The Rocket Test that WAS!

Remember the test that wasn't a couple of weeks ago? Well, today the test was a ROARING success. I can't do writeups as well as my daughter Lisa can, but I have to post about today's Ares DM-1 Rocket test. What a BLAST! Bryce says that if your clocks stopped today it was because this motor was pointed east and slowed the world down just a bit. All I can say is WOW. It was really impressive, amazing, awesome . . . name some other words.

We had a great time last time in spite of the test being aborted at 20 seconds on the countdown. This time when we passed the 20 seconds and the clock kept going, everyone cheered. We brought lunch again, but didn't go out quite as early, getting there only about 45 minutes before the test began. We also didn't pack out all the paraphernalia that we did last time.

Sara posted her video on YouTube, and it's a great one. You can see it here. Here's Matthew's description since he knows a lot more about it than I do: "First static test of the booster for the Ares I rocket, set to send man back to the moon and eventually to mars.The week before this video was taken another test was attempted, but a problem was found and the test was scrubbed with 20 seconds left on the clock, that's why the crowd cheers with 19 seconds left on the clock. Notice how long it takes for the sound to reach the crowd, that's how far away we were. DM-1 is the world's largest solid rocket motor. It produced over 3.5 million pounds of thrust in just over 2 minutes. The heat from the rocket turns the sand piles in the plume to glass and the smoke plume it produced could be seen by people in Sandy, Utah. ATK has been developing this motor for use by the Ares vehicle, which will take humans to space when the shuttle retires. Today was a huge milestone in making that plan a reality, as this demonstration showed that the 5-segment motor (shuttle uses 4-segment ones) will be able to perform as required. Cheers went up at T-20 because the last time we were out there the Auxiliary Power Unit that powers the thrust vector control failed to power up. They had to scrub that test. Not this time! The motor was ignited right on schedule and burned the expected 2 minutes without incident. What a show it was. We had a great time taking part in this 'first' for human space flight."

Here's my movies (I stopped and started again part way through.) A bit shakier and not as good quality as Matthew's, since he had a tripod and a better camera. He posted his on his blog.