So I set an alarm for 6:45 this morning specifically to watch NASA try to launch a rocket, and then I got to watch them not launch a rocket. Three separate times, actually. If you also woke up early for this and are equally disappointed, hi, welcome, misery loves company.
The rocket in question is the Delta IV Heavy carrying Orion, out of Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral. This is Exploration Flight Test-1, the first test flight of the capsule NASA wants to eventually use for deep space missions, Mars being the word everyone keeps using even though thats obviously decades off. No crew today, no passengers at all really, just a bunch of sensors and cameras strapped in to see how the thing handles reentry at higher speed than a normal Earth-orbit return. It was supposed to go up around 7:05am Eastern, do two loops of Earth going out to about 3,600 miles (way past the ISS, past most everything we normally send people to), then come back down hot into the Pacific near Baja California about four and a half hours later.
Instead: a boat.
I am not making this up. The first hold was because a boat drifted into the restricted range zone off the coast, which, sure, safety first, but there is something very funny about a decades-in-the-making spacecraft getting held up by somebody's sailboat not reading the memo. They recovered from that one fine. Then during fueling a gust of wind tripped an automatic abort sensor and they had to cycle back through part of the countdown. Also fine, mildly annoying, whatever. Then they found a problem with fuel drain valves on the second stage, i think it was the liquid hydrogen fill and drain valve sticking, and that one they couldn't clear in the remaining window. So thats it, scrubbed for the day. Next attempt is tomorrow morning, 6:05am Eastern this time, even earlier, which if I'm honest I might not manage to be conscious for.
I want to be annoyed about this and I sort of am, in the way you're annoyed when a flight gets delayed, but I also keep coming back to the fact that this is the correct way to run a launch. You don't fly a $370 million test article on a rocket that's had an odd valve reading just because a bunch of people got up early and are on TV. NASA TV commentary kept saying "we'd rather scrub than not have a good day," which is a very NASA thing to say, calm to the point of being slightly infuriating when you're the one who set an alarm for it. I've read a bit about the old Shuttle program and scrubs were routine there too, sometimes multiple scrubs in a row before a clean launch, so this isn't even unusual. Doesn't make we-woke-up-for-nothing feel any better though.
One thing that stuck with me watching the coverage: this Orion capsule is a lot bigger inside than the Apollo capsules were, something like 50% more room, but it's still going up on a rocket that's basically three Delta IV cores strapped together, which is very much an off-the-shelf-parts kind of solution rather than something purpose built. NASA's actual purpose-built heavy rocket, the SLS, is still years out. So this whole flight is sort of a placeholder test using a rocket that was never meant to send this capsule anywhere near where Orion is ultimately supposed to go. There's something almost charming about duct-taping together an interim launch vehicle just to get real reentry data sooner rather than waiting for the "real" rocket to exist. Practical, even if it looks a little improvised on paper.
Also, small aside, completely unrelated to spaceflight: the NASA TV stream kept cutting to a countdown clock graphic that looked like it hadn't been redesigned since maybe 2003, and I found that oddly comforting. Not everything needs a flat redesign and a new sans-serif font. Some countdown clocks can just stay ugly forever and that's fine.
Anyway. Setting the alarm again for tomorrow. If it scrubs a fourth time I'm going to start taking it personally. If you're watching too, the window opens 6:05am Eastern and there's apparently more backup opportunities later in the week if that one doesn't work either. Coffee's already in the machine on a timer so at least that part of the morning is handled.