Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama announced they made some discoveries regarding a component (J-2X) of the new crew launch vehicle that NASA is planning to return humans to the moon by 2020. The J-2X powers the upper stage of the Ares 1 rocket.

The engineers are: Jeff Hanley, manager, Constellation Program, NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston - Steve Cook, manager, Ares Projects, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. - Garry Lyles, associate director for technical management, NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center.

They’ve been striving to find out how to reduce vibrations which are very likely to occur in the Ares 1 rocket.  The combustion in the rocket's solid-fuel motor would surely transmit vibrations across both vehicles for a few seconds during the ascent and the astronauts could either be injured or become unable to respond to emergency commands.

Vibrations can affect sight and speech in a very severe way.

Beginning in 2015, the Ares I rocket will carry the Orion crew capsule and up to six astronauts and small loads to the International Space Station, NASA said.

To announce all these and discuss their results, NASA hosted a media teleconference on Tuesday, August 19.

Passive vibration control systems will be placed between the first two stages to cut down on the highest vibrations (above 0.25 Gs) that are a threat to the health and safety of the crew. Steve Cook of NASA Marshall Space Flight Center said that while it doesn’t physically bother you,” at 0.25 G you can read and at 0.5 G you can not.