NASA astronauts will have to wait until another day to launch to orbit in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The planned launch was called off Monday night because of a problem in the Atlas V rocket that was to send them to space.
Engineers will work through the night to assess whether the two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, can get back on the launchpad on Tuesday, or if repairs will be needed that could delay the flight by at least several days.
Launch is scrubbed til Friday due to a part malfunction. A pressure regulator on the upper stage was rapidly cycling so they’re investigating.
People seem to forget that the Shuttle had an average of 1.9 launch attempts per mission. I don’t even know what the scrub rate is for other launch vehicles, it happens all the time due to weather and part malfunctions, it’s not even considered part of launch reliability statistics. Let’s maybe let it actually get off the ground before we start wild speculation about reliability.
Anyways, nationalize ULA.
I’ve heard this number cited as one of many reasons why the Space Shuttle is a piece of shit
Absolutely. But every vehicle platform scrubs, so there’s not a ton of point in speculating about the reliability of a brand-new launch vehicle based on one scrub. There’s a huge gulf between Soyuz and the Space Shuttle.
It didn’t help that the shuttle’s main engine fuel was hydrogen. Hydrogen plumbing plus Florida air equals rocket engineer headaches, and scrub after scrub after scrub. We saw it again in all those delays on the SLS test launch. And SLS is basically a space shuttle with different lego instructions.
The shuttle was the worst crewed space vehicle of all time by a wide margin
It’s worrying that the new dual-engine Centaur that was developed exclusively for Starliner is also having teething issues. I know they can’t use the proven single-engine Centaur because of abort-scenario reasons, but as the kids say, this ain’t a good look.