SpaceX Delays Falcon 9 Launch

stoolpigeon writes to tell us that Elon Musk recently announced a delay to the projected summer launch for SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule. "Falcon 9 is the centerpiece of SpaceX's project for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) project. NASA is hoping to be able to draw on new and cheaper commercial rockets to service the International Space Station once the shuttle fleet retires in 2010. If the trial flight of Falcon 9 early next year is a success, payload-carrying COTS missions could follow in quick succession. But the delay is worrying some observers who note that SpaceX's other rocket project, the Falcon 1, has failed during its only two launch attempts. The first Falcon 1 caught fire and crashed, and the second failed to achieve orbit due to problems during stage separation. A third Falcon 1 launch is planned for April."

Comments

Re:And you call that bad?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Two failures and one delay? And one of the failures wasn't that bad? For a brand new company and new rocket tech? Considering how many outright explosions and multiple failures NASA and all others did before they got it right, I'd say they are doing just fine. I bet NASA wishes they had that success rate!

The most recent launch vehicle developed by NASA the space shuttle, which was successful on its first 24 launches. After the first failure, it succeeded on the next hundred launches before the next failure.

Before that, the previous vehicle developed by NASA was the Saturn-V, ten launches, no failures.

Before that, the Saturn 1/1b, nineteen launches, no failures.

Why in the world would NASA "wish they had a success rate" of 0 successes?