Sun, Nov 27, 2005
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
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