SpaceX Launch To International Space Station Delayed For Code Tweaks

RogerRoast writes "The first private spaceship launch to the International Space Station has been delayed, possibly by at least a week, the vehicle's makers announced Monday. The commercial spaceflight company SpaceX was set to launch its Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket April 30 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida." The article quotes SpaceX lead Elon Musk's twittered explanation: "Am pushing launch back approx a week to do more testing on Dragon docking code. New date pending coordination with @NASA."

Re:Better to fix it first

[joh]

Has nothing to do with "exploding". The problem is the automatic docking (actually berthing) and I've read they still have too many false emergency aborts in testing. They don't want to go all the way to the ISS just to have it pull back for no good reason automatically.

Anyway, if they have their software and their testing not ready one week before launch, this isn't good at all. They should better put if off for a month or so.

Tests, not tweaks!

[wjsteele]

No where in Elon's Tweet or in the referenced article does it say they need to tweak the code... it says they need more time to "test" it.

Bill