-Good morning, and welcome to the Countdown Status Briefing,
the first briefing for the STS-103 countdown.
We have with us today NASA Test Director Steve Altemus
to deliver our countdown status,
STS-103 Payload Manager Steve Ernest,
giving our payload status,
and finally Shuttle Weather Officer Ed Priselac.
We'll begin the briefing this morning
with comments from each of our panelists,
and then we'll open up the floor for questions from the media.
We'll start with the briefing from Steve Altemus.
Steve? -Thank you, Joel.
Well, good morning.
It's good to be back in countdown again,
and over the past several weeks,
that you're aware of, that we've worked through
a significant number of nonstandard work items
have gotten to the point where the vehicle
is configured for a nominal countdown.
Last night we successfully closed out the aft compartment
for flight
and picked up the countdown at 1:30 this morning.
The countdown itself is fairly straightforward,
approximately 68 hours in length.
We don't have any payload or mid-deck experiment work
in the countdown with the exception
of a T-0 conditioning purge on the payload instruments.
I'd like to run through the countdown summary,
some milestones for you.
Like I said, we did pick up call to stations this morning.
The count actually picked up at 1:30.
Through the day today
we'll be performing our preparations for PRSD load.
We'll clear the pad at 5:30 this evening
for a shuttle pick resistance test,
then pick up with the PRSD Cryo load at 9:30 this evening.
That'll be an 8-hour load with no boil-off
or off-load, fairly standard,
and then Wednesday we'll work the engine final preparations
and TSM securing through the day,
and then we'll activate the comms systems
for launch 8:30 Wednesday evening.
Thursday, the RSS is set to come back at 3:45 in the morning,
and we'll configure the pad,
do our final load preps for ET tanking.
Tanking we have set at 12:30 Thursday afternoon,
and that should be complete about 3 hours later.
The flight crew is set to arrive on the pad just after 6 o'clock
Thursday evening, and in the terminal count you can --
We have two planned holds: a 10-minute hold at T-minus 20
and a 40-minute hold at T-minus 9.
Our launch is set for 21:18,
or 9:18 Eastern Standard Time on Thursday evening,
with a landing just before 7 o'clock on Sunday,
the 26th of December.
So overall, like I said, we're into the countdown successfully.
The vehicle is in great shape.
The launch team is once again well-prepared,
and I think, as Ed is going to tell you,
it looks like the weather is going to cooperate,
so we're all expecting a spectacular launch
on Thursday night.
That's all I have, Joel.
-Thanks, Steve.
And now we'll going to Steve Ernest with the payload status.
-Thank you, Joel.
We're expecting an exciting mission
to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
We have seven highly experienced crew members on this flight
that will perform four EVAs.
The primary objective
is to replace the gyros that have failed,
and place the telescope in a safe mode condition,
non-science gathering, and so we except an exciting mission.
We're flying two carriers for the mission.
One is the flight support system, for birthing
and positioning the telescope.
The other is an ORU carrier,
which provides storage and protective enclosures
for the replacement hardware that the crew will remove
and replace on the telescope.
Going over some of the timeline activities for the payload,
the carriers arrived at KSC back on August 12th.
The final Rate Sensor Unit, the rate gyro,
was delivered on September 17th.
It was a late delivery.
We transferred to the pad on November 8th.
Following that, we installed into Discovery on November 16th,
performed our interface verification tests
with Discovery on November 19th, and then preferred
an end-to-end test with Mission Control Houston
and the Goddard Space Flight Center on November 22nd.
The payload bay doors were closed for flight
on November 24th.
We don't have any significant launch countdown activities.
We're non-powered for the ascent.
We have a GN2 purge, as Steve mentioned,
to maintain cleanliness on a science instrument,
the Fine Guidance Sensor, one of the replacement ORUs,
and we expect an exciting mission.
That's all I have, Joel.
-Thank you, Steve.
And finally we'll go to Ed Priselac with the weather.
-Thank you, Joel, and good morning.
In spite of conditions outside right now,
we've got quite a bit of cloudiness
working its way through the KSC area.
That is one frontal system
now actually pushing southeast of our area,
then we'll have dry air coming in.
Then, believe it or not, we have another front approaching,
being here Wednesday, and should be through the area late
Wednesday into very early Thursday.
Given all of that, we do anticipate high pressure
building into the area, and right now conditions look
pretty good for getting off the ground on Thursday night.
If we can look now just to a surface chart.
Again, this is valid Thursday evening.
You can see the second front offshore south and east of us,
high pressure building in.
We look now to the tanking forecast,
and I apologize, it looks like
we're not going to be able to read that very well.
We have few layered clouds with that second front going through.
No thunderstorms in the area.
No concerns about temperatures or winds,
so we've got a zero probability
that weather would impact any tanking operations.
Looking to the launch forecast,
which you probably can't read unfortunately,
just some scattered low clouds,
and a slight chance of a ceiling around 3,000 feet
that would potentially impact through the range optics
for launch,
or the 5,000-foot ceiling for RTLS,
but we only anticipate a 20 percent chance
that that would occur.
We do expect winds out of the northwest
at about 10 to 18 knots at the SLF,
and a little stronger at the pad.
We have a 34-knot launch commit criteria
for our northwest winds at the pad,
so we're in good shape with regards to that.
Temperatures will be down into the lower 50s,
and one concern we do, or the NASA folks do have,
is ice secreting on the tank
with those types of temperatures.
One thing, if the winds stay up, that would help ameliorate
that condition, though, so we'll see how that plays out.
With regard to 24-hour delay forecast,
basically the similar conditions except winds coming out
of the north, northeast 0, 3, 0, and just a slight chance,
again, of a ceiling at around 3,000 feet.
Given that, again, the 20 percent chance
that weather might keep us on the ground.
If we go on to Saturday,
looks like we'll pick up some sort of easterly
of southeasterly fetch in the local area,
and given that, we'd have a chance of both low cloud
and a small chance of bands of showers
working their way in the KSC area,
so we've forecast a 30 percent chance
we might be kept on the ground on Saturday.
And if we could go back to the SRB recovery forecast,
which I missed, looks like some brisk winds offshore,
running about 320 at 18, peak 24 knots.
We've also had a number of storms to our distant east,
which are creating swells offshore,
so we're figuring sea is probably
running 5 to 7 feet offshore, but still relatively
good conditions for SRB pickup offshore.
Looking to Edwards on launch day,
SMG folks just forecasting a few clouds at 25,000 feet,
good visibility, winds northeast at 8 to 12 knots, no issues.
The same with the white sands, some broken cirrus at 25,000,
good visibility, winds southwest 10 to 16 knots.
Looking to the TALs,
Banjul looking good with scattered clouds
at 25,000 feet, good visibility and winds northeast at 7 knots,
0, 2, 0 at 7 knots.
Ben Guerir scattered clouds at 3,000 feet, good visibility
and a very slight chance,
or a chance of, crosswind violation,
winds from 0, 5, 0 at 12 peak 20 knots,
and I'll conclude at that point, gentleman.
-Thanks, Ed. At this time we'll go ahead
and take questions from the media.
If you'd please just state your name and affiliation
before you ask your question.
We'll start over here with Todd.
-Todd Halvorson of Space.com for Steve.
You mentioned that you guys have had a lot of challenges
in terms of ground processing in this particular flow,
and seems like every time you disposition one problem
another crops up,
and I was wondering what the launch team,
you know, thought about all these problems cropping up,
and especially this late in the game over the past weekend?
-Well, let me just say that the fact that we're discovering
these problems is really a testament to the workforce.
In that what they're doing is they're looking really hard,
and the fact that we're finding these things and repairing
these things really speaks to their diligence,
and we'd much rather find them on the ground
than we would during ascent or on orbit,
so that the team is comfortable when we identify these problems
and go ahead and fix them.
-Follow-up, Todd? -Yeah, just a quick follow-up.
I'm wondering if you can tell us what your strategy
is going to be in terms of launch attempts here.
You have a sort of a drop-dead date of the 18th to get off,
and I understand you might position yourself
to go three in a row if necessary.
-Well, that's correct, Todd.
What we have is, as you know, a year-end constraint
for the year 200 rollover.
We would like to be powered down at that time,
and go through the rollover with no critical systems powered up.
So that what means with a 10-day mission,
we have to be on the ground
and be in a posture secured before that rollover period,
so what we need to do is attempt to launch on the 16th,
hopefully get off on the 16th.
We will plan for a 24-hour scrub turnaround,
which would put us on the 17th and landing following that,
and then there is a chance
that we may attempt a third launch attempt on the 18th.
We're looking at at that now from a perspective of quantity
of cryogenics, hydrogen and liquid oxygen at the pad.
We believe technically we have enough margin there.
We're looking at the launch team itself
and how stressed they would be
in a three-attempt kind of scenario,
and I think what it's going to come down to
is basically how stressful the scrub
is itself on a launch team,
what the nature of the scrub is and what type of people,
what systems we need to keep over and work
to resolve any problems.
And so, like I said, we are planning and looking at that,
but it's going to be determined by the situation
or specifics of the day.
-We'll go ahead and go over to Mike, and then we'll come back.
-Mike Cabbage with the Orlando Sentinel.
My question is for Steve also.
It's been almost 5 months since the last shuttle launch.
Could you talk a bit about the sort of challenges a layoff
like that poses for the launch team,
the team's state of readiness and the sorts of things
that you do to make sure that everybody stays sharp?
-Okay, Mike.
Well, I guess since STS-93,
really the launch team preparations
have been somewhat segregated from the launch rate,
in that we simulate launch countdowns
on a fairly regular basis every month or month
and a half or so, so we've run through
I'd say about six launch countdown simulations
August, September and November.
We've run through mission management team simulations
to exercise the management folks.
We've run through simulations
with the facilities side of the house,
to exercise those folks in a launch countdown environment.
We've exercised the pad rescue forces
and Closeout Crew activities.
All these training activities have helped
to heighten our preparedness
and ensure that we're ready to go for launch,
above and beyond the normal processing activities
that would be occurring with an increased flight rate.
-Follow-up?
Come back over to Todd, please.
-For Steve again, could you elaborate on the hold time
you have on the pad in terms of consumables, liquid hydrogen,
liquid oxygen, et cetera?
-Sure.
Turns out that the PRSD hold times for LH2 is about 8 days,
and LOx is 21 days,
which gives us plenty of margin to try and get off this month.
We don't have any near-term range constraints,
and, like I stated earlier,
there's no payload or mid-deck experiment constraints
that'll keep us on the ground, or keep us in a scrub --
affect our scrub turnaround scenarios.
-Over here on the right side, please.
-Franco Malerba, supporting the Italian Right TV.
I would like to ask a question, one of the two Steves,
about the crew activities.
I see from the launch day schedule that they will be
waking up at 12:30 p.m., so they will be shifted.
Are they already shifted?
Are they already in the launch schedule,
or will they move to that in the next few days?
-At this point they're already shifted to a sleep schedule,
I believe, of they go to sleep at 3:30 each night
and wake up about 11:30,
so they're already shifted to their prime shift.
With the delays in launch,
we've had to slip those 30 minutes
to an hour to catch them back up to put on schedule,
so right now they're in their sleep cycle
and their mission cycle, and they're ready to go.
-Let's go over to Mark Caro, please.
-Mark Caro from the Houston Chronicle for Steve Altemus.
Could you just discuss the launch window
and the exact launch time,
sort of when do you expect to adjust it,
or do you think you won't have to do that this time?
-With the easterly trajectory on this mission,
we have no window open versus preferred window
discussion that needs to occur.
We can target the window open, which is 9:18 Thursday night,
and that'll be our time we'll count to,
and we'll stay with if we have no technical issues.
-Any other questions? Mike?
-I have a question for Ed.
What do the TAL sites look like
as you move on into Saturday and Sunday?
-Okay.
Banjul still looking good with just scattered clouds
at 25,000 feet, good visibility and northeast winds at 10 knots.
Scattered clouds at Ben Guerir, but still a concern
about crosswinds of the east/northeast 0,
6, 0 at 12 to 20,
and then finally Saturday both TALs look good.
Scattered clouds at both places, good visibility
and both locations forecast winds 0, 3, 0 at 12 knots,
so Banjul looks like a problem for the first 2 days.
-Come back to Todd, please.
-This may be a question for Johnson,
but I'll throw it out anyway.
Steve, do you know where Hubble will be relative
to the Kennedy Space Center at the time of launch
and how far behind the orbiter will be
when it gets on it's initial orbit?
-That is probably a good question for Houston.
I didn't go look at it. That's the phase angle of
after launch, and where we're going to --
how we're going to catch up in so many revs,
so they'd be better equipped to answer
that than I would at this point.
-We'll get that for you, Todd. -Quick correction to my summary:
Banjul looks good all the way through.
Ben Guerir has a problem first 2 days, crosswinds.
-Any other questions here in the room?
We have no other questions at the other center,
so that will conclude this briefing.
We'll remind you that we do have our 4 p.m. pre-launch
briefing for STS-103 today.
Thank you for joining us.
-Good afternoon.
Welcome to our STS-103 Pre-Launch News Conference.
We have with us today Ron Dittemore,
the shuttle program manager from the Johnson Space Center
in Houston, Dave King, Director of Shuttle Operations
here at Kennedy Space Center,
and Captain Clif Stargardt, the Staff Meteorologist
for the 45th Weather Squadron.
And we'll start with opening comments from each person,
and then we'll take your questions.
Go ahead.
-Okay, well, I've got to start off
by saying it's finally good to be here.
Last time we were here was in July,
and we've done a lot working on our vehicles from July
until now.
A good friend of mine mentioned to me last week that --
reminded me of a saying
that "the road to success is always under construction."
And I think he was saying that
because every time we seemed to turn around,
we hit another pothole, another curb,
another bump that we had to overcome,
and it certainly seems that that was the case.
We spent a lot of our time looking in nooks
and crannies on this vehicle over the last 4 or 5 months,
and I believe, and the team believes,
that this vehicle is safe to fly as it has been in years.
The scrutiny that was used to inspect the wires
and other areas of the vehicle,
the intensity of the work teams and the inspectors
and the awareness of everybody in the system
was increased because of this 4-month period,
and I think it will show itself
in the overall increase in safety.
Not only of the vehicle and its readiness,
but also of the teams.
We did, as you know, find a problem on STS-93,
which turned in to a much bigger problem.
As we got into it, we found more wires
that had insulation that was damaged,
and what we thought would be a fairly simple thing
to go identify and repair these wires
turned out to be several months of activity.
We did overall inspect over 100 miles of wires.
We repaired wires.
We modified procedures.
We will improve access platforms,
and we will implement a better inspection routine from now on.
Columbia, which was the STS-93 mission, is out at Palmdale.
Because we could not inspect 100 percent
of all the wires on a vehicle here at Kennedy,
we have begun inspecting those areas we could not reach,
or didn't feel it was prudent to go in and inspect
while we were here at Kennedy.
We are inspecting those areas out at Palmdale,
and so far we are finding similar results,
and so we do plan,
while we have Columbia at Palmdale,
to do 100 percent inspection of our wires,
and we're prudent we will add more protection
for the types of things that we have seen here
over the last 4 months.
Let me talk a little bit about this mission.
The mission to the Hubble Space Telescope
is a textbook mission for the shuttle,
where we can rendezvous,
grapple with the Remote Manipulator System,
use our EVA capability and go repair,
and those are the types of flexibilities and capabilities
that the shuttle has that will be necessary in the future,
especially in the Space Station environment.
We leveraged the last servicing mission's flight design,
so that we can do this particular mission
in a short amount of time.
We had planned a flight in October
that would have been about an 8-month template,
and we were ready to fly in October
from a flight design and team readiness point of view.
All we had to do was get our vehicles up to speed,
and we have done that.
We have talked to our workforce,
both from the management down to the people on the floor.
We have emphasized to them,
not only the safety aspects of what
we are trying to accomplish in the Space Shuttle program,
but we've talked to them about their workload.
How do they feel about what they have done?
Do they feel good about it?
Do they feel like we're rushed?
And to a majority of those folks,
they have come back and told us that they are excited
about what they have done.
They're very proud of what inspections
that they have performed on the vehicle,
and their intent is to have the safest vehicle
that a crew member could fly, and I believe that is true.
The teams in Johnson, and Goddard and here
at the Kennedy Space Center are ready to fly.
They're rested.
They're not pressed.
We do plan to launch on Thursday evening.
-Thank you. Dave?
-As Ron said, it is really good to be here again.
Looking forward to a lot of hard work
culminating in a good launch on Thursday evening.
We have been through a very careful process
of trying to disposition everything that
we've found very carefully and thoroughly.
Over the past months, this workforce, here at Kennedy,
has worked very hard at making sure
that we look at everything very carefully,
and I think we found some things that needed to be fixed,
and we obviously have a much better vehicle
as a result of that.
We did take the time to do this right,
and to go look in the areas that we needed to go look,
and I'm very confident that we have a good vehicle.
As Ron said, we are ready to go fly Thursday night.
We did pick up the count last night.
Got through a good -- Got the aft doors on,
and got through a good aft confidence check,
which gives us a good feeling
that everything was done properly.
And we'll be picking up with PRSD load tonight,
and continuing on with a fairly standard countdown,
looking forward to a great launch on Thursday night.
-Thanks, Dave. Weather?
-Thanks, Lisa.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
I suppose it would be a real bummer
if Mother Nature threw us another delay
after all the hard work the launch team
has done to get us here.
Fortunately, it looks like chances are pretty good
that's not going to happen.
After a noticeable cold front passing this morning,
high pressure will continue to move into the area
over the next couple of days,
and it will actually start to feel a little bit
like Christmas around here.
Skies will be partly cloudy and temperatures much cooler,
but with little threat of rain
until possibility into late Saturday.
For tanking on Thursday afternoon,
scattered clouds and breezy with northwest winds at 18,
peaking at 26 knots.
Zero percent chance that weather will prohibit tanking.
For launch time, Thursday evening,
scattered clouds at 3,000 and 25,000 feet,
with a chance for a broken deck at 3,000 feet
that would violate RTLS or range optics criteria,
but with good visibility northwest winds at 12,
peaking at 20, and temperature a brisk 52 degrees Fahrenheit,
so overall only a 20 percent chance
that KSC weather would prohibit launch on Thursday.
For SRB recovery, broken clouds at 4,000 feet
and good visibility out over the ocean,
gusty winds northwest at 18, peaking at 24 knots.
Those winds will kick up the seas to about 5 to 7 feet,
but still no real concerns for recovering the SRBs.
Should we get into a 24-hour delay for Friday,
little change from Thursday.
Still a chance for a broken cloud deck at 3,000 feet,
and winds will turn northeasterly at 8,
peaking at 15 knots.
Still only 20 percent chance
that weather would prohibit launch on Friday.
Forty-eight-hour delay into Saturday,
we'd bump up the probability of weather
prohibiting launch to 30 percent.
That's because the winds are going to turn out
at southeast at 8 knots, peaking at 12,
which will bring the temperatures up a little bit,
and a chance for some coastal showers around the Cape,
and that's why we bump up the probability
just another 10 percent.
For abort once around basis, Edwards and White Sands
look really good Thursday and Friday
with a few clouds and light winds.
On Saturday, the winds at Edwards
will kick up to 12 knots,
peaking at 22 knots from the northeast,
but that's right down runway 04.
White Sands will see a few clouds and winds southwest
at 10, peaking at 20 knots, on Saturday.
For the TAL sites, Ben Guerir will have winds from 0,
5, 0 at 12 knots,
peaking at 20 knots on Thursday and Friday.
That potentially puts them out of crosswind limits.
The winds then ease up a bit on Saturday,
but throughout the period Thursday,
Friday and Saturday, Banjul looks just fine,
so all in all, the launch weather team
is looking forward to a beautiful show on Thursday.
-Thank you.
We'll start with questions here at KSC.
Please identify yourself by name and affiliation.
Craig Covault.
-Craig Covault, "Aviation Week,"
Ron, Terra launch is still on the 16th,
and what has to be done
and just explain how that will play out
if there's any risk at all Tidras
could be still hung up with Terra.
-See, Terra launch is going to be on Thursday morning
about 10:30 Pacific Time, 1:30 or so Eastern Time.
Our launch is at 9:18 in the evening.
We've asked our Tidras folks whether they can support both.
They said they can.
I don't have the details, Craig, on exactly what their time line.
We just asked them that simple question,
do they have the margin to reconfigure and support both?
And they do.
-Todd Halvorson. -Todd Halvorson, space.com,
I was wondering if you could elaborate
on whatever engine issues
there might have been to disposition at the MMT today
and whether there are any other problems
being worked at the pad right now.
-Let's see.
Dave can talk about whatever problems
he may be working at the pad.
Engine issues were just cleanup issues
from our flight readiness review.
We had a couple of open items that they just needed
to clean up, nothing significant,
and we just talked about those, pressed on.
They were nothing major.
-Okay, Dan Billow and then Bill Harwood.
-I'm Dan Billow from WESH-TV for Ron Dittemore.
You mentioned that the workforce has been asked
whether they feel rushed and pressured and said
that they feel excited and proud about the work that they do,
but do they indeed feel rushed and pressured?
-Well, see, I'm going to defer to Dave
to answer that for Kennedy because he lives and works,
breathes and sees them every day.
Let me talk a little bit about more than
the workforce here at Kennedy
because when you start talking about a shuttle launch,
you're talking about a lot of people.
You're talking about folks
at Goddard that support this flight,
and you're talking about folks at the Johnson Space Center
and other areas around the country,
and we just don't talk to Kennedy Space Center employees.
We talk to each one of them. How do they feel?
Because they all have additional work that they've had to perform
over the last couple of months to get ready.
Johnson and Goddard are ready to go.
They are excited.
In fact, they would prefer not to do any more delays
as the rest of us would.
There is no pressure to launch in December, none at all.
We can just as well go in January.
There's nothing that says we have to go in December.
When we look at that, we look at the training of the team,
the efficiency of the team,
and we have found that our teams,
both at Kennedy, Johnson and Goddard,
are at their peak training periods,
and they are ready to go,
and because the vehicle is ready,
we think the right thing to do is launch this week.
If we were to delay further like in January,
we would actually have to back out of certain activities
that we have already performed on the vehicle,
and then we also believe our teams would suffer some
because they would have a 3-week layoff,
and then we'd have to bring them back up
into their peak training period,
and so there is some loss you suffer by going into January,
so it's just not a casual decision that says,
"Let's go into January because there's no rush in December."
There is no rush in December,
but when you are ready to go, and your teams are ready,
then you ought to take the opportunity to launch,
and that's exactly what we're going to do.
-I'll address the workforce here at Kennedy.
I've spent a lot of time in the last couple of weeks
out talking to folks about how they feel
and how they're doing, and I say, "A couple of weeks,"
really for longer than that
but specifically the last couple of weeks,
and this team is anxious to go fly.
I don't want to say that anxious in a negative way at all.
I really think they're just excited
about getting back to flying again.
Everybody here has worked very diligently
to try to get this vehicle ready to go fly,
and we all think it's a very solid vehicle
and ready to go do that,
and folks are ready to perform those tasks.
Getting back to the other question that Todd asked
about what kind of issues we're dealing with
in this specific launch countdown,
we have had a couple of things that we've been working,
but I wouldn't call them -- Even though they're nonstandard,
I wouldn't call them, you know, out of family.
We had a couple of valves in the MLP
that we've had to change out in the last couple days,
but those have been replaced, and retest is complete,
so we've got that behind us now.
We really aren't working any kind of problems
that pose any threat at this point.
We think we've got a good, clean vehicle
and clean ground-support system to go fly.
-Okay.
We'll take one from Bill Harwood.
Then we'll come back.
You have a follow-up, Dan? What is it?
-Yeah, it's fairly closely related if I may
for Ron Dittemore again, and this is on, again,
the pressure or nonpressure to launch
because we're for an organization
that is not under pressure to launch,
you're making or willing to make some fairly unusual
or even unprecedented changes in your philosophy
in order to get this thing done before January 1st.
One would be as Steve Altman has told us
this morning the possibility of three launch countdown
attempts in a row on consecutive days.
The other would be the possibility of shortening
and sacrificing parts of this mission
in order to get down before January 1.
You know, a day in space is --
I'm not trying to tell you, not trying to lecture to you.
As you know, a day in space is a very valuable thing,
and you're willing to potentially give it up
in order to get back by January 1,
so if all that is the case,
how can you say that there's no pressure
or that you're not pressuring yourselves
to launch before January 1?
You're doing things that indicate
that you are racing the calendar.
-So you said a lot there.
What was your question?
-The question is what I said at the end.
If there is no pressure to launch
and get back by January 1,
then why would you do things or be willing to do things
that indicate that you are indeed racing the calendar?
-Let's go back to the formulation
of the mission to begin with.
There's a desire to go to HST to replace...
That is the fundamental reason that we're going to visit
this particular spacecraft so that we can replace the gyros
and get it back into working condition.
As you know, they've had another failure of a gyro,
and it's basically in a zero-gyro Sun point mode,
and it's waiting for us to come visit.
When we first planned the mission,
that was the highest priority event.
As we looked at the opportunities
once we were there, we said, "Now since we're there,
and we have the consumables available,
can we do some tasks that would actually get ahead
for the next servicing mission
not this time but the next one following?"
and the folks put together actually two EVAs,
the third and the fourth
that are predominately get-ahead tasks
for the follow-on servicing mission.
Now it's Goddard's position that they need two mandatory
EVAs and a third one for some flexibility
in case they need to -- task took a little longer.
They can fault over into the third EVA and finish the task.
Their position is they need three.
We put in a fourth EVA basically to do some get-ahead tasks.
Now is that mandatory?
Absolutely not, and Goddard has told us
as they're the customer they would accept,
they would desire to launch and only do the mandatory items
and protect for three EVAs as their minimum.
We believe that's an acceptable position.
There's no reason that says we have to do the get-ahead tasks,
so again given that,
there's no real requirement to do four EVAs,
and we built four EVAs on there because we wanted to make
the most efficient use of our time on orbit.
Then we have to go back and look at what I just told you,
and that is, where are we in the processing of the vehicle?
Where are we in the training of the teams, and are they ready?
And since they are ready, and we believe
that the mandatory items of the mission can be protected
and can be completed with margin,
then we think we have opportunities to launch
on the 16th and the 17th, and even on the 18th
is when we would drop off possibly the fourth EVA,
and we're still looking at that.
-Two questions,
and I don't remember the numbers.
It OI-26-B that's on board this orbit, or is it --
-That's right. OI-26-B is --
-Is that Y2K-compliant?
In other words if you did roll over into the next year,
do you have to have different set of flight software?
-No, no.
The flight software itself has always been Y2K-compliant.
What we have done to protect ourselves for Y2K
is to ground tools
that build software and check it out and certify it.
We made a decision back in September
when we felt perhaps we might be pressed to roll over to January
that we asked our, not the flight software,
the guys that do the ground software
and the mission control center software
to go certify their software
so that if we did go into January,
there would be no Y2K problems, so the flight software,
there were no changes to that to go into January.
The ground tools were certified to be Y2K-compliant
from September to now,
and so there is no problem of going into January.
-Oh, I see. ...the stuff on board
the orbiter itself this particular increment
was okay if you roll over that same set.
-That's correct.
There are no Y2K concerns with OI-26 software
or OI-27 or any flight software.
-And just to follow up on Dan's and other questions
on the push to get off here in December,
I know obviously with Hubble out of action,
there's certainly some pressure in that context to get up there
as soon as you can to get Hubble back in action.
Everybody understands that.
I know Dave Cronin is here. I was just wondering.
I know he's not on the panel, but if perhaps
he could just address Hubble,
the project's desire to get the mission up
and get Hubble serviced if we could, please.
-We'll bring the mic over to you, Dave.
-Well, it's absolutely true that we really want to get up there
and get Hubble serviced to get it back online doing science,
and it's also absolutely true that the fourth EVA activities
were very low priority relative to everything else we're doing.
So we as a project have no problems whatsoever
deferring that work
until SM-3B if we absolutely had to.
We don't anyone to feel pressure because of this.
Hubble will still be there waiting for us in January
if we have to defer to January.
We certainly don't want to put anyone at risk,
the system at risk at all,
but given the choice of going now
and getting Hubble back online is the perhaps almost important
and valuable and productive scientific tool
that I'm aware of in this many-decade period,
getting that valuable tool back up
and running is a high priority for us,
and we would like to do that.
-And just a reminder, we do have a Hubble briefing tomorrow
at 10 a.m. in this room.
I believe Mark Caro had his hand up.
-I'm Mark Caro from the "Houston Chronicle."
I had a question and a follow,
and the first one is for Ron Dittemore
in regards the 100 miles of wiring
you mentioned early in your comments.
Could you just summarize
what proportion of shuttle wiring that is
and the areas you focused on and the areas
that maybe you didn't and why and the rationale for that?
-Well, let's see.
I don't know the exact percentage,
but let me say it's the majority, okay, if that helps.
We focused on areas
that where workers worked around those general areas
a lot where there could be collateral damage
where people were going in and out of the vehicles,
where we were making modifications,
and because of the modifications
and just the fact that we had people working in that area,
we could get collateral damage.
We looked at the parts of the forward module.
We looked in the crew cockpit.
We did extensive inspections of the midbody
because that's where we do a lot of our reconfiguration
from flight to flight when we have payloads
go in and payloads go out.
We put new cables in and put new power connections.
All those types of thing go in, so that was an extensive review,
and then we went and looked at the aft.
Now the aft was a little harder to do when we were in the OPF.
Because of the way the platforms are situated,
you just can't see all the wires as well as you can
as when you are in the vertical.
We knew that, and so we fully expected
that when we went out to the pad
and put in the platforms that you use
when you're out in the vertical that we would be able
to do further wire inspections in the aft,
and that's exactly the way it came to pass.
When we did those wire inspections,
we found more damage, and we repaired it.
-I had a follow-on question, and I realize that a little bit,
some of this, maybe a lot of it is kind of beyond your control
as to what kinds of numbers of shuttle missions
you can fly next year, but just on a general basis,
can you sort of jump-start from three
to whatever you might fly next year,
whatever number higher than that you might fly next year
without a lot of difficulty?
Is there anything looming out there
that you really have to address before you can take that on?
-It certainly is true that our flight rate has been lower
than what we'd like it to be.
We're fully capable of doing seven, eight,
nine missions a year.
That's what we had been doing,
and the reason our flight rate has been low is really
because the customers that we had planned
to fly weren't ready to fly.
Our space station program has been delayed,
and so we're not ready to move forward on that
and those particular missions.
Chandra itself was delayed, and we finally launched in July,
but it was delayed for some period of time,
so it really has upset the apple cart on our manifest
because of our customers not being ready.
Then we added to it by looking at our vehicles
and finding some deficiencies that we needed to repair
and to fix and to correct.
As we start looking ahead, we think this year
maybe six missions in the calendar year,
but again, a large part of that
is based upon our customers' readiness.
We'll fly HST.
We'll fly SRTM in probably late January,
maybe early February depending on what happens at HST,
and then the bulk of the manifest
is space station missions,
and as you know, there's a lot of work going on with
when we're going to launch the service module,
and that has a lot to do with what we do not
only in the content of our shuttle missions
but when we go fly them.
As far as the workforce goes, I think we're fully capable
of flying six missions this given year.
Now we have reviewed what we have been able to do
over the last year or 2.
We've had a lower workforce here in Florida.
Our flight rate has been lower,
and all that has worked out just fine,
but as we look ahead based on the efficiencies
that have been implemented here at Kennedy
and really checking those efficiencies, you know,
sometimes you project what efficiencies
and gains you're going to get.
We've had some opportunity now to put those efficiencies
in place and really validate them.
We believe that we need to plus up our workforce
a little bit here in the Kennedy Space Center,
and we're in the process of doing that.
We were at some 3,650 people here in the USA this summer,
and we're up to over 3,700 today,
and we plan to be at 3,800 by March or April,
and that would put us in a good position
to fly these six flights in the summer months
where we think we're going to have three or four.
-Justin Ray.
-Justin Ray with spaceflightnow.com,
I was wondering you could
sort of put 1999 into perspective, Ron.
So far, only two missions, would you say the year
has been disappointing, frustrating, challenging?
So far to date, what do you say about the year?
-Yes.
Our flight rate is lower than we'd like it to be.
Okay, and there's not much we can do about that,
and I just explained why,
but we've had a lot of good success.
We visited the space station twice,
once last December and then again in the May time frame,
and then we deployed the Chandra telescope in July,
so what we had to do we did, and we did it very well,
so we've had a lot of good successes
in the shuttle program,
and now we're working on getting ready to fly again,
and we're certainly ready to fly again here in the next few days,
and then we'll have to see what the future brings this next year
to see if our customers are ready
when we'd like them to be ready, and we'll just go do that.
-Okay.
We'll move over to this side of the room here
for some people who haven't had a chance.
Marcia Dunn.
-Marcia Dunn, Associated Press, two questions for Ron,
firstly in light of the two Mars failures
and all of the shuttle problems, how important is it for you
to see NASA get this flight off finally
and to have a big win up there with Hubble?
-Well, I don't look at the Mars activities that have gone on
and what you have reported on the press
as any factor on the shuttle program.
I've got to have my head in the game
of launching shuttles and doing them safely
and doing them when they're ready to fly,
and so, you know, I read your press reports,
and I see what might have happened with the Mars programs,
but that does not affect my thinking.
It does not affect my planning.
I'll go back to the success
I just mentioned over the last year.
If you try to put these in perspective, you know,
the Mars two missions were maybe $400 million worth of missions.
Chandra alone, spacecraft was $1 billion.
The shuttle did that mission.
Every time we go to the station, we support that significantly,
so if you put those in perspective,
the shuttle program is doing a significant amount
of successful activities in the past year,
and so we ought not to lose perspective
all of the successes that go on around NASA,
and I'm just talking about the shuttle program,
and I'm sure there are many other successes
that go on from day to day that just aren't as visible.
It just so happens that the latest two activities
going to Mars have been very visible,
but let me say again,
that activity and their success or failure
does not affect what we do in the shuttle program.
It does not rush us. It does not change our planning.
We keep our head down in the foxhole, and we work,
and we plan, and we get ourselves ready to fly.
-Okay. Thanks.
Besides seven astronauts, if they're up on Christmas,
how many other people are going to be working on Christmas Day,
and do you have any idea of what that's going to cost
in overtime?
-Well, I would say that just by rough numbers of people,
you'll probably have about 100 or so,
probably more than that at the Johnson Space Center
just doing the mission control activities
and keeping the control center running.
You'll have another 100 from Goddard
that'll be located at the Johnson Space Center,
so those people will be away from their home
for Christmas to support the mission,
and you'll have remote facilities
that people will work,
so you're going to have I'd estimate 200,
300 people that will be engaged
and work over the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
Now if we launch on the 16th, 17th or even the 18th,
we don't land until the 26th,
so here in Florida once they get through the launch,
their level of activity really drops off until we land,
and then they start preparing for landing,
so the predominant effort will be at the Johnson Space Center
for mission control once we launch.
-Any idea what this is costing above and beyond the, uh...
-No, I really haven't.
That's another one of those things that, you know,
I haven't even worried about because we're going to do it,
and the cost is the cost, and that's the way it is.
We'll just go do the mission and be safe about doing it.
-Sue Butler. -We talked a lot about people
being nervous about this mission.
I've heard some certain expressions
such as snake pit, seen it in the paper.
Now to give you an analogy, the FAA administrator
is planning to fly around the country in New Year
to prove that there will be no problem with the computers.
What can you do to reassure the public
that you have dotted every I?
-Well, I don't know where the nervousness is.
I think most of the nervousness comes from you, the press.
As I read the papers and see articles,
I consistently see a theme that, "Y2K is a problem.
We are rushing to launch in the December.
The workforce is too low. Are we really ready to fly?"
and in actuality, those things are being generated.
If you wanted me to reassure the public,
I would ask you to report back to the public what we have done.
We have spent a tremendous amount of effort
and time and intensity
on making these vehicles safe to fly.
They are safer today than they ever have been.
When the crews go on board, they ought to feel really good.
I know they do because they have commented
how safe they believe the vehicle is.
They've flown these vehicles before,
and they know what has gone on over the last 4 months,
and it is safer.
We've inspected that wiring.
We put in protection. We have repaired.
Even though most of what we found was minor,
it is much cleaner.
Even the intensity of the inspectors,
when we close out the aft compartment,
and we found this latest 4-inch manifold that had a dent in it,
again, it's a part of the inspection process
where our overall level of scrutiny has been raised,
and so our standards are up from where they were
which has been very healthy for the shuttle program.
We've had some folks come and help us.
We've had some independent assessments
come and look at our program
and see where they can find weaknesses,
and where they find weaknesses,
we will go correct and make those strengths,
and so I would ask you to report to the American public
that we are in good shape.
We are flying these vehicles safely.
We're in no rush to launch, but we use our judgment,
and it's the right judgment to launch this week.
If we didn't think so, we wouldn't be here to tell you
that's what we plan to do.
If we wanted to launch in January,
I wouldn't feel bad about saying that, too.
We could launch in January. That's no big deal.
There's nothing driving me to December
except what I've already told you about,
so I'm very pleased with the shuttle program,
very pleased with the workforce.
I think they've done a tremendous job,
a commendable job.
Our overall awareness has been heightened.
I think the workforce feels better
about what they have produced, and they are getting
a lot of attention, and we get a lot of attention.
They feel better about that, also.
You know, many times the attention they get is negative.
What we'd like to see is more positive attention,
not negative attention.
You can do more to help the shuttle program
than you realize, so if you ask me,
Sue, about what can I say to help the American public
feel better about the space program,
I'll ask you to help me to do that.
-Okay, Stefano. -Stefano Coledan with UPI
and "Popular Mechanics,"
have you determined how the pipe,
the jacket was crushed,
and also, was the inner liner damaged after all?
-Well, we took the part out, and we don't intend to scrap it.
We intend to take it on the bench
and do a lot of testing
and, you know, similar do CAT-scan types of things
and see exactly if there was any damage to the inner liner.
We don't know yet, too premature,
but that is in our plans.
What caused it?
When you work in the aft compartment,
it is difficult to do that.
It's a very cramped space.
You have to be somewhat of a contortionist
to go in and do that.
If you're not limber, you don't work in the aft compartment.
I mean, you've got to be able to bend
and kneel and crawl and slide, and it's difficult,
and we ask these guys to do a lot,
and they do it very well,
but that doesn't mean that we won't get collateral damage
from time to time by a misstep or a knee in the wrong place.
What we need to do is help them out,
and what we plan to do is look at the aft compartment
more closely from a human factors point of view.
Maybe we're asking them to do too much,
and we haven't helped them with design.
We put elephant hide over this 4-inch recirculation manifold.
That's not enough because obviously we can step on it
or kneel on it and damage the line.
Maybe we need to put some platforms in there
whether plastic or whether it's metal.
We need to do something to help the workforce
so that we don't have these delays
that are caused by workmanship.
You know, we're not on the ground
because of pieces of hardware that are breaking.
We're on the ground because we have broke it,
and we need to fix that,
and part of it is it's not that the workforce is not skilled.
It's not that they're not trained.
I think in large part we have set them up.
We need to get our design folks in step
with our processing folks
and see what we can do to make this orbiter easier to work on,
and that's part of the thrust that we're going to have to do
over the next months and years. -Okay.
Jay Barber, do you have your hand up?
-Yes.
Jay Barber of NBC for Ron and Dave.
Ron, you said a while ago, I believe,
that if we launched 16, 17 or 18,
come-home day would still be the 26th.
What is the real drop-dead day that you really have to get back
and get on the ground date to put everything away?
Can you do that as late as the 30th,
and are you really figuring in here
with this 27th a couple of contingency days
just in case you have bad weather?
-Let me tell you the days, and I'll let Dave give me
a break and talk about what's driving the --
once you land to Y2K.
The 26th is our target landing date,
and we always protect for 2 days of weather extension,
so if you target for the 26th, that means you need,
no, Sherlock, you got to land on the 28th if you had bad weather,
so based on the 28th given we have used
all our weather extension days, then we land.
Now Dave takes over because he's got to process the vehicle.
He's got to have it secured.
He's got to have it safe so that we can have
an orderly shutdown of computer systems,
ground computer systems prior to Y2K.
-And the answer to that is we feel like we need
to be on the ground on the 28th in the evening
to be able to get the orbiter secured, get the PRSD offloaded,
get all of our requirements met postlanding
such that we've made sure that we have a good vehicle
technically and power down the vehicle,
and then we have about a 12-hour bar beyond that
to get all of our computer systems powered down and be down
before actually 19:00 Eastern Time on the 31st
because we work to GMT time,
so that backs you up to the 29th.
The work is a little longer at Dryden than it
is here just because of
the physical attributes of trying to get work done
and get into the...device
and get hooked up to the sling
and leveled such that you can get into
all of that securing work that needs to be done,
and that's really what drives you there.
-The must-land date is then the 28th.
You can come down the 29th and still make it, Dave.
-That's correct.
That's what we are planning to today.
We need the 29th and 30th to get the vehicle secured,
and then we'd have the 31st to get the rest
of the computer equipment here at Kennedy secure.
-So evening landing on the 28th.
-That's correct.
-That protects for the Edwards landing should we have to do it.
-Thank you.
-Phil Chin.
Let me start a follow-up on that.
Is there any scenario where you'd consider
launching on the 19th?
Obviously wouldn't try four times in a row,
but this sounds a lot like the previous mission
where you tried to get additional range attempts,
but if you fired off the igniters
and then needed the time to turn it around
and then accept the fact that you're going to have
to compress the end of the mission,
that if the weather is bad here, go immediately for a dry run
so you can still make your 28th landing,
something like that, or take off one or two EVAs,
plus the crew up,
make up the -- I'm just thinking.
Is there any scenario like this where you'd want to go --
-The launch will not go past the 18th.
-Mm-hmm. -That's the simple answer.
We're not going to go past the 18th,
and the 18th leaves you with an 8-day mission
with 2 weather-extension days and three EVAs.
-And, Ron, in your opening remarks,
you made a comment about, "The majority of the workers
are happy with everything that's being done now."
How about the minority?
I suppose these are the guys who are reading all the stories
about the nervousness and everything else.
What do you do to assure them that everything is okay,
ameliorate their concerns?
And I suppose a lot of people are concerned about the fact
that we've found all of these problems.
We've fixed them all, but what else might there be
that we haven't done that may or may not catch us?
-Well, I say the majority because I --
Certainly, it wouldn't feel truthful
about telling you 100 percent.
I mean, we have a tremendous workforce,
and I'd have to believe that out of that workforce,
there's got to be a few that, no matter what I do,
they would still feel uneasy, and I don't think
that's anything unique about the Shuttle Program.
That's just human nature which reminds me about a question
that was asked over here that I wanted to talk about,
and that's three launch attempts in a row,
and it was implied that that was unusual for us to do that.
It is not unusual for us to do that.
Typically, we don't do it
because the time of day of launch is not --
and the preparations that lead up into the final day
are not in the wake hours, you know?
Like, if it were 2 or 3 a.m. in the morning,
now you're having people work 3 days in a row
that is not their normal sleep pattern,
not their normal work pattern,
and so we don't press 3 days in a row when that happens.
If, however, the launch is, and the preparation time,
is predominantly in the awake hours,
then we go back and ask the team
if that is an acceptable condition for you
to use your workforce for 3 days in a row.
And we asked Dave to go determine
whether that was an acceptable capability for this flight
because the first launch is 9:18 on the 16th,
and the next day its a half an hour earlier,
and the next day it's earlier than that,
and so it's all generally
in your awake hours from the morning,
midmorning, all the way through the later evening.
And Dave has talked to us
and told us that from the workforce point of view,
that's a feasible thing to consider.
Not that we will do it, but it's a feasible thing to consider,
and we would consider that depending upon
what caused us to scrub.
We had some flights earlier in the year.
We asked the very same question, and we determined at that point
we thought we could do three in a row
for the very same reasons.
It's just that sometimes because a launch time
is in the middle of the night,
you don't hear about it very often,
but when it is in the late afternoons
or in the early evenings, it's a perfect capability
that we ought to take advantage of if we can.
So it's not unusual.
It's just that you don't see it very often.
-Joe Barbary? -Yeah.
Just to follow up, Ron, you were saying there a while ago,
"If we launch on the 16th, it's a 10-day mission.
Launch on the 17th, a 9-day mission.
Launch on the 18th, an 8-day mission"?
-That's exactly right. -Okay, thank you.
-You got it.
-And, Phil, did you have a follow-up?
-But let me say one thing about that
from a HST point of view.
The 16th and the 17th
are equivalent from HST's point of view.
You do four EVAs.
The mission is shortened by 1 day.
We had inserted in the time line a crew rest day,
and what we're doing by going to the 17th
is we would delete that crew rest day.
Now, obviously we don't do that without talking to the crew
and asking them how they feel about that,
and they felt perfectly comfortable with doing that,
and so did all their management.
And when you go up to the 18th, you have to take out
the crew rest day and one EVA to get to 8 days,
and then we're looking to see if there's any way to keep
that fourth EVA in there, and that's what --
Dave is going to sharpen his pencil
and see if there's any way to do that,
but we'll worry about that when we have to launch on the 18th.
-Let me follow -- Again, on this minority.
Obviously, you can't prove that no one isn't concerned,
but has anybody come to either of you to, Ron or Dave,
and expressed any concerns, and what have you told them?
When we talked last week,
certainly I was less concerned afterwards
than before because you did explain what the situation was,
what with the barring and the two,
but have any workers come up to you
and expressed any of those concerns?
-I'll let Dave answer for what he knows down here,
but I asked our management team to hold meetings,
staff meetings, all-hands meetings,
get down on the floor and go talk to their people.
I explained to them our rationale,
a lot of what I've been explaining to you,
so that they understand what we're doing.
You know, much of what you hear in discontent
is generally not discontent as much as it
is a misunderstanding of what the objective is,
and so we've been trying to improve our communications,
from the bottom all the way to the top and down,
and we have been doing that for some weeks.
No one has come to me personally
and told me we should not launch.
No one has come to me personally and said,
"We're pressing it," from a workforce point of view.
I have had indications from managers
that they have this sense or have this feeling,
and I go follow up on that and try to understand it,
and I haven't found one yet that has real data
other than their sense, okay?
There's nothing that's pressing here other than their sense,
and the sense I get out of that
is that we're moving into the holidays.
We're working over Christmas,
and when people focus on those holidays,
that starts to get into what maybe plans they had made,
family plans, and so they start feeling that,
and we're getting some feedback on that.
That does not make us unsafe to fly.
That does not mean we cannot launch.
It just means we need to do a better job at communicating
so they understand why we are doing this.
-And my perspective on that:
We have been out talking to this workforce
quite extensively recently about those kinds of issues.
We've had lots of forums to give folks opportunities
to express concerns.
The only concerns I've heard is with folks
trying to support more than one vehicle at a time.
We heard that over the last couple of weeks
and have recently, you know, told them,
"Look. If you have a concern supporting both,
then we just won't process the other vehicle at this time."
And we've sent that message to the workforce,
and that's happening.
That's not to say that we are not going to go process
STS-99 to go fly because we want to go do that.
But where folks had concerns or might have concerns
about being able to support two,
we've given them instructions with,
after talking with Ron about that, to, if they need to,
back off on 99, to go support 103.
One oh three has the priority currently,
but I have not had anybody come to me telling me
that we have a safety issue here
or we have concerns of the nature you talked.
Every concern that has been brought to my attention,
we've gone and worked, and it's been, you know,
a way to try to get the work done,
and we addressed all those appropriately, I believe.
-You know, from a Christmas point of view,
we've worked two missions over Christmas.
All right? This would be the third,
and from a Space Station point of view,
we're going to do that every year.
In fact, last year, remember?
We launched 88 in a Christmas time frame, STS-88.
Although the shuttle landed,
we had a team of folks in the control center
looking after the FGB that was put in orbit, so it happens.
It's part of our job. We will go do it,
so it's not going to be uncommon in the future,
and so we better get used to that.
-We've got time for a few more questions.
Sue?
-An easy one for you: What is the latest current date
for launching Endeavour, and what --
Suppose you have to switch that, and you can't for any reason
launch Discovery before Christmas.
What would be the launch date for Discovery
and then Endeavour?
And one more question I'd like to tack on:
Who really needs that radar Earth mission?
-Needs what? -That radar mission.
I mean, why is that so important?
-Save that one for January.
-Latest launch on the books for Endeavour
is January the 13th,
but it's going to move to the right
because we changed an engine
out in the Vertical Assembly Building,
and we know that's an impact on that schedule.
We've already moved our flight-readiness review
from the 6th of January to the 11th,
so we know that Endeavour is going to move to the right
to the latter part of January.
Okay? We know that.
Now, if Discovery did not launch in December,
we would schedule it for January 13th,
same slot that Endeavour was in.
That's the earliest we can launch
after the beginning of the year
just because of what we have to do by the nature of the work
to get ready to go do the launch.
So I think that answered two of your questions,
and that last one, I'd hope you'd save that one
for the SRTM folks when they come in January
and talk about their science payload.
-Okay, Todd Halverson.
-Yeah, Todd Halverson of space.com for Dave King.
It occurs to me that over the, well, past couple of weekends
as well as, I think, Thanksgiving, too,
you've had crews out there working,
and I was curious about what time of overtime percentage
you've been running in this particular launch flow,
how that might compare to a normal launch flow,
how many waivers you've been signing
and how that might compare to a typical flow.
-Let me tell you that the kind of work
we've been doing over the past few weekends
has been different most weekends
which means different sets of folks work different weekends.
We have had some folks
who have had to work consecutive weekends,
but we've worked very hard to give folks days off.
We have very few waivers associated with going
and flying Thursday night.
We do have some, but it's very small in number
and not of any concerns.
As you know, we review those on an individual basis
and feel comfortable that what we have is good to go,
and as I said, we work very hard to try to give folks at least
1 day off on the weekend to reset the clock
and to spend a little time with their family,
such that they can be ready to come out here
and do this job professionally as we ask them to do.
So although we have been working some weekends,
I think we've worked very hard at making sure
that folks have time off, such that we don't have folks
that have been working weekend after weekend after weekend.
-Bill Harwood. -Yeah, Bill Harwood again, CBS,
with just a quick nuts and bolts.
Back when it was a full 10-day mission with four EVAs,
like if you launched on the 16th,
they were telling us at the prelaunches a while
back you had at least one contingency Hubble EVA
as well as the usual contingency shuttle EVA in the back pocket.
If you go to the 17th or 18th,
what does that do to contingency EVAs?
I'm assuming you would be limited to just four,
just three no matter
what in order to get down on the 26th.
Is that right? -Well, what we start doing is,
we start taking that get-ahead activities on the EVAs,
and we start deleting them, and those third and fourth EVAs
which are largely comprised of get-ahead tasks,
they start becoming margin,
and if you had to delete the fourth EVA,
then the third EVA is still largely comprised
of get-ahead tasks.
It becomes margin.
So the first two EVAs are the real meat of the mission,
and then three and four provide the margin
for the real requirements.
If all goes well on the first couple of EVAs,
then we're going to do the get-ahead tasks,
but that's where the margin is:
to get the real requirements done.
-What if you slip into the [Indistinct]
become your contingency --
-If we go to the 17th, we still do four EVAs,
but again, if we were pressed for time,
we'd start throwing away the get-ahead,
and on the 18th, right.
Three EVAs, and one of those is your margin.
-Okay. I think we have two
final questions on this side.
Marcia?
-Marcia Dunn, for Ron.
If you launch on the 16th, all four EVAs go great,
is there any talk being given if the crew wanted
to give up their day off and come back on Christmas day
to at least spend some time with their families
that they wouldn't have on a holiday?
Is there any talk about that,
or would you still fly the full 10-day mission?
-We would fly the full 10-day mission.
We would do it just the way we had planned,
and it would be the best Christmas present
I could have this year.
-And I believe, Franco Malerba, did you have your hand up?
You haven't had a chance yet.
-Franco Malerba, I'm supporting RAI TV in Italy.
About the EVAs, I wonder,
what is the level of certainty and confidence
you have about the status of the Hubble Space Telescope?
In other words, if there will be any, say,
unknown as to the operations that need to be carried,
and therefore whether there will be a need
for any extra activity on the EVA side.
-Well, all I can say is, you know,
they've given us the state of the spacecraft.
We know the status of the equipment that's not working.
We also know that even though some equipment may be working,
we plan to change it out,
very detailed and trained plans for the EVAs.
There is some margin contingency time
if something were to go wrong.
We're even carrying some extra hardware that,
if something were to go wrong, they find something,
we could replace a particular piece of equipment.
So there is that flexibility.
They've tried to think of everything they can think of
so that when you make this one trip,
and you don't get there very often,
that you take advantage of it.
-Okay. We have two briefings tomorrow:
the countdown-status briefing at 9 a.m.
and the Hubble science briefing at 10.
Thank you.