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SpaceX Rocket Launch Postponed Again (www.cbc.ca)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the safe-than-sorry dept.

ClickOnThis writes with a CBC report that SpaceX has "called off a planned launch of a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a communications satellite less than two minutes before blastoff from Florida on Thursday, citing a technical problem. It marked the second straight day that Elon Musk's privately owned Space Exploration Technologies had postponed the launch."

6 of 30 comments (clear)

  1. A link with some actual information by Harlequin80 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    http://spaceflightnow.com/2016...

    The Falcon 9 rocket’s countdown proceeded normally Thursday until a member of the SpaceX launch team called a hold at approximately T-minus 1 minute, 41 seconds, before the scheduled launch time of 6:47 p.m. EST (2347 GMT).

    The cause of the last-minute abort was an issue with loading cryogenic liquid oxygen into the rocket, according to a SpaceX official on the official launch webcast. Both stages of the Falcon 9 burn a mixture of RP-1 kerosene fuel and liquid oxygen.

    1. Re:A link with some actual information by Irate+Engineer · · Score: 5, Informative

      The Falcon 9 v1.2 uses deep chilled liquid oxygen in order to increase the propellant density, so more can get loaded on, which (according to Tsiolkovsky's Rocket Equation) increases the velocity to which it can accelerate a given payload mass (or conversely, how much mass you can accelerate to a given velocity). This system has been giving SpaceX some teething troubles.

      SES-9 is going to a very high Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit (GTO) to allow the satellite to get to its station sooner, as this mission has been delayed for a while. SpaceX is working really hard to get this satellite out as high as they can for the customer. They are still going to attempt to recover the first stage on a barge, but concede that they are going to be at the absolute limits of their fuel for this attempt, so it is very possible that they'll run out of fuel before touchdown. They are really pushing the envelope of the Falcon 9 v1.2 with this launch.

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    2. Re:A link with some actual information by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 4, Informative

      As explained in your linked article, the latest version of Falcon 9 uses super-cold liquid oxygen, as it is denser. This means that they need to pump it in just before launch, so it doesn't have time to warm up. Previously the LO2 would have been loaded a few hours before launch, and there would have been plenty of time to deal with any loading issues, so this bit of cleverness has cost them a scrubbed launch. Hopefully it is just teething troubles and they'll be able to make the LO2 loading process reliable soon.

      --
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    3. Re:A link with some actual information by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think it is indeed just teething troubles as you say. The Russians have been using supercooled LOX for a long time and have managed to perfect it, so that is an existence proof that there is no fundamental obstacle in the way.

  2. Re:Good idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    "than", not "then"

    "Postpone, then go boom" would be a bad thing

  3. Re: Big Deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wow. Pretty much ever syllable in your post is wrong.

    The only reason there were O rings in the boosters at all is because of political interference in the design. In order to buy off enough senators to get the thing paid for, they had to designate various aspects of the project to different states. So the boosters had to be manufactured 3,000 miles away from the launch site and be shipped via rail. So, we get O rings. Not because of some private corporate interest, but because funding was dependent on getting enough votes in the senate.

    This is precisely the same reason the new SLS rocket looks like it does. It is 100% purposed as a replacement jobs program for the shuttle jobs.

    The pressure to Go on Challenger was for the image of the space program, not the image of the Reagan-bot. They needed to secure funding and needed their teacher in space. This was the source of the Go-fever. And the source was not from within the suppliers - the pressure was on the suppliers to maintain the schedule. Their failure was in acceding to the pressure instead of doing the right thing and issuing the hold.