Live coverage: NASA, SpaceX Countdown To Launch

Update: Standing down from launch today due to unfavorable weather in the flight path. Our next launch opportunity is Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 p.m. EDT, or 19:22 UTC

13 Replies to “Live coverage: NASA, SpaceX Countdown To Launch”

  1. You couldn’t pay me enough to get on a rocket built by Elon Musk. Let’s put it this way, if there were a killer asteroid hurtling towards the earth and there was a seat available on a Musk rocket, I’d take my chances with the asteroid.

    1. You do realize (don’t you) that SpaceX has an excellent track record. Boeing on the other hand …

      It’s going to be crazy busy around Cocoa Beach and Titusville today.

        1. “SpaceX has successfully completed its 84th Falcon 9 rocket launch (and 52nd booster landing), surpassing the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V to snag a long-standing American launch record.”
          https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-ula-american-launch-record-rocket-landing/

          “Rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 87 times over 10 years, resulting in 85 full mission successes (97.7%), ”
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches

          Not too shabby.

  2. The launch has been scrubbed due to weather (about 17 minutes before launch).

  3. China Joe Biden issued a statement after the launch was cancelled. “It was a beautiful launch to Mars, kind of reminds me when I travelled with the cat on the space shuttle to Venus last week.”

  4. When the USSR collapsed, the Russian Rocket development had been Moth-balled because they didn’t know how good the after Burn feature was compared to the Best USA rocket @ the Time…..The USA dropped their Rocket technology & used the Russian’s

    It helps to keep stuff secret such that everyone doesn’t know if an idea is feasible, or NOT

    1. That’s not quite true. About 20 years ago, the RD-180 engine was purchased for use in the Atlas III by Lockheed Martin and, later, by United Launch Alliance for the Atlas V. However, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine a few years ago cast doubt on the availability of parts.

      That dispute affected more than the availability of rocket engines and parts. Ukraine planned on selling the Tsykon-4 rocket as a launch vehicle. Concerns about things like quality control plus suitable launch sites hampered efforts to market it.

      The Russians haven’t been inactive in rocket development. There’s been discussion of retiring its workhorse booster, the Soyuz, and replacing it with the Angara family. So far, it’s had a pretty decent record.

      They’ve been relying on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and that arrangement goes back to the Soviet Union. However, for a number of years, a successor launch site at Vostochny in Siberia near the border with China has been under development. A few rockets have flown from there, but there’s been an on-going matter concerning corruption associated with that site.

      The Americans, of course, have continued with their rocket development, SpaceX and Blue Origin being, perhaps, the best-known independent private companies working on that.

    2. Both the Americans and Russians, as well as India, have been selling their launch services to whoever wants to put something into space and has the cash to pay for it. The launch business isn’t so much a matter of technology and hardware any more but, instead, one of cost and availability.

      One company to keep an eye on is RocketLab. It’s based in the U. S., but it uses a launch facility in New Zealand. It’s primary market is smaller payloads, such as cubesats. It’s been quite successful in the last two or three years and it, like SpaceX and Blue Origin, is private.

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