“Houston We Have a Podcast” is the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, the home of human spaceflight, stationed in Houston, Texas. We bring space right to you! On this podcast, you’ll learn from some of the brightest minds of America’s space agency as they discuss topics in engineering, science, technology and more. You’ll hear firsthand from astronauts what it’s like to launch atop a rocket, live in space and re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere. And you’ll listen in to the more human side of space as our guests tell stories of behind-the-scenes moments never heard before.

Episode 35 features Jeff Fox, Chief Engineer of the Rapid Prototype Lab, who talks about some of the testing and training for Orion. Fox brings the actual audio from inside the Orion capsule during its first flight so you, the listener, can experience what it would be like to ride inside the spacecraft. This episode was recorded on February 7, 2018.

Transcript

Gary Jordan (Host): Houston, we have a podcast. Welcome to the official podcast of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Episode 35: A Ride in Orion. I’m Gary Jordan, and I’ll be your host today. So in this podcast we bring in the experts — NASA scientists, engineers, astronauts — all to let you know the coolest information about what’s going on right here at NASA. So today we’re talking about NASA’s deep space humans capsule, Orion. Orion will take us outside low-earth orbit, well beyond the International Space Station. To prepare Orion to take us to deep space, we have folks here at the Johnson Space Center working on development and testing of every stage of flight, one of whom is Jeff Fox, chief engineer of the Rapid Prototype Lab at the Johnson Space Center, here to tell us all about Orion and how the Rapid Prototype Lab plays a role in its success. We talked about some of the testing that’s been happening for Orion, and Jeff brings us the actual audio from those tests to experience during this episode. It really felt like we were taking a ride on Orion. So with no further delay, let’s go light speed and jump right ahead to our talk with Jeff Fox. Enjoy.

[ Music ]

Host: Thanks a lot for coming today to talk about kind of Orion. And you are the chief engineer of the Rapid Prototype Lab; is that right?

Jeff Fox: That’s correct. And thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here and talk about — talk to you today.

Host: Fantastic. All right. Well, we’re going to kind of get into the Rapid Prototype Lab. And I’m really excited for this episode because the whole idea of that lab is you can kind of sit down and sort of experience some of these test flights that we’ve done. And you have audio recordings of that that you brought in. And we’ll kind of go through those and you, the listener can actually sit back and kind of — kind of experience what it’s like inside these test runs inside of Orion. And Jeff’s going to kind of guide us through that experience [Laughs].

Jeff Fox: Yes. It’s very exciting. We’re going to take you through a launch, an entry, and a pad abort like when you’re trying to get away from the rocket if it’s not performing well on a launch and your little escape rocket on top. I think you’ll really find it interesting.

Host: Yeah, this is really going to be cool. So let’s kind of set the scene a little bit. We’ve done a couple episodes on Orion itself, but if we can just start with the basics of what is this vehicle that we’re going to be on? Because all of these tests are different parts of Orion, but this vehicle Orion, what is it?

Jeff Fox: Well, obviously it’s a capsule. People have seen it. You know, it has a similar shape to Apollo, only it has four people in it. It’s wider at the bottom. So whereas Apollo was on the order of 3.9 meters, Orion is 5 meters. So it’s quite a bit bigger in the interior. It also has a heat shield that’s unique. And it’s the largest one that we’ve tested to date. So that’s a real unique factor. And it has a lot of newer electronics in it. And you don’t have as many physical switches. Everything is done under a glass and computer displays, much like everybody’s used to seeing on their laptop and video games. But so all those technologies and all that’s been learned over the many years since Apollo [inaudible] all try to take advantage of the ones that help us and use the ones that are reliable and cost-effective and that will get the job done.

Host: Exactly. Okay, cool. So you got this capsule. And this capsule is going to bring us further than we’ve gone before, right? And then we’re going to be focusing NASA — the objective is to go and explore the solar system and sort of establish this — this space in the low-earth orbit for commercial industries to come and take over; is that right?

Jeff Fox: The goal is to have the commercial crew vehicles, you know, take up the space in low-earth orbit where Shuttle and Station have been the ones primarily and Soyuz and other visiting vehicles, but we’re trying to move beyond that. So it takes a bigger rocket, it takes different — it’s different challenges to do that. Because whether we go to the moon, go to a gateway that’s somewhere between the moon and the Earth, go to Mars, you’re going to have to have a vehicle that can get you out of earth orbit. You’re going to have to have a vehicle, Orion the capsule, that can get you safely back into the atmosphere and back to Earth after these missions. These missions can be longer. They can be days or weeks, it could be months or years. Now, we don’t want anybody to think that you’re going it live in that little, tiny capsule for years and years — well, obviously you’re not. For the upcoming missions it’s maybe a week or two. You know, you’re dealing with days or weeks. That may be okay. But if you’re going to Mars or you’re going somewhere for a long time, you’re going to have to dock to a larger habitable volume.

You know, something — a bigger canister, if you will, where you can live and do other things. And then you’ll transition back into Orion as your vehicle to get you back to Earth when the time is right.

Host: Exactly. And we’re taking these steps to get to that point, just one step at a time, kind of developing this vehicle. We’re building right now the vehicle for EM-1, I believe. But we’ve actually done a test in the past, EFT-1, right? That was our first test flight of Orion.

Jeff Fox: That’s correct. EFT-1 stands for Exploration Flight Test 1. It was actually launched on a different booster than we’re going to use for our NASA missions. It was on a Delta IV heavy. But that rocket got us to the speed and altitude conditions around the Earth that we needed because what we really wanted to do was test the heat shield, structure, recovery systems, those types of things. You know? And we did that. The vehicle actually went up to 20,000 miles an hour, which is the faster any vehicle — manned-type vehicle — has been since Apollo. And we’re actually going to have to go faster than that to escape Earth orbit when we go to the moon.

Host: That’s right. Because the Delta IV brought us not necessarily around the moon, but brought us kind of in the lunar vicinity and then coming back super fast, right?

Jeff Fox: It was a highly elliptical orbit. So it was around the Earth but way away from the Earth.

Host: Yes.

Jeff Fox: A very high apogee.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: So, you know, you were coming in, accelerating the Earth, and building up those tremendous speeds so you can test the heat shield and structure.

Host: Yeah. And that was the mission profile. You got the heat shield. You had, you know, these incredible speeds to get to the temperatures in order to test the heat shield. But then there was the whole sequence of deploying parachutes, too, right?

Jeff Fox: That’s right. You know, you’re only as good as all the components that work together. And if you can’t get the chutes out, it’s not going to be a good mission.

Host: Exactly. And you actually got to see that firsthand, didn’t you?

Jeff Fox: Yeah, I was very fortunate. We actually — what’s really unique is you want to be close as you can to this vehicle anytime we’re doing tests like this, whether it’s parachutes out in the desert in Yuma, Arizona or the spacecraft coming back from space with the EFT-1. And nominally, the error predictions of all the debris that come off when these parachute come out are very large. And so you can’t approach in a helicopter or thing too close because it’s dangerous — something could hit the rotor, hit the helicopter. But you want to get close because you want to get good stills and video because it’s good for engineering and documentation and great for public affairs to share the imagery. But you have to have a way to do that. So a system was developed that allowed us to look at the error predictions of these things coming off. And I was fortunate enough to be deployed aboard ship out at sea for EFT-1, and we flew in the Navy Seahawk out at altitude about 6,000 feet out over the Pacific Ocean. And we were flying with the Navy and using their cameras to image the vehicle that was coming back in from space.

I think we picked it up somewhere around 70,000 feet it. It looked like a star on infrared, then we switched it to the live video. We kept the video trained on it. We were able to make all the timing calls for our photographs and videographers onboard the helicopter and follow the vehicle basically down to splashdown. So it was an honor, very exciting time.

Host: That’s incredible. So were you piloting, or were you taking the images, or monitoring the instruments?

Jeff Fox: Well, it’s a whole team. The Navy was doing the piloting. And then we had a mostly NASA — combined NASA contractor team in the back of the aircraft either taking pictures, keeping track of the timeline and letting people know what’s happening, or like myself, operating a tool we called the debris tool. So we make sure we’re staying in the places that are safe to fly in — there’s no hazardous debris in those areas.

Host: Yeah. And then kind of tracking it. Did you actually see it come down?

Jeff Fox: I was. Usually you’re real focused. This is a great question. You’re so intent you don’t want to screw up, right? Everybody’s looking at you, you put all this into it, you don’t want to miss the money shot. Right? So you’re looking at your screen, but you realize history’s going on. I did get a quick peek out the right-side window and I could see the vehicle coming down. And I could see it splashdown. But your main thing is the safety of the helicopter and everybody on board and allow us to collect that imagery so the engineers and others can use it later.

Host: Awesome. All right. So that was our first step on this future vehicle that’s going to take us deeper into space. But really, your job title is the chief engineer of the Rapid Prototype Lab, right? So what’s that, what’s the Rapid Prototype Lab?

Jeff Fox: So it’s kind of a generic-sounding name. It’s a name that’s stuck. The lab’s actually been around for over ten years. It belongs to the crew office, CB, at NASA. The whole purpose of it is you have a lot of knowledge with test pilots and all the seasoned crew that have been aboard all these spacecrafts, and they have a lot of knowledge about how to operate a vehicle. And that knowledge can be — we want to leverage it. And what our lab does is we are actually in the critical path of building the displays that will be used to control the Orion vehicle in all flight phases — the launch phases, the orbit phases, the entry phases. So there’s roughly 70 of these displays — software displays that the crew will use to interact with. Well, the crew is very involved in design of what the content of those displays are. And so our lab is charged with building these prototypes and these displays, describing how they work, bringing the crew into simulators that we’ve built to test out these displays, find if there’s issues with them that we need to correct.

And this is not something new. We’re doing it for Orion, but we’ve also did it in Shuttle and for other vehicles, like the X-38 that we’ve tested in the past. So it’s really a real resource, you know, to ensure we’ve got a spacecraft that the crew can interface with. Because that’s your primary control, is through those displays.

Host: And that’s it, is to — I guess, rapid prototype means you kind of use the resources you have to kinds of put this together. “All right, what can we create to simulate this pilot, this experience, and this cockpit,” I guess?

Jeff Fox: Yes.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: And I’m saying, again, getting back to the name Rapid Prototyping Lab, it’s really of the crew interfaces.

Host: I see.

Jeff Fox: So that’s kind of a generic name, but that’s what we’re really doing. In this case the displays. So that’s really your whole interface to this vehicle. You know, without that, you know, you’re kind of along for the ride. But you may need manual intervention. You want to follow what the automation’s doing at times. There’s a whole host of reasons that you want to see data and know what’s going on with your vehicle. And you may go on missions that are a long time delay before somebody can talk to you. Well, I may have to go in there and do things and I can’t wait for the ground. So we need to try to think of those things and we work with teams of the crew and human engineering, and flight operations, mission control, flight controllers. So together we all come up with these concepts and test them with the crew and, you know, take advantage of all that experience — decades, centuries of experience when you add it all up.

Host: There you go. Yeah, you’re right, this is a place where all of this knowledge comes together to create this beautiful thing that eventually is going to go in a real vehicle and the procedures are going to be implemented in real space flight.

Jeff Fox: That’s the most exciting part for us, knowing that for — you know, we build these vehicles maybe what, once every 30 years? You know, this has been my short experience. And they can last that long, you know, or longer and just be able to be part of even a couple displays or actually [inaudible] the crew is using and you test it is really exciting.

Host: Oh, yeah. And so this is the reason that I really wanted you to come in, is you gave us a tour of this Rapid Prototype Lab and we actually got to sit back and you played this experience of Exploration Flight Test 1, of EFT-1. And it truly felt like I was there. I felt like I was inside. So what are you using this test for, this footage, the lab specifically for EFT-1?

Jeff Fox: A couple things. One, it certainly is one of the most popular tours around [Laughs]. We get a lot of requests. I think we’ve had he have been from the center director to the head of — the administrator of NASA on down.

Host: Oh, wow.

Jeff Fox: To different authors, and dignitaries, and all kinds of personnel. Because it’s fun.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: But it’s not just a simulation. The difference with this is I’d say it’s more like a recreation. Because we’ve actually taken the real audio and video off of the EFT-1 test flight like you talked about.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: And the way we did that was although there was no crew on it for that first launch, we gathered all the data we mentioned about, we came back 20 miles an hour, tested the heat shield. But there was a microphone inside of the crew cabin. And it’s located near where the crew’s head is. So we had the idea if we got this audio, we could certainly replicate the audio during the different mission phases — the launch, the entry, those kind of things.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: And then we said well, you know what? Not only do we have the audio, we’ve got the video because there’s different cameras pointed out the different windows. And okay, well, I bet we can sync up the audio and the video together.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: And we had an idea we were going to build a simulator that you can lay on your back. And in fact, the particular simulator we’re repurposing was flown on the zero-gravity plane that does a big parabolic arc in the sky. As we were testing things early on in the program, we repurposed that and pumped the audio and the video into that. You lay out your back, you look out the windows. We actually are proud of the fact that we did it very cost-effectively, too, because we repurposed older seats that Orion wasn’t using. We went to Home Depot and bought a screen and created a screen over the windows that you lay down and look out — the regular Orion windows which are in our mock-up.

Host: Cool.

Jeff Fox: We used a projector that was not being used for anything else. And, you know, now we have a way to recreate the launch, the landing, and the pad abort, which we’ll probably talk about in a little bit.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: Not only can we recreate it and it’s the fun part, but we’ve actually used that audio/video and tied it in with data from the real mission and put the crew in there and let them actually practice manually deploying parachutes, for example, or working malfunctions.

Host: Oh, yeah.

Jeff Fox: And not only that, that simulator’s been tied to a very what we call a mini-mission control room with flight controllers, a handful of them where we can flow that same simulation data, talk on the different intercom system, and it’s just like a real flight — a simulation where you have the mission control involved with the crew, using this audio, video, and different data. And you get a feel for what it’s like to really be on the vehicle. We can really learn how good are these displays working and what works well. Because it’s a brand new system. We need to test these things.

Host: All right. So I mean, the fact that you had audio and video on EFT-1, were you advocating for that or was that part of the mission design?

Jeff Fox: Part of the mission design.

Host: I see.

Jeff Fox: We just said, “Hey, it’s there, let’s see what we can do with it.”

Host: Yes.

Jeff Fox: Again, hence the name Rapid Prototyping Lab, RPL, it doesn’t always cost a lot to try these different concepts. So we’re fortunate that we were able to prototype these things. And we need to do things. You they, sometimes it doesn’t have to be a perfect production model to test things and find out if you’re on the right path.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: So we could build something like this recreation of EFT-1.

Host: Fantastic. Well, I’m ready to ride on it. You want to take us through?

Jeff Fox: I’m ready. I never get tired of it. I’ve done it over 100 times and never, never tire of it.

Host: Oh, man. I’m very excited. Okay, all right. So the first one, I think, why don’t we start with launch? Because I feel like that’s the first thing you think about — the first part of EFT-1. So I wanted to take us through the first three minutes. And there’s a good reason for that. What’s happening on the first three minutes of launch?

Jeff Fox: Well, of course, you’re lighting the engines for the first time. You’re close to the ground. You know, that’s what — if you were standing in the audience, you’d see the big flame. And a number of seconds later, you hear the audio, the sound coming in. Well, interesting thing from the perspective of the crew, you’re getting the microphone on board. So it’s pretty loud. You’re going to really hear that when you first launch. And the other thing about that is the sound is right there, it’s all going into the ground, it’s reflecting back up onto you and the structure. And so it’s pretty rowdy for those first several seconds. And then as you move away from the ground and that structure, it quiets down a little bit because you’re not getting the sound of the rocket and the reflected sound and all that.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: And as you’re moving up through the atmosphere, again, it quiets down a little bit more. But then you start to pick up more speed. And as some of you even remember back in Shuttle, you remember those calls like max Q, and things like that, maximum dynamic pressure, fancy words for the vehicle’s moving very quickly through dense air and the aeroforces on the vehicle, you can transmit some more sound on the vehicle, and you can kind of hear the sound rise a little bit as you’re going in those regimes. And then as you go faster but you get through much thinner air, the sound will taper off and then eventually it will be fairly quiet as you’re ascending through the atmosphere.

Host: Exactly. And then eventually it’s going to get to a point where you’re not going to really hear anything until things start clicking and deploying and stuff, right?

Jeff Fox: It’s very quiet.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: It’s much quieter. I mean, you’re going to notice something’s going on. Obviously you’re going to feel a rumble. That’s the other nice thing about our simulators, we actually play back some vibration, you know, from those recorded microphones into the seat. So not only are you looking at the audio and video, you’re feeling the seat move.

Host: Yes.

Jeff Fox: So you really feel like it’s a, I guess, 3D experience, if you will [Laughs]. So you know, you got the motion typical, like, home theatre-type of seat shakers.

Host: All right. All right. Well, if you have a home theatre seat shaker, this is the time to plug it in for this podcast. Because we’re going to take you through the first three minutes of launch. And like you said, it’s going to sort of — it will be loud at first, and then it will sort of quiet down after you get to maximum dynamic pressure. And then it starts getting louder again, and then as you kind of escape the atmosphere, the molecules, you’re not pushing up against anything and it gets quieter and quieter and quieter until nothing.

Jeff Fox: That’s right.

Host: Awesome. All right, here we go. Take us through the ride.

[ Rockets firing ]

Okay, awesome. That was pretty cool. All right. So that was the first part. And so that’s the launch. Then through the mission profile it goes — what, it goes around the Earth, and then that’s when it does the large apogee? Is that kind of what happens on EFT-1?

Jeff Fox: Yeah. Well, the bottom line is it’s a couple orbit —

Host: Couple orbit.

Jeff Fox: — mission, but you’re getting — your whole objective is to get a very high apogee and create the entry speeds that are needed to test the heat shield properly.

Host: Yes.

Jeff Fox: You know, it’s one thing to test it in low-earth orbit at 17,500 miles an hour, but you have to do — generate a different type of trajectory and performance profile in order to generate a 20,000-mile-an-hour entry to create the heat, the 4,000-degree roughly heating that you’re going to get on the heat shield to find out if that and the structure will survive all that. So.

Host: Exactly, exactly. And, you know, 2,500 miles an hour is not just small, like, boost, you know? That’s significant. So —

Jeff Fox: 20,000 miles an hour.

Host: Right. I mean, 2,500 extra miles an hour.

Jeff Fox: Oh, 2,500 extra miles an hour? That’s correct. That’s exactly right.

Host: Yeah. So generating that is no small feat. So that’s where this next part comes in. And that’s the entry sequence, right?

Jeff Fox: Right.

Host: So we’ve kind of split this up into a couple different segments. First is you’re starting to enter the atmosphere and there’s — that’s when the heat is starting to build up and you’re getting this plasma; what’s happening there?

Jeff Fox: Well, you’re basically now, you know, if you think about the ascent, you were speeding through the atmosphere is getting quieter. Now you’re at your maximum speed of 20,000 miles an hour.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: As you come into what we call entry interface at probably 400,000 feet, 80 miles up roughly, you start running into enough air fast enough that you’re creating this heat and this plasma around the vehicle, around the heat shield and you’re generating these maximum temperatures in the 4,000-degree range in order to test your heat shield. And as you’re riding in there, you can actually see the plasma going by the window; you hear the jets fire; you see the plasma interrupted and moving outside the window.

Host: Whoa.

Jeff Fox: It’s quite a sight. So you’re hearing it, you’re seeing it. You know, you’re feeling the jet fires of the little attitude control jets to either stabilize you or change your attitude. So it’s quite a ride.

Host: All right. Okay. So I think that video has to be available somewhere, like, on YouTube or NASA.gov or something like that.

Jeff Fox: I know there are vehicles — there are videos I’ve seen post the flight, which was back in December of ’14.

Host: Yes.

Jeff Fox: Some of them, I think they are the same views, but they may be either set to NASA narration or music.

Host: Oh, okay.

Jeff Fox: What we did is we stripped all that out because we just wanted it like it would have been had the crew been in it.

Host: Yes.

Jeff Fox: It was a crew experience. So it’s just audio from the perspective of the crew inside the cabin and video out the window.

Host: Cool. All right. So let’s go into that. Let’s play — it’s about 30 — maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute. You’re going to hear the plasma start to build. And it’s kind of like a white noise almost kind of noise?

Jeff Fox: Yeah.

Host: And then you’ll hear these thumps. And that’s the jet firings as it’s changing attitude.

Jeff Fox: Right, exactly.

[ Rockets firing ]

Host: All right. Awesome. All right. So the next part is there’s this kind of a gap up until the next loud sound you hear is the chute, when the chute start coming out, right?

Jeff Fox: Yeah. Actually, the first thing happens, there’s a cover protecting all that, the chute compartment on the top.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: You wouldn’t want that just exposed to anything before you’re ready for it to come out. So the first thing that’s going to happen is that cover, the fore bay, the FBC will jettison. You’ll here a pyrotechnics fires and you’ll hear that thing come off. You’ll see it actually go by out the window. So that’s kind of interesting to see it fly off. And that’s followed very quickly by the drove chute. There’s two drove chute that are about 23 feet in diameter. And what you’re doing there is you’re trying to put those out to slow and ensure the vehicle’s in a stable configuration because you don’t want to put out your next set of parachutes until you’ve done that. And so, you know, certain amount of time later, your main parachutes will come out. There’s three of those. Each one of those is about 115-foot in diameter. Again, you’ll hear another loud pyrotechnics sound because you have mortars that are firing that are deploying these parachute. The good thing about these parachute is you got three. So any two of them you can have a safe landing. That’s a good thing. You got some redundancy.

Host: All right, that’s awesome. Okay. So let’s play that, let’s play the chute deployment sequence. It’s about 30-ish seconds long, so let’s go through there.

[ Orion sounds ]

Okay, awesome. So those main chute are deploying. Now you’re coasting on those for a couple minutes, right?

Jeff Fox: Yeah, that’s right.

Host: And then so now you’re going down and you’re splashing. And the EFT-1 happened in the — it splashed down in the Pacific Ocean?

Jeff Fox: That’s correct.

Host: Okay. So then now this is the last part we’re going to play, is the actual splashdown. So I think you start off by hearing a couple thumps, right? And those are the jets are firing for orientation?

Jeff Fox: Yeah, there’s some jets firing. In that particular mission we were trying to keep the — basically the spinal axis of the astronaut, if you will, from head to toe pointing in the direction that we’re moving so that when you splashdown, the loads that you take, the G forces that you take, kinds of spread them out nice and evenly across your body.

Host: Ah.

Jeff Fox: So you’re kind of hearing maybe [inaudible] these jets fire to try to hold that position. And then you’ll hear the splashdown. And it’s really great in the video, unfortunately folks can’t see it, but you see the water come up over the windows.

Host: Oh, cool.

Jeff Fox: And then you sit there for a few more seconds and then you hear another pyrotechnic booming sound. And that’s the risers that are connected to the parachutes cutting them away. Because you want to get yourself away from those.

Host: That’s right. Yeah. You don’t want them to be pulling you all over the place.

Jeff Fox: That’s right.

Host: Okay, cool. So that’s only a couple seconds here. So we’ll go through the jets firing and the splashdown all the way to cutting those risers.

[ Orion sounds ]

All right, very cool. So there it is. There’s your ride on Orion. It’s launching and then landing in that whole sequence there. So the last part that I really wanted to experience was the pad abort test that we did I think it was back in 2010? And that was Pad Abort 1. It’s very quick, isn’t it?

Jeff Fox: Yeah, it’s real quick. Actually, that was done down out at White Sands, New Mexico, you know, just sitting on a capsule with a booster — the abort rocket’s on top of it emulating an escape from the launch pad. You know, if you were sitting out there and this crew was on this big, massive rocket and there wasn’t time to jump out and run down a slide wire and slide to safety, you might have to light that little rocket off. And it would separate at the bottom of the capsule and pull the capsule away. So that was — the way we emulated that out at White Sands is we put, again, that capsule on a concrete pad, had the escape rocket on top, and then fired that rocket to test it.

Host: That’s right. And this — the whole idea of a pad abort is this thing is supposed to be escaping from a failed vehicle. So it’s — everything happens so fast. And you’re probably feeling a lot of G’s, right?

Jeff Fox: That’s correct. Whether you’re escaping on the launch pad or you’re escaping when you’re at altitude, that little rocket has a big task. It has to accelerate your 20,000-pound roughly capsule away from a giant, most powerful rocket ever built that’s behind you that may be chasing you.

Host: [Laughs] Yeah.

Jeff Fox: And you may be pushing through a thick part of the atmosphere. So not only are you trying to push through the atmosphere, you’re trying to get out of the way of maybe a rocket that’s coming apart at the booster below you. So I’ve got to have a really high-accelerating little escape rocket to get me out of harm’s way. So when this motor fires, it’s only for a few seconds and those G’s build up very quickly. But they spike real quickly and come down real quickly because, you know, if you were on those too long, you can injure yourself.

Host: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, feeling that on your — it’s kind of spread out throughout your whole body, I can’t even imagine what that feels like.

Jeff Fox: That’s interesting you say that. I kind of segue into my dad, Mike Fox actually back in the mid ’60s he was the lead subject in the centrifuge. And think of a centrifuge as something that swings around and in this case it was him and his other Navy test subjects back in the mid ’60s. And they were riding several of the Apollo abort profiles. And those were in the 12- to 16-G range. In fact, my dad rode one up. He still holds a record at JSC at 16 G’s.

Host: Whoa.

Jeff Fox: And if you want to get an idea of what that’s like, you could go out to your garage and jack your car up and get in the center of it and let it down on your chest. If you’re 200 pounds and you multiply that by 16, that’s 3,200 pounds, so —

Host: Whoa.

Jeff Fox: — that’s what it’s like. Now, obviously no body can take that body — not somebody but your physical body can take that —

Host: Right.

Jeff Fox: — for very long. So the G comes on very quick. We’re talking fractions of a second or maybe a second. But it’s short but it’s intense. And you can cause bodily injury. In fact, interesting story, my dad was doing a high-G run and the simulator, that part went well, but the simulator had to be slowed down or abrupt slowdown. What that did is if you think about swinging around like on an amusement ride, your inner ear and how the fluid in your inner ear can get disturbed if you stop abruptly or move your head and you feel upset something or something?

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: Well, when they stopped the centrifuge and he got out, he didn’t feel real well. And eventually, you know, they observed him, they said, “Well, you can go home.” He had a little hazardous duty badge on for when you ride in the centrifuge because it obviously can be hazardous.

Host: Oh, okay.

Jeff Fox: And he decided, “Well, you know, they said you could go home.” And so he got in his car and drove home. And, you know, a few minutes into the drive he’s getting pulled over. He sees police behind him. And he’s like, “Well, geez, I don’t know what’s wrong. I haven’t done anything.” So he pulled over. And the officer asked him to step out and say, “Did you know you were weaving all over the road?” “Well, no, sir. I’m fine.” You know? Of course he’s thinking he’s fine.

Host: Right.

Jeff Fox: And the officer said, “We want you to turn around and put your hands on the roof.” And so he went to turn around and put his hands on his roof and he fell backwards. His whole inner ear was — had everything transposed 180 out to what he thought he was — the motion he was performing was, like, the opposite. And so then, you know, police immediately thought, “Well, you must be drunk. You have to be drunk.” And, of course, he’s trying to show him his badge and say no, no, I’m part of the NASA crew. I was doing this. And they weren’t going to have anything of it. So they took him to the Baytown jail probably about a half an hour from the Johnson Space Center here. And, of course, it was in the evening. And he’s trying to get him to understand what’s going on. And so some time later in the evening, one of the desk sergeants or somebody came over and said, “I want to take another look at this.” And so he asked him some more questions. He looked at the badge and he’s like, “Maybe we’ve made a terrible mistake. Maybe you’re telling us the truth.”

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: Bottom line is they wind up saying, “Yes, we checked it out. You’re good.” But the funny thing was is they actually took him out to his car, which was still on the side of the road and let him get in it to go home. And he still has this condition that maybe he’s driving like a drunk even though it’s not his fault.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: And so he gets in the car, somehow gets home about 3:30 in the morning. Of course, mom is there. You know, we’re real young at the time, so we don’t remember — maybe six, seven years old. She says, “Where are you? Have you been out? Have you been out with the guys? What’s been going on here?” And he says, “No, I was doing this high-G centrifuge run and we had an issue. And this and that and the police, and here I am.” And so he was changing clothes, getting ready to go to bed and went to sit down on the bed and fell down — fell backwards. And so immediately she’s thinking, “No, you must have been out. This was some party or something.” But he eventually talked to her and explained it. And everything worked out.

Host: And then she took him right back to jail, huh?

Jeff Fox: Oh, yeah, right [Laughs]. Well, thank goodness he made it back because we did see him again.

Host: Thankfully, absolutely. Wow. That’s amazing how long that that affected him, how long that his equilibrium was so out of whack. That’s all the way through the middle of the night.

Jeff Fox: You kind of — where you upset your gyros, you know, you — literally those little hair follicles and that fluid in your inner ear can really be disturbed. And they don’t necessarily — you don’t just necessarily recover from that immediately [inaudible].

Host: Yeah. So this pad abort test, this is going to — you know, you’re going to feel the G’s, but it’s going to do it in a way where the human body isn’t going to be so out of whack, right?

Jeff Fox: No, you’re not going to stop abruptly like in the centrifuge and that motion. You’re getting the G’s from chest to back, you’re laying down, looking straight up. They’re onset very quickly. You know, the whole thrust of the motor is, you know, three to four seconds.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: And you’re not at that max G for more than fractions of a second in that peak. It does peak there and it is uncomfortable. And it does save your life. So that’s the purpose of it. You know, if they can bring you back and you have a little bruising, well, then we did our job.

Host: Yes, yes, exactly. And just another point is you said you’re feeling this on your chest and it’s being kind of spread evenly throughout your body, but on the motion directly kind of on your chest versus, you know, straight up your spine couldn’t handle that, right? If you were taking those loads.

Jeff Fox: I mean, you’d have a whole other bigger problem.

Host: Oh, yeah.

Jeff Fox: If it was coming from toward your head to your toe or your toes to your head, you would have a lot of other complications. And so that’s not a good orientation to put the body in.

Host: Definitely not. And that’s why they’re oriented this way during launch. So for Pad Abort 1 we’re going to take you to that simulation, that audio right now. It’s very loud up front, right? So I would just be prepared for that, it’s going to be real sudden. But then it’s going to be real loud. And then about 30 seconds in, that’s where everything happens and it has to happen super quickly, right?

Jeff Fox: Yes. So if you think about it, think of two ways of doing an abort. A pad abort means you’re sitting on the pad or you’re very close to the ground, right? So that’s one way. Another way is you’ve got altitude, you’re already in the boost phase of the main booster. Maybe you’re at 10,000 feet, maybe you’re at 100,000 feet. So you have some altitude to work, to deploy parachute and that type of thing. Well, in this particular one you’re going to experience, this pad abort, you’re sitting on the ground, remember, out at White Sands, New Mexico. The capsule’s on the ground, the escape rocket was on top. So you only have a few thousand feet to play with after the thrust of that abort motor is finished. So as soon as that loud noise is over and tails off, you hear another booming noise and that’s the jettison motor to pull the cover off of the vehicle. Because you have a cover over it to protect it from all the smoke and fire of the main motor, to get you to safety.

Host: That’s right, because it’s right above you.

Jeff Fox: It’s right above you. But you can’t get your parachute out unless you get this cover off.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: So the cover comes off, but because you don’t have a lot of altitude, the next thing right away happens is the forward bay cover that we talked about before for the entry that covers the parachute compartment, it comes off followed right away by the drove chutes, followed right away by the main chutes. You don’t have time — you don’t have time to watch everything perfectly come out and be stable. You just have to get under the parachutes.

Host: That’s right. So everything’s happening super fast. So, again, it’s really loud up front. So just be prepared for that. And then 30 second in about, that’s where everything’s going to deploy.

[ Rocket sounds ]

All right, cool. So that’s — that’s pretty much, like, some of the coolest parts about the Rapid Prototype Lab, right, is you got these simulators. And we just took you through launch, entry, and Pad Abort 1. And you can actually sit in the Rapid Prototype Lab and feel all of this kind of real time. You’re not just doing the audio, but you’re talking about the vibrations, the visuals, all these things, these elements so that the crew can actually learn what they’re like.

Jeff Fox: That’s right. It’s a good familiarization tool. If you haven’t done it, you can get in there and it will kind of give you an idea. I think the thing that struck us was how many of those little attitude control jets fire and how much there is really happening there.

Host: Yeah.

Jeff Fox: That’s not something you sit around and just think about. You think of a launch, it’s a dull roar and it goes down. And you don’t hear a lot of those things. But on the entry it’s a whole different things, and you’re hearing the pyrotechnics fire and seeing the parachute come out through the window. And totally different experience. We use that tool along with other simulators to help the crew get familiar with these flight phases or learn how to interface with the vehicle, the displays that we’re building. So it’s a great tool.

Host: Exactly. I’m imagining, like, an emergency situation, too. Because if you’re taking someone through the Rapid Prototype Lab and you know to listen for the thump, thump, thump, thump, you know, if something wasn’t going right, you’ve actually lived it, you’ve experienced it. So you can actually report something, “Hey, maybe something’s not going the way that I want or maybe we need to, you know, think about this emergency response scenario because this — I’m not hearing or experiencing it the way that I experienced it in the Rapid Prototype Lab.”

Jeff Fox: That’s exactly right.

Host: That’s awesome. And I’m sure a lot of these lessons learned are going to be taken on future missions, too. So where’s Orion going next?

Jeff Fox: So the next flight is an unmanned flight, EM-1 here in a few years here. Now we’ve got missions that are being defined, you know, in the vicinity of the moon or around the moon. So that’s the next stop, you know, followed it a few years later by a crew potentially doing that same type of flight profile. And I think as time goes on we’re going to get more clarification with our schedule and budgets and direction from the president and Congress. So, you know, where our next, you know, stops will be. And so we’re excited for that. We’re building the capability right now. We’ll be ready to execute those missions.

Host: That’s right. It’s just amazing talking to you and then all of these other Orion experts, you kind of get the whole picture of everything that’s going into this, right? There’s so many different elements and so many different people working on all of these different things that help to make this mission successful. So it’s kind of exciting that when you see this — this thing launch, you know, it just looks like a launch to you. But then you think about all the work and all the people that worked so hardly and diligently to make this moment possible. It’s kind of — it’s kind of inspiring to see that thing on the launch pad — or it will be when it finally does. I’m very excited for it. Well, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and taking us through the super cool audio experience. I really truly felt like I was on Orion. That’s the whole purpose — that’s really why I wanted to bring you in, is just I felt it, man. It’s a different experience and you’re right, it kind of helps with the training and understanding what this vehicle is all about and learning, bringing all these teams together so you can make it the best possible thing. So I appreciate you coming on today.

Jeff Fox: Thank you for having me.

[ Music ]

Host: Hey, thanks for sticking around. So today we talked with Jeff Fox. And he took us through a ride on Orion. And it really felt like it, right? I hope you actually turned up the podcast volume whenever you were listening that stuff because especially if you have, like, a theatre or something, you can really feel it. We were in the studio editing this and it really felt like we were on that launch. Everything was vibrating. It was kind of awesome. So I hope you did that. If not, you can go back and listen to it. But if you want to see more on Orion, you can go to our website, NASA.gov/Orion. Actually, the Ascent Abort-2 capsule just arrived at the Johnson Space Center not too long ago and is being outfitted to start the next abort test mission. So it’s kind of cool. Actually, if you go back to I think it’s episode I want to say 25, the episode title is A Rocket on a Rocket, you can learn a little bit more about abort systems, launch abort systems. And we’re going to be doing AA2 coming up here soon. Other than that, on NASA’s website and anything Orion you can find on social media.

You can go to the Orion pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. On Facebook, it’s NASAOrion. Twitter it’s @NASA_Orion. And then on Instagram it’s @ExploreNASA actually is one of the channels that we have that has a little bit of Orion, a little bit of SLS. So you can see a lot of cool stuff there. You can use the #AskNASA on your favorite platform to submit ideas for the podcast. Maybe we’ll answer it on one of the episodes or maybe we’ll dedicate an entire episode to it. So this podcast was recorded on February 7th, 2018. Thanks to Alex Perryman, Greg Wiseman, Tommy Gerczak, Rachel Craft, Laura Rochon, Brandi Dean, Kelly Humphries, and Ryan Stewart. and I wanted to give my condolences to Jeff Fox. He was talking about his father, Mike Fox, during this podcast and just wanted to say rest in peace. He passed away very recently. And I wanted to thank Jeff again for coming on the show today. We’ll be back next week.