Next Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2010,  at 9:05 a.m. (MDT), ATK and NASA will host a horizontal ground test firing of the Ares DM-2 (Ares Development Motor – 2) five-segment solid rocket motor…and you’re invited!

In fact, if you are a twitter user and would like to take advantage of an exclusive, up close view of the test, you can register with @ATKRocketNews (deadline to register is Aug. 26) on twitter and view the testing from the VIP launch site. You can also follow the #DM2 hash tag on the day of the event for the latest updates from the launch site.

2009 DM-1 test, Corinne, UT

The DM-2 is a five-segment rocket motor that is an upgraded version of the Shuttle’s 4-segment booster. This DM-2 test is being held in the morning as a “cold motor” test in which the motor will be cooled to 40 degrees F to measure the solid rocket motor performance at low temperatures.

If you would like to view next week’s test from the public viewing area rather than participating in the tweetup, travel approximately 20 miles west of Corinne, Utah, to the observation area located along State Road 83 North.

Lastly, we encourage you to post comments about the test here on our blog, or visit our facebook profile to upload any fan photos you would like to share.

Disclaimer: ATK  is a financial supporter of Clark Planetarium. They sponsor the ATK IMAX Theatre through annual cash and in-kind donations.

WOW!!!!

Thursday’s static test firing of the Ares solid fuel rocket booster at ATK’s test facility in northern Utah was spectacular!

Don’t believe me?  Check this out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here it is again, close-up. (Yes, I’m a nerd – I took two cameras.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

That’s what six million horsepower looks like.

[geekmode = ON]

1,381,700 pounds of solid fuel was burned in just 122 seconds – that’s a rate of more than five and a half TONS of fuel burned – PER SECOND for over two minutes.

122 seconds of 3.6 million pounds of rocket thrust. It was amazing.

The boosters that launch the Space Shuttle contain four segments of solid rocket fuel stacked together in a single case.  The Ares booster uses five segments.  Additionally, it uses a new formulation of the solid propellant, a new geometry within the motor case to optimize the thrust and a new, larger nozzle throat.  These improvements, plus others not mentioned because honestly I probably wouldn’t understand them, make this Ares booster 24% more powerful than the solid fuel rocket boosters that help launch the Space Shuttle.

[geekmode  = OFF]

Numbers shmumbers.

When the countdown reached “T-minus 10 seconds…” and everyone’s attention was riveted on that long white tube a little over a mile away, I’m here to tell you that no one, not even icewater-for-blood rocket engineers, worried about numbers. This was purely an emotional moment.

The column of flame coming out of that thing was as bright as the Sun.  For five seconds you saw it but did not hear it because the sound waves hadn’t reached us yet.  Then… BOOM! The roar was amazing and your chest shakes from the roar of the engine.  You can feel the power of this thing rattling through your bones.

Congratulations, ATK!

At the same time I’m writing this, a summary of the Augustine Commission Report, which reviews the options available for the future of America’s human space flight efforts, is being widely discussed.

It’s worth keeping in mind as you read it that as a percentage of the total US federal budget NASA’s funding has never been smaller, and currently is about one tenth what it was during the Apollo years.  As you consider the dollar amounts being discussed it’s helpful to put those numbers in the context of other areas of federal spending.

Also, as you think about money being spent on “going to the moon” keep in mind that no one is proposing to package pallets of hundred dollar bills and hurl them into space.  What’s really happening, of course, is that thousands of scientists, engineers, truck drivers, accountants, electricians, secretaries, etc. are working together to put Americans back on the moon.  And this time it wouldn’t be for a quickie two or three day visit, but for much longer, earnest scientific explorations and eventually the construction of permanent lunar outposts.

While the Ares booster is a magnificent and wonder-inspiring technological marvel, it is also very much in the spotlight of political scrutiny.  Do we as a nation fund it, or not?

Who gets to make the decisions regarding the future of human spaceflight for the U.S.?  Can we as members of the general public make proper sense of the technical issues being discussed so that we ourselves can make informed decisions as taxpaying voters?  This requires what’s called “scientific literacy,” and more and more critical public policy decisions depend on a scientifically literate public and scientifically literate elected representatives.

That’s what we at Clark Planetarium are here to encourage – public awareness of and appreciation for the science in our daily lives.

Please pay attention to this kind of thing.  It’s important to you in more ways than you can imagine.

I have to weigh-in on the last Ares booster ground test that was scrubbed at T-minus 20 seconds on Thursday, August 27.

I was there, along with a handful of other planetarium staff and members of our board of directors.  It was hot, crowded and exciting as we jostled for position so we could get a view of the first-ever test firing of an Ares booster (a longer and more powerful version of the Space Shuttle’s Solid Rocket Booster) from a safe distance of a just over a mile.

The Ares 1 First Stage is the long white tube lying on its side. It is 156 feet long and will burn its 1.38 million pounds of solid fuel in 122 seconds.

T-minus 25! 24! 23! 22! 21! 20! Then the clock stopped. The voice over the loudspeaker announced that there was a “hold.”

It was so exciting! And then...

Ten minutes passed.  Carloads of engineers could be seen driving purposefully up the road toward the rocket.  For a moment I entertained myself with thoughts of a burly, red-faced engineer angrily striding up to the rocket, giving it a sharp kick and then shouting into a radio, “OK, try it now!” or dozens of men in lab coats swarming around the back end of the rocket as they frantically patted their pockets, yelling to one another, “Who’s got the matches?”

Several more minutes passed, and the voice on the loudspeaker announced that the test had been scrubbed for the day.

Bummer.

ATK has identified the problem as a failure of a valve to supply fuel to one of the Auxiliary Power Units that powers a small but powerful turbine that powers a small but powerful pump that creates the hydraulic pressure that allows the rocket nozzle to be tilted a few degrees in any direction while the rocket is firing (Everyone clear on that?).

Directing the thrust from a rocket engine is how you “steer” as you roar into space, which is obviously a critically important thing for a rocket to be able to do.  In fact, it is so critical that the rockets are designed with redundant systems so that if one APU fails it has a separate backup system up and running that can do the job by itself.

When astronaut lives and a billion dollars’ worth of hardware are at stake you make sure that valve failures are vanishingly rare events and that critical systems always have a backup standing by.

When a valve that is this critical to the mission (to say nothing of astronaut lives) fails during a test you don’t write it off as “just one of those things,” you stop and get to the bottom of the problem. These valves aren’t supposed to fail.

Over this last weekend I had a gas station conversation with an acquaintance from my old neighborhood.  Knowing that I was affiliated with the planetarium and had an interest in things spacey, he asked, “So whatcha think of that big rocket failure?”  Ugh.  Before I could finish my answer, (”Well… ‘failure’ is a loaded word…”) his next question was, “I wonder how many millions they wasted?”

Double-ugh.  How to even begin addressing such a perspective?

Both our gas tanks were filled and “Well, see ya laters” were quickly exchanged without so much as an “It’s not that simple…” from me.

Rocket science is hard.  If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.  There is a reason the U.S. is the world leader in spaceflight – we have been at it longer, we have worked harder on the difficult science and technologies involved and as a result we have been more successful at it than any other nation on earth.

Always keep in mind that omniscience is not a human trait.  Failure – whether it is a failure of a component, a failure of a design or a failure of an entire design philosophy, is inevitable. The only choice any of us have in the matter is how we prepare for the inevitability of failure, what we learn when we encounter it and what we do with what we learn from the experience.

An axiom that has guided me over the years is, “Thought is born of failure.”

To think one thing and then later discover that you were wrong is a natural part of life.  Some would even say that making mistakes is necessary to progress.  If you are never wrong then you never have a reason to learn anything genuinely new.

Where do you want to discover that there is a problem with a critical fuel valve when major scientific advancement, major economic development and international prestige depend on that valve’s function?  On the test bed, or on the launch pad?

The Ares 1 test is scheduled to take place this Thursday, September 10, and the odds are very good that when the test is concluded ATK engineers will have truckloads of data that will be encouraging, scientifically valuable, and that will reveal new challenges that will need to be overcome before astronauts ride an Ares booster into space.

There is a wonderful latin phrase that sums up everything I’m trying to say here: Per aspera ad astra. (”To the stars through difficulties.”)

“Through difficulties.” This is the way we got to the Moon forty years ago, and it is the way we will go back to the Moon and beyond.