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From: snidely@inteloa.intel.com (David P. Schneider)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Atlantis misses by a hair
Message-ID: <4361@omepd.UUCP>
Date: 1 May 89 21:01:52 GMT
Sender: news@omepd.UUCP
Reply-To: snidely@inteloa.UUCP (David P. Schneider)
Organization: BiiN(tm) Corp., Hillsboro, Oregon
Lines: 30


Atlantis and Magellan missed their first  launch  attempt  by  31  seconds,
scrubbed  when  an  anomaly was noticed appearently relating to a SSME fuel
(recirculating) pump.

I understand the pump is being replaced today, with launch Thursday or Fri-
day a possibility.  (I'd rather they went for Saturday, but that's just for
viewer convenience).

Some questions about this: is this one of  the  pumps  that  was  installed
after  Atlantis  was  on  the  pad,  how  was  the  anomaly  noticed, which
desk/function/station announced the hold (it sounded like a woman's  voice,
such  as had been calling off some checklist items a little before, if that
helps with the identification), and how big a hold can be dealt with at T -
31 seconds with little or no rollback of the count?

From the sound of things, once the hold was announced, having to scrub  was
pretty  much  automatic  because the sequence could not be recovered within
the launch window.

At least one account I heard was that this was a very smooth  countdown  up
until  T  -  31 seconds, best since return-to-flight.  NASA select, though,
had extra polling going on regarding a range safety computer that needed to
brought  back  on  line.   The boot sequence must not have been as rough as
some other issues, though, enven though it had the potential to  scrub  the
launch.

                                                David P. Schneider
                                                     BiiN (tm)
                                                    Monday, 5.1