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

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."

Comments

A link with some actual information

[Harlequin80]

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.

Re:A link with some actual information

[Irate Engineer]

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.