Surely this is the point, the windows are ridiculously short these days, its
no wonder the weather screws it up so often, especially this time of year.

So, maybe its time to do a bit of looking at the weather factor and seeing
if this can be relaxed a bit. As far as I can see, its not a real problem
for launch unless they are right close by, except maybe for visibility. I
have never been confident that return to launch site is feasible in the
early stages of the launch, due to the probably catastrophic failure mode
most probable in that time frame. A bit later on gives them mor energy to
play with and thus an ability to avoid any dodgy weather on the glide back,
though unless the cell is really bad, the most likely problem will be tile
denting etc, rather than anything else. They would be glad to get the ship
back at all.


Just some thoughts. I personally feel that they are still running a bigger
risk by not tearing down the systems to fire the srb bolts and starters etc,
than they would have had launching yesterday with the weather they had.

Brian

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Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
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"John Doe" wrote in message
...
Both RTLS and launch weather are no-gos at the 9 minute polling.

No expection of improvement, will lose the launch window. Thunderstorms
to the west of the site.

Scrub not yet announced.

Question: since they saw those storms come, how much time could they
have cut from the 9 minute hold period to launch before the storms got
too close ?

Scrub now formal. Will try tomorrow.