One Week Delay Anticipated

The first launch of a new rocket vehicle is RARELY without setbacks (notes the guy who will shortly be piloting an as-yet-tested rocketplane while sitting three feet away from a brand-new rocket engine design... hmmm -- Jim Campbell, ANN E-I-C). The much-anticipated first launch of SpaceX's Falcon1 has just been scrubbed and Elon Muck has emailed ANN to fill us in...

Statement from Elon Musk on SpaceX Launch Scrub

"The SpaceX launch is scrubbed for today. As I warned, the likelihood of an all new rocket launching from an all new launch pad on its first attempt is low.

The reason for the delay was an auxiliary liquid oxygen (LOX) fill tank had a manual vent valve incorrectly set to vent. The time it took to correct the problem resulted in significant LOX boiloff and loss of helium, and it was the latter that caused the launch abort. LOX is used to chill the helium bottles, so we lose helium if there is no LOX to cool the bottles.

Although we were eventually able to refill the vehicle LOX tanks, the rate at which we could add helium was slower than the rate at which LOX was boiling away. There was no way to close the gap, so the launch had to be called off. In addition, we experienced an anomaly with the main engine computer that requires further investigation and was arguably reason in and of itself to postpone launch.

We are anticipating rescheduling the launch within a week at the earliest but probably longer as we need to bring in LOX and helium from Hawaii. Our LOX plant on Omelek will not replenish our supply in time."

- Elon Musk

FMI: www.spacex.com