ENG: Comments on today's launch abort
Updated: Jul 8, 2020
Hello everyone, David here, and well, I got some somewhat bad news.
WHAT HAPPENED TODAY
As you all know from yesterday post (and from not living under a rock, of course) that today was supposed to be the day of the Demo-2 launch, the first time American astronauts go to the I.S.S. aboard an American vehicle from American soil since 2011 when the last shuttle launch took place.
Well... that didn't quite happen. The astronauts suited up, had the weather briefing, exited through the classic double doors (awesome sight by the way!), hopped on a Tesla and headed off to the historic Launch Complex 39-A, where they climbed up hundreds of stories and finally boarded the Dragon 2 Capsule, sitting comfortably and ready to make history once again, going to the I.S.S and retrieving that long wanted American flag left by their predecessors. It was all going well until mission control started getting worried about the weather, which was getting constantly worse, and they shared their concerns with the astronauts aboard the rocket. At about T-17min to launch, right as the RP-1 and Liquid Oxygen (LOX) began to fill the first and second stage tanks, astronauts Doug and Bob received a sad update from mission control: the current weather did not meet 3 from the many criteria necessary for a completely safe go for launch. They were then told to stand-by for further instructions as the ground team initiated flight abort procedures, where they had to take all the propellant that was loaded out, and then unseal the hatch and remove the astronauts from inside the capsule.
What happens is that when you want to rendezvous with a target, there is a specific time window in which you need to launch in order to successfully catch up with said target. Sometimes the window is a period of time, 5-10 minutes for example, but sometimes it's an instantaneous time window, which means the rocket needs to launch at exactly that time, otherwise it will completely miss the I.S.S., and that was the case of today's launch. Had that time window been 10 minutes later, odds are the weather would have been OK, as the weather briefer reported to the astronauts.
It is unfortunate that it had to be postponed, although it is the safest way to act. Weather down at Florida was rough today, with reports of thunderstorms mere hours before T-0. I'm just glad that our heroes are safe and sound, ready for the next window, which will be open this Saturday, May 30th at 3:22 p.m EDT (Florida time), so tune in on NASA's or SpaceX's live streams for that (still) historical launch.
MY COMMENTS ON THE SCRUB
As I said, it is very unfortunate to see the Falcon 9 remain on the pad, but it is the (obviously) best thing to do. The most important thing is Doug's and Bob's safeties, as a Falcon 9 can be replaced, but human lives can not.
It must honestly suck for them. They suited up around 4 hours before T-0, and sat inside the Dragon 2 about 2 hours and a half before T-0, which means they were in their suits for about 4 hours, furthermore, they remained seated with their suits for about 3 hours! All of that just for the flight to be scrubbed. At least they were good sports about it.
As Doug said when they were being removed from the Dragon 2 Capsule, "Everybody did great today, it was a good practice and we'll do it again Saturday", and it really was. It went pretty much like a dry rehearsal would go, except for the... you know, huge wait times they experienced inside the Dragon 2 Capsule.
Something that's also kinda bad is that the launch isn't only great at T-0, the whole thing is exciting to watch, from them suiting up until them opening up the open doors, and seeing all of that to have the flight canceled kind of lets me down a little bit, but it doesn't really matter anyway as they will do the same thing on Saturday, so we'll get a lot of Déjà vu from that.
Overall, I am really excited for Saturday! Today wasn't the day, but it was good anyway as we learned a lot of things, so let's remain positive!
Welp, that was it for today's quick update on the whole Demo-2 mission thing, so yeah there's that. Again, the next launch window is this Saturday, May 30th at 3:22 p.m EDT, so make sure to watch this historic launch from home! As of right now, that's what I have to say, I will see you all later! Stay safe! Peace!
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