problem
yeah the question about how this relates
to the orbital flight actually takes the
same kind of a team exactly it we have
different players but the difference
between an orbital flight and this one
from the mission preparation and the
launch is very very similar there's not
a lot of difference really almost no
more people involved as a matter of fact
the only difference is instead of going
up and coming down we go to the same
altitude and keep going in fact most
orbital flights won't even go that high
you know you flatten out and you just
use the interview to accelerate orbital
velocity
the NASA contracts are set for a mid 93
first launch the Air Force is fall of 92
and a couple other programs that could
be in the middle e92 time frame probably
nothing in 91
well we feel very good about it we've
felt since day one and we have an
excellent orbital launch system we
believe it's the best one the country's
got of course we're a little prejudiced
will admit but it's based on highly
reliable components and we are able to
ensure the insurance companies looked at
it and set our premiums and we've got
about as low premium there's anybody in
the country so we think that's a vote of
confidence in our system so we think we
got an outstanding system there we just
hope to have the opportunity to go use
it I think dr. Lundqvist from the
university of alabama's is here and
there were some earlier questions about
the payload and easy he's the guy to
talk to those so there's anybody have
anything else on a launch vehicle I'll
answer it otherwise we should turn it
over to him okay well thank you we're
happy you're all here to watch it and
then got a dick
I'm Chuck Lundqvist from the university
of alabama in huntsville the consortium
for materials development in space let
me begin by congratulating deep and SSI
on a great flight we got the kind of
ride we wanted and are now awaiting the
recovery of the payload obviously it
came down on parachute and we don't have
a report yet from the helicopter having
reached the site so i can't tell you
exactly what form the payload is in but
came down well on parachutes so there's
every reason to believe that it's a
successful recovery the recovery will be
taking place probably right now
with regard to any of the specific
experiments it's too early to make any
kind of a diagnosis from the telemetry
we can tell that the timer's that
operated the different instruments
worked and so the 12 experiments were
working one one way or another and until
we looked at the individual equipment
when it gets back and do more detailed
analysis it's just premature to say
anything about any of the experiments
the the one message or one bit of
indication was a temperature measurement
but there could be other interpretations
of that do so I I'd say it's premature
to make any kind of a diagnosis on any
of the experiments we we don't really
know anything about any of them
specifically we know that the general
apparatus worked within the payload we
see that on the telemetry but just much
too early to go beyond that
questions
let me again say that we're just very
pleased with the flight that SSI
provided perfect day for it went went
very well and we now have to analyze the
results from the individual experiments
to see what results we got but I'm very
optimistic that it was a very successful
flight