SpaceX delays launch just before liftoff
Falcon 9 rocket gets another chance today
CAPE CANAVERAL — SpaceX’s new Falcon 9 rocket aborted launch a minute before liftoff on Thursday, scrubbing the mission for a day.
Another attempt will be made at 4:14 p.m. today. Forecasts call for a 60 percent chance of good weather.
Earlier in the day, SpaceX founder Elon Musk said at a news conference that “there's a lot of things in this new rocket that could potentially go wrong,” and added, “Man, I'm stressed. Whatever happens today, I know the SpaceX team has worked very hard to make this launch successful.’’
The Block 5 model of the rocket is designed to be sturdier, so that it can be flown up to 10 times with minimal mechanical refurbishment — a big leap forward in efficiency and cost savings.
Musk also gave a fresh perspective on reusing rockets. He said he hopes to shift public perception from thinking a reflown rocket is “scary” to thinking “an unflown rocket is scary.”
He pointed out that most people would think twice about trav-
eling on an airplane that had never flown.
The best previous example of re-usability was the space shuttle, before SpaceX started recovering booster rockets in 2015. The company also began recovering Dragon space capsules in 2010 and re-flew one in 2017. SpaceX’s launch costs, currently $62 million for a new rocket, are about a third of its closest competitors.
Eventually “spaceflight would be open to anyone, basically just like commercial air travel is,” Musk said. “We could have stopped innovating a long time ago and still had a large market share.”
Other key takeaways from the Musk news conference were:
The Block 5 will be the final iteration of the Falcon 9, and he expects to get about 300 flights out of around 30-50 Block 5 rockets. Next up, the BFR (Big Falcon Rocket, or something like that.)
The first flown Block 5 rocket will be taken apart. “Ironically, we need to take it apart before we can prove that it doesn’t have to be taken apart,” Musk said. But eventually the Block 5 should only need refueling and SpaceX wants to relaunch one within 24 hours at some point.
“I’m certain we can achieve re-usability of the upper stage,” he said. Currently SpaceX is gathering data about the second booster, primarily about when it breaks up upon descent into the atmosphere.
SpaceX will gradually add more thermal protection to the upper stage to see what the minimum amount is to have it survive reentry, without jeopardizing payload.
Reusability has helped get the cost of launches down toward $50 million, but further price reductions are unlikely because of ongoing development costs.
Musk said he thinks reports of NASA’s concern about SpaceX’s fuel loading techniques for human spaceflight missions are exaggerated. He said SpaceX could always load the fuel first and then have astronauts board.
When it launches, the Falcon 9 will carry a communications satellite for Bangladesh called the Bangabandhu 1, from Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center.
It’s named after Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Bangladesh’s founding father. The government of Bangladesh sent out a news release saying the country is joining the global “space club” with the launch of its first satellite.
The $250 million, 3.9-ton satellite will carry television, telephone, data, Internet and emergency communications to the public, the government’s weather service and defense sector. It also will provide uninterrupted emergency communications in the event of natural disasters.
Currently, Bangladesh said it rents the services of foreign satellites, costing the nation about $14 million annually. Bangabandhu-1 would eliminate that cost. The satellite is expected to have a 15-year lifespan. The launch is expected to put the satellite, built by Thales Alenia Space, of Cannes, France, into geostationary orbit.
“The Bangabandhu satellite will help to make Bangladesh an advanced country,” Shahjahan Mahmood, chairman of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, which will manage the satellite, told the Dhaka Tribune. “It would also speed up many aspects of our daily life.”