Three days ago, Contributing Editor Mike Reynolds wrote his
first in what will be a series of blogs about meteorites and meteorite collecting. While we talked with Mike about that first piece, we learned that he was going to attend the
Ares I-X launch. In this entry, he shares what it was like to witness Wednesday’s successful test flight. Mike also took photos of the event, and we'll post those with this entry soon.
Ares I-X lifted off from Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center after a number of countdown starts and stops over 2 days. The flight appears to be a success, and we await the data from the myriad of probes on the rocket.
This is a big rocket! Going out to the pad the night before the first launch attempt October 27 underscored what everyone had been saying about Ares. Not only did the size surprise me at a height of 327.4 feet (100 meters), but the mock-up Orion and Escape Tower caught me off guard. Like most, I have seen illustrations and mock-ups of Orion. But at first glance at the pad Monday night, it looked like a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and escape tower!
I felt the frustrations of the Ares I-X launch team on both days. With a 4-hour launch window Tuesday, all felt optimistic a launch would happen. The Florida weather was, well, Florida weather: unpredictable. It was approaching 90° Fahrenheit and muggy. NASA had specific weather conditions for this mission that included flying through no clouds and maximum wind velocities. The no-cloud issue was due to the concern that as Ares I-X would pass through clouds, static electricity would build up and damage the instrumentation packages. The wind issue is a normal condition for launches; 20 knots maximum in the case of Ares I-X. Even though I enjoyed the breeze as I waited — and waited, and waited — I knew conditions were not right.
For the Tuesday launch attempt, a variety of problems came up. First the launch team was behind in pre-launch preparations. Weather dynamics came and went: green (go for launch) to red (no-go). Then there was the now-infamous tarp issue:
There is a series of probes mounted in the top of the rocket. To expose these probes for flight, the launch team would pull on a lanyard to remove a tarp at the top of Ares I-X. Note that the gantry did not go up to the top of the rocket. So when they pulled on the lanyard, the tarp became stuck! This caused another delay. By the time the tarp was finally free, the weather was green and go. At that point launch security “found” a cargo carrier ship in the splashdown zone. How was it allowed to get into that closed zone in the first place? So another delay. By the time the cargo carrier was out of the splashdown zone, the weather was red and no-go, and the Ares I-X launch attempt was scrubbed for the day.
On Wednesday, October 28, the Rotating Service Structure rollback was a little late. Weather was again an issue. The Ares I-X launch team kept pushing back the launch time. I thought we were in for a repeat of the previous day. Finally, all was a go, and Ares I-X screamed off the pad.
I didn’t know what exactly to expect, even though I’ve covered launches all the way back to 1975, including the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and Apollos 11 and 17.
I was surprised at how quickly Ares I-X pitched over — I thought something had gone wrong. Since this was a ballistic lob, there was no need for a straight up then pitch over. The flight was short and sweet, accompanied by a loud cheer from the press site. The launch was fairly noisy, as we’ve grown accustomed to with the shuttle. Separation of the Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) first stage was different than that of the shuttle because it separated from a mock-up second stage and Orion. The SRBs on the shuttle fall away from the External Tank.
The Ares I-X launch was spectacular. The question now is: Will this be Ares’ only launch?