Oh, SpaceX. Elon Musk’s commercial space outfitter has been beset by delays, which makes Saturday’s last-minute shutdown all the more frustrating. SpaceX had to abort the ignition sequence of the Falcon 9 rocket just half a second before lift off early Saturday morning — they need to fix an engine valve, just a second! After delays initially postponed the May 9th launch, it came as little surprise that 10 days later, the anticipated launch brought no galactic satisfaction (but did end up in a 10-minute video of a steaming Falcon 9 rocket accompanied by control dialogues that are fun to listen to and try to decode).
Almost there, except not quite.
Not to worry, the unmanned craft carrying supplies to the ISS is, according to SpaceX, fully equipped to reignite at 3:44 AM Tuesday morning. With investors like Microsoft’s Paul Allen, SpaceX has plenty of funding and rooters for their success, and failure certainly wouldn’t come cheap: Each Falcon 9 rocket costs $60 million to fly, and that’s not counting the loss of confidence a failure would bring. Then throw in $60 million in shipping and handling for the Dragon Spacecraft“, the reusable craft that SpaceX hopes to eventually fly their customers in, and you realize delays are inevitable.
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NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce explains it thusly:
Well, for this launch, they had what was called a near instantaneous launch window. So, that means they basically had one instant when they could take off and if they missed it then they were out of luck for today. And the reason for that is that they have to go when things are lining up with the space station so that they can take a very direct route to the station, and that’s to save fuel. Because on this particular mission, they’re going to need a lot of fuel. The idea is that this unmanned capsule is going to carry food and other supplies. It’s loaded with all sorts of stuff for the space station. But before it can actually deliver this stuff, it has to fly around a lot in space and do a bunch of maneuvers and execute them all perfectly so that NASA can be assured that everything’s working and that it’s safe that this spacecraft to get close to the station. You know, you don’t just fly up casually to the International Space Station. It’s $100 billion asset, plus there’s people living onboard. So, NASA wants to make sure there is no chance of any collision.
Musk chilling with his rocket. You have to love the humblebrag pose.
If it all works out, this will be the first time a commercially launched payload will be delivered to the International Space Station. Having collected over two billion dollars in contracts from NASA, SpaceX is well on its way to being a viable company. Musk, for one, isn’t nervous: talking to CNBC’s Jane Wells, it’s clear he doesn’t give a hoot about the rising number of SpaceX haters, competitors and environmentalists alike. Perhaps tomorrow he’ll finally be proven right.
