Posted on Jul 02, 2009 07:13:29 PM | Dan Kanigan | 1 Comments   

Here's a quick update from Ares I-X Mission Manager, Bob Ess Earlier this week, the I-X and Constellation team completed a really significant milestone –a Mate Review.  The purpose of this review is to assess our readiness to begin stacking operations in the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center. Right now the Ares I-X rocket is put together in big pieces called “super-stacks”. We begin our stacking operations when we put the first part of the first stage booster on the Mobile Launch Platform. We'll follow that with these five “super-stacks”.   During the review, we discussed the mission’s progress to date, key technical and operational items and, of course, the readiness of the procedures and facilities for the stacking operations. This review was attended by members of the Constellation Program and directors of the involved NASA centers as well as independent (outside NASA) reviewers. The review went very well and the review board agreed on a set of procedural guidelines and next-step actions.  The mating (stacking) of the aft skirt on the MLP is the first step in assembling I-X. As this is the foundation of our rocket, we have spent a lot of time assessing our aft skirt and making sure it can adequately handle the needs for I-X. Some of that analysis is not quite complete so as a group we decided to wait until the middle of next week when we know more about our loads analysis before we started this particular mating operation. Also at the Mate Review, we agreed upon a set of “constraints” that are mini-review points for some key to-do items.  This allows the team to get together and assure that sufficient progress has been made on these items before we undertake some of the critical stacking events.   The constraints are mostly centered on the completion of several ongoing loads analyses and the completion of some planned testing in the Vehicle Assembly Building.   Overall, it was a very good, interactive review by the team and we are very please to have completed such a major milestone. Based on our plans and the work we have ahead of us, we plan on stacking the booster section in a couple of weeks and plan to have the entire vehicle stacked in August. It will really be something to see. More to come... -Bob Ess

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