Lofty Ambitions Blog

The California Story (Part 3) November 14, 2012

A little more than a week after our quadrennial national election, we wonder about our future in space. As space and aviation bloggers, we yearn for the clarity of a “We choose to go to the moon” moment. Time and time again, we have seen the power of space exploration to inspire, to inculcate aspirations to learn, to imagine, to engage. At our own institution, Chapman University, we once saw a young woman get up during an event in Memorial Hall and ask astronaut Mike Massimino, “How can I become an astronaut?” As we mentioned in the second part of this series, named after California Science Center’s newest exhibit, “The California Story,” Doug was surrounded by a class of fifth-graders pointing at the displays related to the space shuttle and challenging each other on their knowledge. Space inspires.

“The California Story” exhibit of space shuttle Endeavour nurtures that inspiration at the museum. In the first part of this series, we interviewed Ken Philips, who’s curating that exhibit. In part two of this series, we gave a general overview of the exhibit: space potty, Endeavour’s tires, scads of photos and videos, a couple of shuttle simulators, and a wide range of other displays. This week, we look at the part of the exhibit that captured and held Doug’s attention: the ROSC, or the Rocketdyne Operations Support Center. The ROSC is a launch control center dedicated to a single component in a shuttle launch: the space shuttle main engine (SSME).

The SSMEs are the three rocket engines attached to the tail of the shuttle orbiter. They are liquid propellant engines—as opposed to the solid fuel boosters—that burn a chemically potent mixture of cryogenic liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, which are fed from the large, orange external fuel tank. After the hydrogen and oxygen combine in the burning process, the exhaust that escapes from an SSME is essentially super-heated water vapor. In other words, it’s thrust. These SSMEs provide power.

Doug had stopped and gawked at the ROSC exhibit shortly after arriving at the Media Day event, but it wasn’t until he was chatting with Ken Phillips that Doug found out that the person responsible for bringing the ROSC to the California Science Center, Rocketdyne’s Dean Patmor, was at the day’s event. Phillips motioned towards Patmor, blue-shirted and standing nearby. After a quick introduction, Patmor related the story of how he arranged for the ROSC to wind up as a permanent part of “The California Story.”

Patmor’s efforts began eighteen months ago when he realized that Rocketdyne might be forced to scrap the ROSC. For thirty years, every single launch of the shuttle program, Rocketdyne engineers sat watch in the ROSC. But when the shuttle program ended, ROSC became a man-rated system without any launches to support. The ROSC would be “too expensive to maintain,” as Patmor put it, until NASA’s next human-rated launch system comes online. Fearing the loss of the historic control room, Patmor first contacted the California Science Center to see if they would be interested in giving the ROSC a part to play in the exhibit that they were creating for Endeavour. Once he had that part in motion, he broached the subject with his own management. Patmor’s approach is familiar to us at Lofty Ambitions: ask for forgiveness rather than permission.

During its working life, the ROSC was responsible for monitoring the SSMEs’ mind-boggling performance numbers in real-time. Here are just a few of those numbers. The SSMEs’ operating regime encompasses a temperature range 6500º F (-423º Fahrenheit to +6000º Fahrenheit). The engines’ high-pressure fuel turbopump delivers the hydrogen fuel to the combustion chamber under such great pressure (6,515 psia) that it could pump its contents thirty-six miles high into the atmosphere. During the shuttle’s eight-and-a-half minute ascent into orbit, the people in the ROSC kept a watchful eye on those numbers and more. For visitors to the exhibit, the monitors and screens of the ROSC display meaningful, but simulated, launch data. Using real launch data would be an ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) violation.

Doug asked Patmor to tell him one thing about the ROSC that no one else knew. Patmor demurred and explained that he couldn’t imagine that there was an aspect of the ROSC that wasn’t known in his community. But prompted by a colleague from Rocketdyne, Communications Specialist Erin Dick, Patmor led Doug into the consoles to show him the pizza button. This tiny, square, red button controlled one of the voice communication loops that engineers used to communicate. Patmor explained that, once a launch sequence begins (starting with tanking the shuttle about nine hours prior to launch), the engineers are stuck there for the duration. It was customary to provide meals for the ROSC team, hence the need for a pizza communication button.

The Lofty Ambitions duo: delirious from sleep deprivation or thrilled to see Endeavour once again?

As befits their name, Rocketdyne is still in the business of designing, building, testing, and launching rocket engines. Currently, they are focused on upgrading the eighteen remaining SSMEs—sixteen flight engines and two for development purposes—for their next role: flying on the Space Launch System (SLS). The SLS, NASA’s next heavy launch vehicle, will make use of four (or perhaps five) of the refitted engines on its core stage. As an aside, Patmor added that once the proposed SLS got going, he fully well expected to be called back from retirement to help to design the SLS control center. A new kind of ROSC will emerge.

And so the story goes. When kids see Endeavour at the museum, they will wonder what it’s like to go to space. When they see the space potty, they’ll start to realize the complexities of traveling beyond our world. When they see the ROSC, they’ll begin to think like engineers and come up with new, unexpected reasons to have an extra button on a console. “The California Story,” as much as it evokes nostalgia, is designed to inspire a future of space exploration.

Endeavour Arrival: VIDEOS October 17, 2012

This past weekend, we watched Endeavour on its final leg to the California Science Center. You can view photos HERE and HERE. In today’s post, we have videos to share.

See all our videos at YouTube HERE.

Endeavour Arrival: PHOTOS October 14, 2012

For our initial set of photos from today’s arrival of space shuttle Endeavour at the California Science Center, go to “Endeavour Arrives at CA Science Center (10/14/12)” at Flickr. Those photos are in addition to the fun photos you can see below. We’ll have a thoughtful write-up, of course, and more cool photos, but for now, we’ll let these images be the equivalent of a thousand words as we try to catch up on sleep and prepare for the workweek.

Anna gives an orbiter a smooch. Welcome home, Endeavour!

Is Doug punching Endeavour in the nose for being very late? Or is this a Lofty Ambitions fist bump with an orbiter?

On an escorted tour where few were allowed to tread, Lofty Ambitions traipsed the specially designed path from the street to the orbiter’s shed, just before Endeavour arrived.

Endeavour did not merely move in a straight line down streets. The orbiter zigged and zagged to avoid poles and trees.

Things didn’t always go according to plan, as Endeavour was about 15 hours late to the museum. But there was a plan!

The Lofty Ambitions duo: delirious from sleep deprivation or utterly thrilled to see Endeavour once again?

Endeavour: close enough to read the codes on the thermal protection tiles.

Endeavour avoids the tree above our heads.

October 12-14, 2012: Three Days of Teamwork

After a long journey, Endeavour pulls into the garage.

If you didn’t yet see the other set of photos at Flickr, click HERE.

Déjà vu all over again October 14, 2012

Volunteer for Mission #26 at the California Science Center

We set out Saturday afternoon for the California Science Center to see Endeavour’s arrival. We actually left our car with a colleague in downtown L.A. so we could avoid any traffic hassles and have the Metro drop us off next to the museum. We checked out the media area, then spent some time at the museum, which is free and was open until 5pm. All was going really well by the time we made our way to our viewing spot before 6pm. To see a sample of our excitement and Anna’s space shuttle skirt, click HERE, and follow Doug on Twitter HERE.

Then, the sun set, and it grew chilly. Anna donned her hat and extra sweater. Word came around quickly that the shuttle wouldn’t be there until 9pm. We’re used to delays in these matters, and press coverage means, for reporters, a lot of hurry-up and wait. By 7:30pm, rumor was that Endeavour was still at the corner of Crenshaw and MLK. Official word, via Twitter and law enforcement, soon confirmed that the shuttle wouldn’t arrive until 1am, maybe even 2am.

Shed Where Endeavour Will Be Housed

So we hopped aboard Metro, with plans to have a beverage with our colleague in downtown L.A., then drive back to the museum, where there was a lot designated for press with plenty of parking. We warmed up, had a good conversation, and gathered our belongings at 10:30pm to head back to the museum. Only, by that time, Rob Pearlman of CollectSpace.com, whom we see at all these shuttle events, was tweeting that the shuttle hadn’t moved since 7:30pm and wouldn’t arrive at the museum until after 5am. Officials were sending volunteers and press home for the evening, and it looks as if zigzagging an orbiter through the streets to avoid trees and poles might require some daylight.

A party for The Mentalist 100th episode, which happened to be going on near where we left our car

So we’re back at home, ready for a few hours of sleep. Check back to see whether we drag ourselves out of bed at 3am or thereabouts to rush back to the museum for the shuttle’s arrival. We’ve done this sort of thing before. After all, Endeavour didn’t launch the first time we went to see it; we had to go back to see what we came for.

The Meaning of Endeavour October 12, 2012

Endeavour, or the American endeavor (which we now think looks like a typo), means, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, pains taken to obtain an object.

Endeavour’s Last Launch, 2011

The California Science Center has gone to great pains to obtain the space shuttle Endeavour. The twelve-mile, two-day journey of this object from LAX to the museum is one of great pains: tree removal, rolling removal of electric wires and poles, layers of police security.

In the fifteenth century, the word endeavor literally meant to put oneself in dever. We’ve lost the word dever in our language, but the phrase is equivalent to the idea of making a task one’s duty or of taking on a noble obligation.

That’s what the California Science Center has done. When NASA transferred the title for Endeavour to the museum one year ago—on October 11, 2011—the museum put itself in dever. It agreed to the ongoing obligation of preserving this orbiter and sharing this object and its history with the general public.

Dever comes from the Latin word for debt. The Latin verb debere means to owe.

Endeavour Arrives in California, 2012

The California Science Center is raising heaps of money to bring Endeavour to its site. There’s a lot for which the museum must pay. NASA, of course, paid for the orbiter in the first place, at a price tag of roughly $1.7 billion, and agreed to pay for removing everything hazardous, at a cost of roughly $14 million. The delivery costs the museum is incurring have been estimated at $13.7 million. The museum, for example, is footing the bill to replace the trees removed along the transfer route at a rate of two to one. There’s a lot of money involved in getting Endeavour to the museum and then more invested to display it as an artifact for the next two hundred years. The permanent building that will house the orbiter isn’t even built yet.

The museum owes more than money, though. The museum owes Endeavour to the public. The space shuttle program was run by the federal government and, therefore, belonged to all of us. When NASA snapped a photo of a launch, we all owned that photo. When the Hubble Telescope, repaired during space shuttle missions, reveals new insights about our universe, that knowledge is open to all scientists, all star gazers. While the California Science Center is a private entity, the museum still owes the public good in an ethical, if not a technically legal, sense. NASA has entrusted the museum with this obligation.

By the late fifteenth century, endeavor had come to mean utmost effort.

Jeffrey Rudolph, Head of California Science Center

Lofty Ambitions has put our utmost effort into following the end of the space shuttle program over the last two years. Tomorrow, we may expend our greatest effort, as we negotiate the streets of Los Angeles to glimpse Endeavour’s arrival at its permanent home. In some ways, because of voluminous and shifting information and tight security, figuring out how to see Endeavour in our own backyard has been more complicated than planning our trips to Kennedy Space Center. But we put ourselves in dever two years ago, and we’ll take pains to see this through.