"Not so fast, Elon Musk!"

It was as dramatic as the closing sequence of any James Bond movie.  The clock was counting down–5, 4, 3, 2, 1–and at the last second, everything ground to a halt.  It wasn’t some evil plot that was stopped, but a good plot.  Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, a pioneer in commercial space flight, was scheduled to do something great:  dock a commercial space shuttle to the International Space Station and deliver supplies to the ISS.  That did not happen.  SpaceX cancelled the launch of its Falcon 9 rocket due to engine pressure problems.

“This is not a failure,” maintained Gwynne Shotwell, president of the Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX.  “We aborted with purpose.  It would be a failure if we were to have lifted off with an engine trending in this direction.  The software did what it was supposed to do — aborted engine five, and it went through the remaining engine shutdown.”

The rocket was slated to take off from NASA’s home base of Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 4:55 AM on Sunday morning.  The Falcon 9 needs nine rockets to achieve liftoff and seven rockets to achieve orbit.  Without Engine 5, the ship is a dud.  SpaceX and NASA are planning to check the engine out with a goal of relaunching the shuttle on May 22 (with a backup day of May 23).

Tags: elon musk, Space Exploration Technologies Corp, spacex, cape canaveral, florida, spacex rocket, nasa, spacex rocket launch scrubbed, spacex trip to the iss scrubbed, spacex launch called off at the last second, iss, international space station, space travel, commercial space travel, gwynne shotwell, hawthorne, california

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