
Hmm
I guess the cheese needed to age some more before launch...
The history-making launch of SpaceX's Dragon capsule to the International Space Station has been delayed by up to a week so that the space firm's engineers can do some more testing. The Dragon was all set to soar atop a Falcon 9 rocket, also made by Elon Musk's SpaceX, on 30 April, but the blast-off has now been moved to 3 May …
Being the first trip, it makes sense to be excessively careful. They _really_ don't want to mess this up. Consider that NASA built an entire space shuttle (Enterprise) for in-atmosphere testing of flight, landing, etc. Just to make sure that the theory and the practice are as close as possible to the same.
I get the impression that it's not NASA but Space-X taking this delay, in which case good for them. They are taking the responsibility of being sure, not just doing another test because NASA wants them too. We all know what happens when we build and ship software to a schedule, rather than "when it's done".
Biting the hand that feeds IT © 1998–2021