May 16 Now Earliest Date For Endeavour Launch

Bad news for anyone camped out in Florida waiting to get a glimpse of the long-expected, oft-delayed launch of the shuttle Endeavour: NASA has pushed the date of the launch back, to no earlier than May 16.

Comments

Re:Excellent time!

[ProdigyPuNk]

...NASA officials said via Twitter. Really? Twitter !?

Not an accident.

[CasualFriday]

I spent the first 20 years of my life on the space coast. I'd just like to say that I don't believe these delays are accidental at all. From the stories I've heard about people who work for NASA, United Space Alliance, EG&G, etc., I don't doubt for a second that the people working at KSC are extending these launches as much as possible. I was raised in Titusville, a town that HEAVILY depends on the space program and the tourism it brings. When a launch happens, the population instantly goes up from 40,000 to probably 400,000+. When a scrub happens, half of those people don't just say "oh well" and go home. They hang out for a long time. I was working at the KSC Visitor's Center when one of the launches got scrubbed in 2009. This British guy asked me how long it would be delayed and I sadly told him almost two weeks. He wasn't even phased, just immediately asked me if I knew a good extended stay hotel in the area. Now, for places like Titusville, those launch-campers pump millions of dollars into the economy every launch day, and having them hang out for two weeks is just icing.

Re:Not an accident.

[quacking duck]

I love the irony in your title--NASA of course really would prefer this launch be "not an accident" :-)

There may be a little bit of grandstanding involved, but NASA has been severely raked over the coals twice for not following safety procedures. One was for a relatively high-profile mission (Challenger, teacher in space), where there was a lot of pressure to launch and managers overrode or ignored engineers' warnings. Columbia, managers ignored warnings of possible damage, even overriding a request to have pictures of the wing taken by military assets in space. With the whole world watching these last missions (and this one in particular, thanks to the commander's wife being the congresswoman recovering from a point-blank shot to the head), they don't need another incident and accusations that they rushed things due to outside pressure.

Re:Not an accident.

[CasualFriday]

I agree that there is extra attention paid to these, but the fact is that the ultra-absolute and ultra-safe atmosphere people would like to believe about KSC simply doesn't exist. My father was part of the crew that re-tiled the exterior of the shuttle for 25 years and he said the corners cut out there were absolutely disgusting. The phrase "good enough for government work" is a joke to a lot of the blue-collar types working on the orbiters. There seems to be a minority of people who really appreciate the fact that there are human lives depending on the work they're doing.

There goes a $100M

[savuporo]

Im just reposting this from elsewhere but .. as Shuttle program costs around $200M a month, this delay just cost NASA around $100M. Other people have built large companies for that money ..

Re:Why in the hell...

[Anonymous Coward]

Florida is one of the states closest to the equator, saving us fuel costs on the way up into orbit by the fact that the earth rotates.

Re:Excellent time!

[Leebert]

Actually, NASA's Twitter feed is one of the timeliest ways to get these updates, short of watching the various news conferences on NASA TV.

If you're trying to see a shuttle launch, the Twitter feed is indispensable. It kept me from getting on a plane at one of STS-133's many delays.