>>14338002Although Graeber isn’t allowed to go into the details, he was able to say that typically they would want to finish loading LOX or LH2 on the Core Stage before loading that commodity on ICPS. “Typically we’re going from one to the next for each commodity, so we’re going to go Core Stage liquid oxygen, get into replenish and then get into ICPS liquid oxygen,” he said.
“Same thing for Core Stage liquid hydrogen to ICPS; you want to get complete with one before you step into the next.”
During Shuttle countdowns, after the External Tank was loaded and into stable replenishment, a final inspection team would go to the pad and do a survey of all the external surfaces of the Shuttle vehicle. For SLS and Orion, that survey will be performed remotely, taking advantage of high-definition camera equipment.
“We do not have an inspection team that goes out to the launch pad,” Graeber said. “One of the things that was unique about Shuttle was that there was a lot of vantage points to be able to see the vehicle and so that final inspection team had a lot of places they could inspect the vehicle.”
“We don’t have as many of those, and so really our inspection is done by folks who actually have experience back in the Shuttle days as part of the final inspection team but they do it remotely via the multiple camera views that we have in place to do a full scan of the entire vehicle surface area outer mold-line.”
“[They] provide that same inspection and inspection criteria as they did with the final inspection team for Shuttle, but it’s done remotely and they support here from the Launch Control Center,” he added.
Two terminal countdown runs, with a recycle in between
For WDR, the launch team and launch systems will get the vehicle ready to fly twice, demonstrating the capability to recycle the countdown and vehicle in-between the two. SLS will have launch windows up to two hours long on a given day and under some circumstances it will be possible to make an
