Col. James Jolliffe

Retired instrument technician William Scott ensures the wiring and heat transfer gauges are intact and in place on the scale model of the Ares I first stage booster prior to installation and testing of the component in the center’s von Karman Facility’s tunnels B and C. Mr. Scott retired from Sverdrup at AEDC in 1999. With 42 years of professional experience, he has responded to requests for help with a couple of challenging projects at the center's Aerothermal Measurements Lab. (Photo by Rick Goodfriend)

A 327-foot rocket blasting off Wednesday in Florida gave engineers in Tennessee a reason to be proud.

Testing at Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tullahoma, Tenn., contributed to the successful launch of NASA's Ares I-X rocket morning in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

"Whenever we get a chance to see those systems operating, it makes us all pretty proud," said Col. James Jolliffe, commander of the 704th Test Group at Arnold.

Testing of the rocket began three years ago in Arnold's wind tunnels, he said.

After the space shuttle is retired in four to five years, the Ares is intended to be NASA's primary vehicle for getting astronauts to the International Space Station.

The test Wednesday fired the first stage, or base, of the rocket that launches the Ares into the atmosphere, the colonel said. All other parts of the rocket were mock-ups and will be tested in future launches, he said.

The Arnold center performs flight testing on equipment for NASA and all military branches. Center personnel have done testing on all manned spacecraft since the inception of the space program.

For the Ares rocket, teams of more than 20 engineers set up tests in three different wind tunnels at Arnold, measuring the performance of scale models of the rocket at speeds that reached faster than four times the speed of sound, which is about 768 mph, the colonel said.

Dr. Harry McDonald, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga's SimCenter, worked with shuttle development as head of the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountainview, Calif., from 1996 to 2003. He said, the Ares rocket is designed to be a very safe vehicle and is a "return to the future" since the system is similar to the Apollo and Gemini missions used in the 1960s and '70s, he said.

The Apollo missions took man to the moon and back 10 times between 1968 and 1972.

Dr. McDonald said NASA moved to using the shuttle in the 1980s to have a reusable vehicle but, in recent years, both safety issues and cost have pushed the space program to return to rocket launches.

"The shuttle has reached the end of its life," he said. "The longer we keep flying it, the greater the risk."

The test Wednesday test bodes well for future work, Dr. McDonald said.

"It's very good for the program that the first step is successful," he said. "You never want your first step to be a failure."

INSIDE THE TESTING

The Arnold center tests, some lasting two to three months, examined the burn rate of material designed to protect astronauts during re-entry, the control of the Stage One liftoff and how well the rocket stages separated, all key elements in a successful launch, Col. Jolliffe said.

He likened the rocket separation to driving behind a semi-truck on the highway. The closer a car is to the truck, the less turbulence, but move farther away and a car will start to rock, he said. Multiply that by thousands of miles per hour and minute adjustments can spell success or disaster, Col. Jolliffe said.

A rocket barreling into the sky also achieves another mission -- getting children interested in math and science.

Thomas Patty, director of the Challenger Center at UTC, said Wednesday's launch is a quick reference for him when working with students at the center.

The center hosts an average of 8,000 students annually for math and science demonstrations and space mission simulations, Mr. Patty said.

The Ares rocket is directly linked to what the center does, he said. As the likely next vehicle for moon or Mars missions, the rocket's specifications fit neatly into simulations that students must configure for space flights at the center, Mr. Patty said.

"The launch of the Ares rocket makes that an even more-viable activity because it's hands-on," he said. "It gets (students) involved in what it takes to get a rocket off the ground."

THE ARES I-X ROCKET

Liftoff weight -- 1.8 million pounds

Height -- 327.24 feet

Maximum altitude -- 28.4 miles

Maximum speed -- Mach 4.76, about 3,100 mph

Maximum acceleration -- 2.48 g

Maximum thrust -- 3.3 million pounds

Powered flight duration -- 124 seconds

Total flight duration -- 369 seconds

Source: NASA