NASA Artemis 1 Moon Rocket Launch! - SCRUBBED

...could have been worse, I guess.

 

Nope.

 

They're trying to fix Artemis on the stand, but if the rumors are correct it's a fairly non-trivial problem.
There were rumors about a crack in a tank, but it was merely the foam.
Since this is a fire-and-forget missile and the heat shield is buried a little deeper than before, flying foam is a little less stressful to the passengers.

HOWEVER (comma!)
Engineers also identified a bleed in a liquid hydrogen line meant to cool the four RS-25 engines on the bottom of the rocket’s core stage.
(Monday was the first full reloading of cryo fuel.) Hydrogen was also a problem in a countdown test in April, resulting in numerous repairs. Another test in June had more success, but still experienced some leakage.

I'm not well educated but I'm seeing a pattern starting to develop.
The RS-25 rocket engines aren't new.
The RS-25 probably stands for something like Aerojet Rocketdyne Shuttle Engine- 25 something...meaning it's been kicking around in the NASA programme since the late 70s (First STS was April-1981) so one might think that they would be plug-and-play for yet another NASA hybrid launch vehicle - part solid rocket and part liquid.

Buuuuut, no.
Different mission profile.
Different engine operating parameters.

NASA might be learning a lesson that they shouldn't have to for two reasons. They might have been better off clean-sheeting the engines for the SLS rather than trying to adapt one from the 80's..."to save time and money."

The first reason they ought to know better is that they've been doing this since the 60's....with hard lessons going back to the 50's.
EVEN IF they're not the cheapest and fastest at DOING stuff, they should at least be able to identify pitfalls early.
ADMINISTRATION after all, seems to feature prominently in their name.
They should have seen this coming and learned from tragic lessons in the 60's, retaught tragically in the 80's that bad assumptions kill as many people and rockets as dates circled on calendars do.

They also should have seen this from over the horizon because they're not the only players on the field anymore.
They should have learned from Musk.

IIRC, Musk said that he horribly underestimated the difficulty in developing the Falcon Heavy, because after all, it's just three Falcon Nine's strapped together with a payload atop the one in the middle - right?
That's easy, isn't it?

NASA is already late, and they're already over budget, and they're married to the RS-25s which will probably prove to be a great engine for this task, albeit more difficulty repurposed than the pencil pushers anticipated.

So.....
Since this will ultimately be crew-certified launch system, they ought to throw away the calendars, back-haul the rocket and get it right.
...the FIRST time.

Remember:
The Shuttle Programme got it right the first time....and the second...and the 20th.
They went on to lose 14 of the 355 folks that flew in them... (according to the wikis, and yes....many of those folks were repeat customers!)

 

meh....
We'll see.

It's easy to be a quarterback on Monday....BUT(!)
Those are OUR bucks on the pad.
We may not call the plays, but they work at our pleasure.

They didn't have a choice but to scrub it.

 

It's easier when you have kids and grandkids.....

 

GODspeed Artemis!

It would be really REALLY cool to test two crew capable rockets with enough stroke to get to other rocks.