NASA postponed this morning’s launch of its Artemis I rocket after issues arose during the countdown. Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut, joined Cheddar News to explain why Artemis I’s launch was delayed. “Basically, the big problem is with engine number three. There are four core stage engines. Number three failed to allow liquid hydrogen to flow in to cool the engine bell and basically to keep it from melting.”

Closing Bell

Leroy Chiao on NASA Delay of the Artemis I Rocket Launch

Welcome back to cheddar news. Closing bell. Everyone while Nasa says its plans of shooting for the moon are delayed after a last minute fuel leak and then an engine problem postponed the liftoff of its mighty moon rocket. So here's what Nasa administrator Bill NElson had to say about the failed launch. Take a listen, we don't launch until it's right. And in fact they've got a problem with the gas is going on. The engine bleed on one engine. You can't go there are certain guidelines. Uh, and I think it's just illustrative that this is a very complicated machine, a very complicated system and all those things have to work. Okay, well the space launch system, rocket was on a mission to propel an unscrewed capsule into orbit around the moon, bringing the U. S. A big step closer to actually putting astronauts people back on the lunar surface for the first time since the Apollo program ended 50 years ago. So joining me now is Leroy chow. Former Nasa astronaut Leroy. Always good to see you. What do you know about what went wrong today with this now delayed launch? Sure, Well it's great to be here. And basically the big problem is with engine number three. Therefore, core stage engines number three failed to allow liquid hydrogen to flow in to cool the engine bell uh, and basically to keep it from melting. And so it's probably it's sounding like it's a valve problem. And flight controllers and engineers trying a bunch of different things. None of them, none of them worked. And so at the end of the day, they they had to scrub the launch. So the big question now is is this something that the technicians and engineers can fix at the pad? Do they have access to the area where there's a problem? Can they do the repair there or do they have to roll the rock it back to the vertical assembly building and take the engine out? If the former, if it's a simple quick fix, we might be able to see a launch friday or monday. If they have to roll back then we're talking about probably a month or more. And these are massive rockets. I've seen this very launchpad in Cape Canaveral florida that's overlooking the atlantic ocean right there. These are huge vessels obviously as our viewers see on the screen, how long, how tedious is it to wheel one of these on and off the launch pad if a bigger fix is needed, that can happen on the actual pad. So to roll out or to roll back is a process of days like 3, 3.5 days, you know, on that order. And so just to get it back to the assembly building will take several days. And of course the reason you're going so slowly is to keep everything level, keep everything stable. There's a very specific type of rock and shells that go into the gravel if you will that the crawler has to roll over. This is the same crawler that's been updated since the Apollo days that keep that launch platform absolutely level as it's moving back and forth between what we call the V A B, the vertical assembly building and the launch pad. Is this something that's common? I mean, certainly, I think a lot of people were excited about this launch. Leroy, everyone I think would agree safety first. But is this kind of like a sore spot for Nasa? I mean, should this have happened? It's a very complex vehicle and any time you're using liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, it's even more complicated. More things are, you know, under stress if you will, including the valves. And so this is an example of one small item that was not performing and which caused the actual scrub. So yes, it's definitely frustrating. We certainly saw a lot of this during the shuttle program. Shuttle actually had a lot more constraints because you had a winged vehicle. You had to make sure the weather in florida was good enough for the crew to be able to fly the shuttle back for landing there in certain aborts. You had to make sure the weather was good across the the world in africa, in case we had to do an abort to a remote landing site over there with this kind of a rocket. It's more of a missile and so you don't have a lot of those weather constraints, but you still have issues with the hardware. If it's not performing, you're going to have to stop and fix the problem and try again. And Boeing obviously had a hand in this. It's helping Nasa develop and deploy some of these major, complicated, complex vehicles. As you mentioned, Leroy is any of the onus you think potentially on Boeing here and its capabilities or what do we know about what might be at stake? Sure. The big contractors that built this rocket Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop Grumman, they all have ownership of the design and actual construction of the vehicle and all the components that go into it. So yes, while Nasa is doing the operations, the actual construction of the vehicle was done by the contractors. So yeah, they absolutely do have ownership and responsibility when there are hardware problems like this. And the big the bigger goal I think of this mission right, is to put humans actually back on the surface of the moon just really within a few years, Leroy, do you think that that is a feasible timeline and one that you know would be worth it for America. The program has been going in different forms for a number of years since 2004, So very, very long time. And this rocket in particular has been going since 2010. So at least 12 years to put that in perspective, NASA went from zero being created to landing humans on the moon in just under 11 years. So this is a very different time. A very different agency, different contractors. Uh, it's unfortunately the tendency of large organizations as they continue to grow to become more bureaucratic and inefficient. So this is a good example of that. It's been taking a lot long time, a lot longer than everyone hoped, a lot more money than everyone hoped. And even the cost per launch is a lot lot higher than everyone thought it would be. So that compounds the disappointment of the failed to launch today. But of course you want to launch when things are right. So you do have to wait. But as far as getting back to the moon, we've also got, you know, the commercial sector to talk about the, you know, SpaceX in particular, they have a contract to help Nasa develop a lander. And realistically, I don't know if you know Nasa or SpaceX is going to get there first and perhaps hopefully they can get there in partnership. You know, we can take advantage of the many years of Nasa expertise and operations and take advantage of SpaceX's innovation and nimbleness and able to react quickly. All right, Leroy chow. We got to leave it there. So good to get your take, thank you as always for coming on the show. Leroy is a former Nasa astronaut. As we see this Artemis one launch delayed yet again