beautiful morning for a launch in
florida
five
four
three
two
one
and liftoff at dawn the dawn of orion
and a new era of american space
exploration
so
well hello everyone and welcome to
today's orion post flight test briefing
orion launched from florida florida this
morning at 7 05 a.m and splashed down in
the pacific ocean about four and a half
hours later about 600 miles southwest of
san diego crews right now are in the
process of recovering orion here to
share more about how the flight tests
today went are
william gerstenmaier
associate administrator for human
exploration and operations
mark guyer
orion program manager
mike hawes
lockheed martin orion program manager
and astronaut rex walheim
we'll start with some opening remarks
here and then we'll have some time for
questions bill
thanks rachel i'd again what a
tremendous honor for me to be here to to
really thank all the folks that made
today happen
you know from the united launch uh
alliance team that gave us the delta iv
that gave us the ride to orbit what what
a tremendous job they did
in preparation and getting the vehicle
ready to go fly into doing their
activities and and making it look pretty
easy and then to the nasa team and the
orion team and the lockheed team that
just did a phenomenal job of getting
orion ready to go fly and to see it
execute this mission and work as as
flawlessly as these guys will talk to
you about before and again i caution us
all we'll dig through the data the first
look looks really good from a data
standpoint but we'll dig through all the
data and make sure that everything is
there we'll definitely learn some things
from this flight that's why it was a
test flight it will really help us as we
take those next steps into the into the
solar system with humans and then thanks
also to all the folks on site out at
california they're still busy even as
we're sitting here today picking up the
capsule and the navy teams and the
helicopter teams and the other folks
that are out there doing that activity
and
is just just phenomenal and even space
station got to contribute a little bit
the rapid scat onboard space station was
able to provide real-time data in terms
of the winds the surface winds at the
ocean during the pickup site so even the
station got to contribute to this
activity so what a tremendous team
effort and then i'd like to also thank
just a little bit the folks that that
really got me excited again about space
flight i mean to see the enthusiasm from
the folks here at kennedy and and even
for the media i don't think i've been in
a press event where you applauded coming
in
you're usually sharpening your pencils
and scowling at me with
with grimaces on your face so so again
thank you for for catching that spirit
that i think we all feel as human beings
that
we as a species are are meant to push
human presence into the solar system and
this is a first step in starting to do
that so again thank you for getting us
excited again and thinking about what
it's like to be really a leader in space
so so thanks to everyone and thanks to
the team mark
well let's see it's good to see you
after the successful mission uh it's
hard to have a better date than today it
was a lot of fun very exciting
uh each part of the mission of course
part of the reason is exciting is it's
it's a difficult mission
it's a tough environment to fly through
it's tough objectives that we set for
this flight
but it appears uh that orion uh and the
delta iv heavy were uh nearly flawless
great job by the team
um
you know even though i'm an engineer i'm
a fairly visual person so these are a
couple of things that i'll i'll talk
about the things that i remember
from the mission
uh were that were the images one of the
big ones was the delta iv heavy the very
the beautiful liftoff we had at sunrise
many of you were here yesterday
as we talked about the difficulties with
getting a great rocket like that started
you know with the wins and other things
that the team has to be very careful
about to make sure we're ready to go and
have a successful launch they worked
through those
things yesterday and today they got we
got right off right at the beginning of
the window flawlessly terrific and also
the upper stage put us right where we
needed to be so i want to thank the ula
team did a fantastic job
the other images that i remember uh were
the we had a v we had a picture out the
window you might remember that one and
seeing the limb of the earth at about 3
000 miles
what i liked about that view is one um
you can see the frame of the window so
you feel like you're an astronaut
yourself you're looking out the window
it's different than a satellite taking a
picture of the earth it's it's what it
would be like if you were inside the
capsule on that mission yourself so i
thought that was very moving and the
distance we were from the earth which a
human rated system hasn't gone that far
since 1972
and in fact uh that mission was apollo
17 which launched december 7th
of uh 1972 so almost almost exactly 42
years ago
so that that reminded us that you know
here we are again now the united states
leading exploration uh out into the
solar system so that was a great a great
moment the other two visuals were the
the separation we saw the the heat
shield as we separated and also the
entry which was very dynamic i want to
thank the teams who who got us those
views but you see how energetic
the entry is and what the job the
parachutes have to do and it reminds you
that this is a difficult job and those
systems have to work and have to work
well and have to deal with very dynamic
environments so i just hats off to the
team just a terrific job so last thing i
would say and mike will actually go
through the some of the specifics about
how the vehicle did
you know this orion team this nasa
lockheed and other key suppliers um
as well as the ground ops team that's
doing the recovery right as we speak
and the mission ops team at jsc
who
who helped us fly the vehicle
and the sls team who made pieces on this
this article they do incredible work
every day today it's just more obvious
to everyone else because we flew the
flight and it performed so well so i
want to thank them and it's an honor a
blessing to be a part of that great team
so i'll pass it to mike
thanks mark
it's uh
so i guess i'll just take from there
with with uh mark that the team has done
just an incredible job in it we had a
chance to uh
swing by and uh check in on the
engineering teams who were still in the
onc
before we left and they're the folks on
the orion side that have been
not just building the spacecraft but
powering the spacecraft and doing all of
the engineering support
for the test flight
you know several years ago
when lockheed won this contract we had
embedded in that contract the idea that
we were going to build a spacecraft at
the kennedy space center and that had
not been done and we have now done that
we have
the the team that accepted you know just
that green pressure hall
and added everything else that made that
ship fly today so it is a fantastic team
uh with our suppliers across the country
and our and our partners as as mark had
said so i really want to thank
the teams including the ula launch team
that really got us there today
really just
just amazing that the
orion was great you know just a very
very clean
flight a few things that
were not really unexpected
our video processing unit reset a couple
times we kind of expected some of the
avionics to go through resets i think we
had talked to you about flying through
the van allen belts and
and seeing higher higher radiation than
we had seen for a while
so
you know we have to go look at that
when we get to
uh naval base san diego
we'll actually get into the capsule and
we'll get those flight data recorders
that have that high data rate uh
developmental flight instrumentation
that we call it all of that data
and we're going to actually act to try
to get that to one of our facilities
there in san diego so we can start
processing that data and get it to our
engineering team and the nasa team
as soon as we can so
so that'll be a big deal but from the
the
the operational data that we saw today
uh the
the ship just flew extremely extremely
well and the flight ops team in houston
uh
really only had to interact with the
system a couple times as we went through
the day so it was it was really a
terrific performance
you know we've talked before we're
already working on that next capsule
we're already
forming metal parts machining parts
we've already sent some parts to esa for
the the service module work that they're
doing for the next time
so there is an awful lot that is already
going
but we'll learn uh
just an enormous amount from what we did
today and when we get all that data back
that will be
a big a big deal for us
the
you know we talked a little bit some
folks have asked me what made me nervous
and i went through a couple times and
talked about separation events and
talked about making sure we got the full
uh burn
so mark picked out a couple moments i
would say that uh
seeing the fairing jettison was was a
big one for me today actually being
worried about all of those separation
events for months
and seeing those come off so cleanly was
was really extraordinary
and and then have the upper stage burn
that put us on the re-entry trajectory
absolutely right on the money was uh
was really great
uh but i would also pick on that video
feed and that was something that
personally i've really
been looking for is that view so much
further than the space station orbit
than we've been and
that was really
unique to see that so i'm looking to see
more of that when i actually have time
to to sit and watch the the replays
not quite sure when that's going to
happen but
uh
and i would just like to close on one
particular thought uh
bill and i have been at this a long time
together
when we started at jsc we started with
all the apollo guys still there
so we've kind of now finally done
something for the first time for our
generation
it's a good day
yeah i'd like to echo the comments i've
heard already and it was just such a
pleasure to witness the inaugural fight
of orion it
it's an amazing vehicle and the fact
that it went so well is a testament to
the workforce that put in so many hearts
so many hours and years of hard work to
to make this work well i think one of
the memories i have in today's flight
was you know the the earth limb view was
amazing but
i think it was the first video that came
down of uh of the earth and it wasn't it
wasn't something i didn't recognize it
was something i i recognized that view
of earth it just looked familiar but
then it struck me that's not from a
platform i've been on before that's from
our orion spacecraft and that really
meant something to me so that was just
just amazing
and as a as impressive as this flight
was this was just serial number zero
zero one of orion and as as as
successful as it was there's just great
things more to come down the road and
we're looking forward to that and i
can't wait to get back to work you know
serial number zero zero two that one's
going to be on the space launch system
and i tell you the site of the orion on
top of the space launch system is gonna
take your breath away even before it
takes flight and then when it does take
flight america is gonna sit up and take
notice that america the space program is
just incredible and it's full of
vitality
and then we'll go on there from uh from
the second flight to the third flight
and that has a a place near and dear to
me because our crew is going to be on
board so there'll be four astronauts on
board on board the exploration mission
expiration mission two
and the neat thing is that this uh that
this vehicle is not destination specific
it's gonna go to a bunch of different
places we all know the the amazing
places it can go to we talked about the
lunar vicinity to an asteroid and maybe
to mars one day
and a neat thing about that is that this
like i say is serial number zero zero
one of a storied fleet of vehicles and
when we look back 20 30 years from now
we can trace it all back to the day
where it started out with orion serial
number zero zero one
okay thanks uh we'll take some questions
and if you wouldn't mind stating your
name affiliation and uh to whom you're
addressing your question let's start on
this side
hi clara moskowitz for scientific
american um
just a quick clarification um when you
mentioned the reset of the video
processing units um was that definitely
caused by the radiation or that's what
you're thinking
for sure but
but we fully expected that we'd see some
of the avionics boxes go through resets
and can you talk a little bit more about
the performance of the heat shield did
you get any data in real time about how
that was going
yeah the instrumentation for the heat
shield is part of this um
this this data that we record on board
so we'll get we'll get that down and we
took some photographs which uh they're
probably starting to look at now so the
first time we really get a chance to
look at is when it gets on the ship in
about four hours so we know it worked
but the specifics of how well and what
are the subtleties will will it'll take
more time to investigate yeah
irene klotz with reuters um on that
radiation issues again did um you have
any indication at all that you did have
any of the computer
resets that you had talked about a
little bit before flying any resets that
we saw were in the video processing unit
which uh
the flight computers uh to my knowledge
we didn't see any
any issues with but they're they're
somewhat similar boxes in fact we use
the video unit as a backup memory
for the flight computers
hi uh miriam kramer with space.com and
not to take away from the celebration of
the flawless test flight but i i'm just
curious what what kind of things can you
learn from this kind of really amazing
test flight that you maybe didn't know
before you know it was on the ground
like is this the kind of thing where you
really wanted to stress those systems
and even see them break and you could
get more data that way yeah i mentioned
a couple day couple days ago that it
it's an unmanned test flight and you
have to take advantage of that so you
push the systems you push the
the operations that you're the most
worried about
and again we have great models and some
of the best people on the planet on
these systems but until you fly it
you don't know so we didn't see anything
major that's clear
it looks like it flew very close to what
we expected but we have 1200 sensors
thousands of
pieces of data that we're going to get
back and i'm sure we're going to find
some very interesting things uh about
how it behaved and that's really
important for us as we get ready for the
next mission so you also gain a lot of
data that that you can't really get from
testing so so just being in the
environment like the the gps system the
global positioning system it at this
high apogee
how well it work how many satellites
would actually acquire we have theories
we have thoughts but it's a function of
actual margin through the antenna system
and into the receiver and function of
the gps constellation so that you can't
really test how the vehicle actually
flies you know we have pretty good
computational fluid dynamics to see how
it actually performs how it dissipates
heat energy what lift vector what
control we can do they did a little lift
maneuver with the thrusters
so all that stuff you you could
get a good understanding but this gives
you a data point that anchors your
models that says hey now these models
that we had before aren't exactly right
so there's there's definitely some
things because i would hear the folks on
the loops talking about stuff how the
cooling system was working they saw some
things every 15 minutes was a little
different to them it's just a function
how the vehicle works you could see the
the capsule expand as it went to vacuum
so you can see the pressure change
inside the capsule and that's a normal
thing we knew that from shuttle but then
you get to actually see the real numbers
with orion so it's those
real world environmental complex
interaction kind of things that you
can't test anyplace else other than to
go fly and we actually saw things you
know subtleties that we didn't think
about because we didn't talk about as
much about the big events in the mission
but you know we watched the capsule fly
yourself and you watched the thrusters
fire so you know you watched all the
individual thrusters fire you you saw
the propellant use and you saw how it uh
went to attitude uh prior to like the
maneuver burns that bill talked about so
there's actually a great deal of data we
got just in the operational nature of
how the spacecraft flew
hi robert perlman with collectspace.com
there was a lot of excitement in the
press room when
when it splashed down so it was a little
hard to hear some of the details so if
you could go over some of the recovery
what we know about the recovery in terms
of did you get all three main parachutes
the forward bay
um and uh what might have happened with
the uprighting balloons not that they
were needed but yeah good question so we
so the crew actually now uh remember we
we had an option if everything was going
well to sit in the water for 60 minutes
and let the systems run and we were
measuring the
the thermal soak back basically heat
shield's obviously very warm and we
wanted to see
how that thermal properties soak back
into the cabin and how other systems
were affected so we we let it do that so
we the recovery guys did not go near the
capsule for 60 minutes in fact i think
they just started 30 minutes or so ago
to go recover the capsule we did have
them out looking for the forward bay
cover and to get to get the parachutes
uh the parrot the mains were were a an
objective so we got two of them two of
the mains were recovered we knew they
synced pretty quick uh they're not part
of my
in my budget i don't i didn't assume we
get them back but we tried to get them
so that we could sometimes you learn
things with the risers and other things
that you wouldn't see if you could get
them back
so we got two of those back ford bay
cover sunk you know if you saw it before
we put it on you realize how big it is
and how heavy it is we were hoping we
might might get some of that but we
didn't we'll see though on the on the
front part of the cm whether there are
any issues with re-contact not that we
suspect that that happened uh as
relative of the seamus bags
a couple at least one did not deploy at
all
we know one was underinflated so we're
actually looking at the data today we
know that the pyro's fired
and the bottles are empty so what
happened with the rest of the bags is
part of what we're looking at but that's
again
a great part of the test so so this one
system behaved a little odd shouldn't
have done that we did land stable one
which was good we landed with the heat
shield down
and the riser cutters fired so the
parachutes did separate all the things
that we expected to happen so
hi ken kramer for universe today in
america's space first congratulations to
everyone uh my question is i wonder if
you have heard anything from the
president or congressional leaders and
are you hopeful that you will at least
get continued and support and even
better increase support so we can move a
little bit faster
thanks
uh well we know we know we had senator
nelson was here
um and i know on the uh
on the twitter feed
some senators and congressmen send their
support so i think just the beginning
we've been busy with other things but i
expect we'll see that
um
a lot of attention
uh relative to that so we've already had
a lot of support you think about it you
know it's a bipartisan program this
whole sls orion ground ops program is
supported by both
um and uh we've always believed uh and i
think with that bipartisan port you see
it that this is an important part of
keeping the united states as a leader in
space
uh and so i think a successful test
flight just helps that kind of
discussion i think
but yeah i think we didn't get anything
we got general
congratulations from a lot of different
folks it was kind of fun i got a picture
from the service module team in bremen
who's working on the service module for
em-1 and gave us their high
congratulations and said they were busy
working on the service module for us
today so that was good news on multiple
fronts so that was good i think the
other thing to really watch too is
you sometimes don't get to see all the
work behind the scenes that goes into
this flight so
you know we you need to take a look at
what's coming up in in future activities
there's a lot of work going on in math
with sls that that we ought to you ought
to try to follow we'll try to make
available to you that you can actually
see what's happening we've got the
flight dome down there we'll start some
flight welding in january we've got the
shuttle main engines down it's dennis
that will actually look at start box
condition stuff probably after the first
of the year so that activity is big
we've got the solid rocket motors that
are going to be on the sls firing next
year
as mark said they're busy machining all
the the forgings and the key aluminum
pieces for the the next em-1 um those
start getting assembled in math fairly
soon i think next year
and then i think the actual welded
orion ends up in florida by the end of
next calendar year here to begin so so
em1 will be here as a pressure shell
coming out of math by the end of next
year ready to get ready for em-1 so i
think sometimes we forget
we see the big event where we can all
watch the launch but then we don't see
all this other work so we're going to
try to do a better job of exposing you
to what we're doing because when i look
across what this team is doing the
progress that this team is making across
the board is just absolutely phenomenal
i am so impressed with the amount of
work
that this team is is pulling together as
a large
team to really make this stuff happen is
just phenomenal so and we'll try to get
that message out and we'll and we've
been getting good support and we'll try
to increase the support as much as we
can and i think i get a hearing next
week so i'll get a chance to try to
cheerlead a little bit next week in the
hearing so we'll see how that goes we'll
see if we get applause in the hearing or
i get
the normal press welcome
hi emily carney americaspace.com um
apollo did not have the use of real-time
cameras and uh drones at the time to
monitor re-entry in the initial stages
of a vehicle recovery um at present time
how significant would you say has this
technology been in today's continued uh
recovery operations and obviously
monitoring the vehicle's performance
the um
a couple things so we you saw some of
the really cool views that we were able
to send down but we also have high speed
cameras in locations like watching the
parachutes that are recorded data so i
think high-speed video has been a huge
part of our
uh test program including the paddle
board test we did it was enormous to see
separations and the subtleties that go
on so that's huge
we
what you didn't see was we also had two
p3 aircraft that were following the
entry one measuring the heating on the
heat shield so they can actually measure
temperature the heat shield coming in
and the other following separation
events like ford bay cover and
everything taking pictures so it's huge
i mean the
seeing the pictures yourself is a huge
benefit to the engineering team we're
going to get a lot of instrumentation
but when you actually see the operation
itself makes a big difference and of
course it was also really really cool
today and i want to thank the icona team
especially
you know yesterday there were some
problems we had fog it dried and they
couldn't get off the ground early enough
and they had some other things it was no
fault of their own and i understand they
actually worked they had some technical
issues and worked overnight to get that
ready for us today and i want to applaud
their efforts because
it really helped i think put the
exclamation point on the mission to see
that capsule coming in
as fast as we expected it would and then
to see the parachutes deployed there's
really not been a film
of that kind of deployment before and it
really gives you a sense for how dynamic
that phase is so i think it's huge
amy green wmfe public radio i just
wondered i realize of course it will
take a long time to go through all of
the data collected from this mission
so far in just a short period since
we've had splashdown what is the biggest
anomaly you're seeing already or what is
the most interesting thing that you will
be immediately looking at after the end
of this mission and also just another
quick question i wanted to ask about um
the orion castle's transportation back
to kennedy space center i think i heard
that it's going to be trucked back and i
just wondered what are the security or
safety protocols for that how will that
work
it will be trucked back that that is the
plan and uh
the uh
ground system development program here
at kennedy is is
the agent for doing that transportation
and
and so they've actually gone through and
secured all of the transport permits and
everything because you have to do that
state by state by state all across the
country
uh and there are unique rules in every
state for large hazardous cargo
the craft will still be fueled it will
still have hazardous materials
during its transport so they have worked
all of that the security aspects and the
transportation aspects we expect to get
the capsule back here uh close to
christmas
that would be what the the plan would be
i think the key rather than picking on
anything that acted strangely our big
focus now is to get that data from those
1200 sensors
and the team is so they can pour over it
in the next month or so because i think
that's we're really going to see
things that tell us as bill said tell us
about the environment tell us about how
the vehicle behaved and that's the focus
of the team in the next few months
let's go to gina sincerie and then we'll
go to frank mooring
gina sincere abc news were there any aha
moments for any of you during today's
mission
that's something that surprised junior
went i didn't know that would happen
we were talking earlier about
whether you would let yourself hope that
it would behave so well
before the flight right because actually
you want the team to be trained to
handle when it doesn't go very well and
so they can handle issues and work and
when we sim this a lot we simulate these
flights a lot we simulate failures
so the team is ready
so i there was a bit of an aha that it
worked so well today
and that
that's uh it's a great team it's a
fantastic team so it doesn't surprise me
that this team puts out quality work
because they do it every day but in that
environment and how difficult this test
was that it flew right down the middle i
mean that that was a very pleasant uh
relief
but they did a great job yeah i think
for me the thing that's
it's it's kind of fun is i understand
all the math and all the trajectory
stuff but then to actually
see it in real time and see the plots to
see us go from from apogee to the really
high perigee to 31 000 kilometers to
actually see that occur and see how fast
that's occurring with that delta iv
upper stage really pushing this and then
when you get to that little peak at
apogee spacecraft's flying fairly slow
so it's a fairly long period of time and
then you start to descend down and the
perigee now goes it goes negative right
so when you're doing that burn you're
actually targeting for below the surface
of the earth so to really see that in
the plot and see the capsule and see the
images and then tie that back with the
math that i know from all my engineering
putting all that together in one time is
is maybe not on aha moment but it's for
an engineer it may be as cool as
an artist appreciating fine art in a
museum right it's the same thing when
you see all the math and all the numbers
and you see the visuals and you see the
data and you see the plot and you know
it's a real spacecraft all that coming
together is pretty special
okay let's go here
yeah hi craig cavall with aerospace
america
and
i'm going to ask a grumpy question
because bill
because bill and mike have had so many
in the past
a question about the future of the heat
shield design
is the program definitely going to shift
from a honeycomb to a monolithic design
and has that been caused by
problems with the the av coat material
being applied in an uneven manner
so we
we need to get the data from this test
before we make any final decisions on
the heat shield because now we've
actually flown it
there are things we saw in the
manufacturing of the heat shield
relative to strength of materials that
was a little it was a little less strong
than we expected it and for em1 we
needed to make some modifications we
want to understand what happened when we
built this last one and look at options
for improving it so that's been work
we've been doing since we built since we
built this first heat shield so we'll
take that data we'll take the data from
the flight itself
and we'll put it together and make a
recommendation as to what to do what's
what to do next the team there was no
issues as far as unevenness of the heat
shield it was built exactly to the spec
and it's a beautiful piece of
manufacturing but there's something
about the material
that wasn't quite as strong as as we
expected in tests we had done before and
so we have to resolve that issue so when
we get to the resolution of that that
will tell us if we need to modify the
design it might be it's just something
we need to do a little bit different
about the mixing or how we apply it or
how we cure it something that simple and
then we could have the same heat shield
we have today so
i think the other thing we're trying to
do here too is
you know we're trying to build a system
that's manufacturable and and fairly
easy to reproduce again because we want
to keep our operating costs as
reasonable as we can so we don't end up
with
each spacecraft being you know
totally unique from a manufacturing
standpoint so we use reaction friction
stir weld where it makes sense
um they're going to change some of the
wiring based on what they learned down
here at kennedy of how you actually lay
the wiring in the capsule so i look at
these as pretty positive changes as as
we actually learn things that are
different and we can get better
performance out of a different maybe
heat shield material mark may also get
better manufacturability out of a
different heat shield design mark will
trade that we may even change heat
shields even after em1 or em2 somewhere
in the future if you know depending on
what the re-entry velocity is and what
we learned from this test so i think we
need to not think we're getting to the
perfect design and then it's not going
to change we'll we're going to be smart
enough and nimble enough we can make
small changes to keep production costs
down and keep our reliability up to keep
us with a really safe system so so we'll
keep doing those things and i think
we'll learn really a lot from this test
as mark described and we'll make mark
and his team whenever they're ready to
make those decisions
we're ready to support those decisions
yeah mike did a real good job a couple
days ago we talked about
we've looked at some of the primary
structure and as we built one we found a
way to actually make it out of fewer
parts right that helps the cost we know
we've done things to make the structure
lighter
because we built one and we knew how to
do that like i mentioned before the
barrel for em-1 is 25 lighter than the
the barrel for eft so those are the kind
of things you do all the time you're
improving performance
and because of what you learned either
by flying or by building it so
okay
uh yeah this is james tutton with space
flight insider and uh i just have a
question well two questions one are
there any physical tests that are going
to be done on the spacecraft before it
gets to florida like looking at the heat
shield taking samples or anything like
that and my other question is for rex um
what if some of your fellow astronauts
had to say about this vehicle like
as pertains like being inside and
wanting to fly on it thank you
i'll take the first part and there's a
couple aspects of it that we talked
about getting the data
recorders out and being able to process
that
we also
we have a request from the engineering
team to to try to take some
samples plugs out of the the heat shield
so we're looking at how that fits into
the timeline and how many of those we
might be able to do
there's a lot of inspection uh you know
documentation photographs everything of
of the actual
heat shield
when we get
uh but we also need to get it on the
road and get it back here for a much
more thorough
uh assessment
you asked about what the astronaut
office thinks and uh i think you'd be
hard-pressed to find an astronaut past
present or future who wouldn't love to
fly an orion i mean this is the true
exploration that we live for and it'll
be really exciting to have a chance to
get on board one of these vehicles
okay let's take a couple more if there
are any more
let's go on the third row here
jackie goddard for the times of london
to what extent
is the
future timeline and evolution of orion
and sls and where it's going what it'll
do dictated by budget and if you had a
greater budget to what extent could you
speed that timeline
i would say so um it is driven by the
budget um
but we recognize you know we don't
recognize what the budget is and there's
a lot of priorities in the country
and so i frankly i feel blessed that we
have the budget we do and we have
bipartisan support for the pieces uh for
the for sls orion and ground ops and we
need to do we need to make the best use
of the money we're given
part of you can see an example of that
in that with the with the ddt uh the
development budget uh we were given we
split our development kind of in three
phases so eft-1
is the beginning and it's mostly crew
module work structures heat shield
em-1 adds the service module adds more
avionics
and starts doing qualification then em-2
adds the life support the displays and
controls the kind of the seats the
things that the crew interacts with
and qualifies the full system so we had
to break it up into three pieces
and and the schedule uh is part of that
right then the the next flight on e-m1
and then em-2 in 2021 that's absolutely
driven by the budget
and what's from my perspective i look at
kind of human space flight as a whole so
there's there's a lot of pieces of human
space flight right there's the
international space station right with
our crews that are going up the space
station and they fit in the exploration
puzzle because you know we're learning
how the human body performs in space so
when we take crews on missions of three
years or two years duration we'll
understand from space station how the
human body performs next year we have
the one year expedition onboard space
station we also get to check out like
long duration life support systems
systems that can operate with very low
maintenance for for multiple years
that's part of space station then
there's cargo that needs to go to
station crew that needs to go to space
station we've got those activities going
on we've got sls we've got orion ground
ops
so human space flight is a pretty broad
portfolio when you look at the sum of
all those probably none of them are
really funded at the optimum level that
they would like to be as individual
programs but if you look at it as an
overall human space flight program of
what we're doing in low earth orbit we
call it the earth reliant region then
we're going to take crews out to cisco
interspace we call that the proving
ground region that's where we're going
to learn to to operate away from kind of
the protection of being hours away as we
are on space station and then eventually
we need to get earth independent which
is a mars class mission so even in my
director we're funding things that are
sitting on the curiosity rover today
we're measuring the radiation
environment of mars so crews will
understand what it's like to go there
we're going to carry a
in-situ resource utilization experiment
that will pull oxygen out of the martian
atmosphere and actually
condense it or compress it into a bottle
so we see if we can actually use some of
the martian materials to go push crews
into space so we don't have to carry
everything with us and we know there's
water on mars we can electrolyze water
we'll use that so so when i look at this
it's it's this whole portfolio of
expiration and it's and it's tough to
pick any one favorite piece and and push
that piece at the expense of the other
so we've got to look at it as a combined
portfolio and i think we have a really
robust overall plan that's going to
that's going to move us at at a
reasonable pace as fast as we can with
human presence into the solar system
okay let's take a final question from
frank mooring this is frank mooring with
aviation week for mike and
mark um
is there any way to characterize the
amount of data that's still stored in
the capsule in terms of gigabytes or
something and also could you sort of
walk through
how you're going to distribute it what
the what the schedule and the process is
for distributing it
and whether there are particular data
points that you're going to try to pull
out
early um and finally if if you know
did the p3 get the the ir data on the
long distance thanks
uh i haven't heard about the p3 although
we know that they acquired i did yeah i
did hear that they did they followed it
all the way to the ground so yeah we'll
see what the day looks like
uh so we talked about the dfi uh
there were 1200 sensors
in that dfi now most of that
uh data is sampled at a much higher rate
you know the normal operational
instrumentation is usually on a one
cycle a second one hertz rate the the
dfi data is typically at a much higher
sample rate
so that we can really
pinpoint some of the
the phenomena that do that
our schedule to get the data
we actually
per the
the the terms of the contract that nasa
had with us to do the test
we owe them a report in 90 days
after today
and so uh
that's why we want to get the data and
get it out of the capsule as soon as
it's back to port
and start actually working on that data
and as soon as we have the data
processed
uh we'll be sharing the data with nasa
but then we will be doing our own
analysis of that data and what it means
for these individual systems
that'll be the the core of that report
that we have
there's actually um
there's actually experts on the ship we
have uh thermal protection system
experts computer experts forward big
cover experts pyro experts so they're
they're when this thing gets on the ship
they're going to be looking at it right
away kind of a macro level hey this is
the kind of things we see but as mike
talked about that's that data in those
computers is really the key in seeing
specifically what we
how it experienced the flight
okay well that's all the time we have
today i'm also told that the white house
congratulated the team at the start of a
president's briefing today
let's take a look at the highlights from
today's flight test and again just want
to thank everyone for joining us
yes
beautiful morning for a launch in
florida
this is the launch director you have
permission to launch
five
four
three
two
one
and liftoff at dawn
the dawn of orion and a new era of
american space exploration
we are now just a few miles away from
reaching peak altitude again this
dramatic view of the limb of the earth
from one of the flight test cameras and
the crew module
of orion
you