SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch and Historic Landing Aborted

An anonymous reader writes With only 29 seconds in the countdown, SpaceX had to abort the launch due to a last-minute problem with actuator drift, affecting the motors that control the second stage's rocket thrust. "SpaceX had to scrub Tuesday's attempt to launch a Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station and make a historic rocket landing. The landing experiment would have involved putting the first stage of the two-stage rocket on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean, about 200 miles off the coast of Florida. Such a feat has never been done before. A successful maneuver would have marked a significant step toward making rockets more reusable and driving down the cost of spaceflight."

Comments

Better to cancel rather than fail.

[BarbaraHudson]

I know that they need to get successful launches, but the ability to scrub at the last moment is more important than a "balls-to-the-wall-let's-go-anyway-can-do" attitude. Unlike in Hollywood, there's no room for space cowboys in space.

They'll get it right when it's the right time.

They'll just try tomorrow... or in a few days...

[Anonymous Coward]

But this makes it sound like, "Oh noes, this is technically IMPOSSIBLE LET'S JUST GIVE UP!"

Really it's just rescheduled a few days; the platform landing attempt will still happen; if it doesn't succeed on this go around they will eventually perfect it.

Re:They'll just try tomorrow... or in a few days..

[Rei]

What I find impressive is SpaceX's turnaround time on scrubbed launches. I mean, sometimes they've fixed problems and relaunched within hours - 3 days is rather long by their standards and may have more to do with launch windows than anything else.

Who knows whether they'll nail this particular landing. But I'm pretty confident in the long run that they'll be nailing landing after landing with only the occasional random mishap (which is allowable, since it's unmanned). Now, whether they can collect, transport, refurbish, and relaunch cheaper than just building a new one, especially with their proportionally low production costs, that is yet to be seen. Best of luck to them, though!

Re:29 seconds? 1 minute 21 seconds is official tim

[ihtoit]

basically, it's when a valve that would ordinarily be held closed by a pressure gradient (or a mechanical spring) favouring its swing side is missing that pressure gradient and being pulled open by backpressure or another, external force such as gravity. It's like when an airliner does a water landing. The doors would ordinarily hold the air in because they act like valves - the pressure inside the cabin holds them in place. When the airframe is under water, external pressure exceeds internal pressure, and the door seals will inevitably fail. Lesson for the day: in the event of a water landing, get the fuck out of the aircraft.