Cold Temps Force Antares Delay
Antares launch update: No Earlier Than January 8
“Orbital, in consultation with NASA, has decided to reschedule the Antares CRS Orb-1 Space Station Resupply Mission launch for no earlier than Wednesday, January 8, 2014. The new target date was set due to the extreme cold temperatures that are forecasted for early next week, coupled with likely precipitation events predicted for Sunday night and Monday morning. While we are preserving the option to launch on January 8, it is more likely that the launch will take place on Thursday, January 9 because of a much improved forecast for later in the week.”
I’m quite surprised that the environmental requirements, particularly the temperature and wind requirements, for launching and landing don’t appear to have been revised at all over time.
No matter which side of the climate change debate you’re on, there is undeniably more rapid and more extreme changes going on, and to be expected, now and in the future. Several Shuttle issues (and certainly one specific O-ring) alone should have caused this issue to be revisited over and over.
The increased number and severity of storms over the last decade (often called “unprecedented” by both the media and the weather services) are another indicator that there needs to be upgrades in the survivability of spacecraft and LVs.
And the issue needs to be considered both from the launching-from-Earth and the reentry-to-Earth aspects (“Unfortunately, the crew could not be saved because of the 40 knot winds over the Atlantic.“).
This feels to me to be very much the same situation that we’ve been in before, in the sense of: Do we have to wait until more people have died before we take necessary actions?
Many have talked about NASA and the governments becoming more risk averse these days. It seems to me that we are even more risk mitigation averse, unlike most industries today. Why? Is it the money? The technical challenges? Or maybe the inertia of misguidedly not changing something that appears to be working well enough?
This is not new. Apollo 12 survived two lightning strikes during launch without major damage and the experts were surprised. Apollo 13 experienced a tank explosion shortly after lift-off of a severity that either a lightning strike or a wind-blown colliding object could easily have exceeded. So this problem goes back to at least the early 1970’s, yet things remain the same. Why?
Russia launched Soyuz TMA-22 and its 3-man crew in a snowstorm in November 2011, while Orbital frets about “cold temperatures”?!
Dear snow and cold weather,
I hate you. I hate you so very very very much.
(on another note;
Living up here in Michigan,
I went to the grocery store Saturday Morning at 6am. By the time I left, the place turned into a
huge frenzy. By 3pm, stores were out of
milk, produce and meat. Snowgeddon
turned a lot of people into zombies.
Glad, I got in and out early – and fast.)
Good luck Cygnus, and for warm weather soon.
Ironic delay for a vehicle with a Russian-built first stage engine.
But in their defense, there’s cold, and then there’s this freaking outer solar system mess going on outside my window right now. Better safe than debris and shrugged shoulders. A system with that many parts is a roll of the dice in good times. Why play the odds?