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from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed dept.
Orbital ATK will attempt its first launch of an Antares booster since a launch failure in 2014:
NASA and Orbital ATK officials have set Oct. 13 as the target date for the first Antares launch in nearly two years, giving approval for ground crews to load final cargo into the mission's Cygnus supply carrier heading for the International Space Station. [...] This month's launch campaign is the first for Orbital ATK's Antares booster since a catastrophic launch failure on Oct. 28, 2014, destroyed a Cygnus supply ship loaded with equipment for the space station. The mishap also damaged the Antares launch pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, a facility owned by the government of Virginia at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.
The launch could be delayed by Hurricane Matthew.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Wednesday October 05 2016, @07:32PM
Not the first hurricane to ever hit Kerbal I mean Kennedy Space Center, and it won't be the last.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 05 2016, @09:17PM
Well, yeah, but like I wrote the shocker is its still gonna be raining from the Hurricane on Monday 3 days before the launch. I wouldn't sweat a launch scheduled in November or even later in October, but launching the first sunny day after a hurricane goes thru seems a bit optimistic.
Sure maybe a butterfly will flap its wings in outer mongolia and the hurricane will head a bit east and it won't matter much.
Still... if you had to schedule, say, a honeymoon, would you plan on Florida this weekend? Or if you had to do a last minute software development sprint days before "launch" would you pick Florida this weekend?
Evac the people, evac the families, tighten down the hatches, lock the doors, and launch that dude a week later or something. Seems a little overly risky.
I remember last time they were like "eh, weather, F the weather, the weather isn't on any of my PERT charts" they tried launching the shuttle in like 30F weather and blew it up. Someone's going to be totally embarrassed if the launch fails because a dead seagull got blown up the nozzle during the hurricane and noone had time to notice because they got launch fever gotta go go go