Test-firings keep ATK team edgy

PROMONTORY — Doug White was in a Sunday-best blue suit and nervous as any expectant father moments away from a delivery that was as much about him as it was about the baby the throng of spectators — some from as far away as Georgia — had come to see.

White, who is vice president of test and research services for Alliant Techsystems (ATK), paced back and forth. At about T-minus 5 minutes, he stopped to take a final close-up look, courtesy of Deseret News photographer Tom Smart's long lens focused on the rocket some 500 yards below. He knows every inch inside and out of the sleek, fluted rocket but said he wanted just one more pre-test glimpse of the 17-foot high rocket.

"I've got butterflies," he said. "I got them when I drove in this morning. This is the exciting, kind of candle on the birthday cake moment part to see if all the testing and retesting and sequencing works."

The test fire was bright, loud and short — all of 5.5 seconds to create the 500,000 pounds of thrust needed to separate the crew from the main rocket should a launch go awry. It's a system similar to the Apollo system developed in the 1960s, but has the added high-tech additions of better fuel and maneuverability to get up and out of the way in a split second.

The force of this new age ejection seat is equal to at least the power of the combined jet engines on two 747 passenger airplanes and induces 16 times normal gravity on the capsule's occupants, but it lasts only about two seconds. Once the motor-type tested Thursday gets the crew away, a set of smaller nozzles fueled by an attitude control motor aligns and stabilizes the vehicle for the deployment of parachutes, allowing the Orion capsule to drift back to earth intact. Both water and land will be used as drop sites.

"Of course, we hope we never have to use it, and don't anticipate we ever will. But the way we think about these things is: We're gonna have a proper safety mechanism," White said.

White and the big suits from participating partners NASA, Lockheed Martin Corp., and Orbital Sciences Corp. took a congratulatory moment, shared hugs and high-fives.

"Now it's back to work again to check out if what we saw is actually what happened down there," White said. The stream of data gathered in those few seconds through 150 channels will be analyzed over the next several months as the team prepares for an actual lift-off test of the rescue system next summer.