Just hours before the space shuttle Discovery was to take off, the launch was postponed. The NASA word for this is “scrubbed”:
In a telephone conversation, a NASA spokeswoman at the Kennedy Space Center confirmed that no launch would happen Wednesday. “It has been scrubbed,” the spokeswoman said.
Apparently there was a problem with a sensor in one of the fuel tanks. I was talking to Andrew about this kind of thing last night. If we could land on the moon seventeen times (and with inferior technology), how can we have so many problems launching the shuttle?
And isn’t NASA planning to launch a new vehicle anyway? I understand that they need to honor commitments made regarding the International Space Station, but surely they could have come to some sort of an agreement that would allow them to scrap the shuttles altogether.
Read: Return to Flight
