A Dramatic Error in American Spaceflight
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla.—It was a picture-perfect launch, just before sunrise on a sandy coastline. The rocket, bright as a candle flame, climbed steadily, leaving a spindly trail of smoke that split the sky in half, with the sharp darkness of night on one side and the first pastel hues of daylight on the other. It carried a capsule, bound for the International Space Station, to the edge of space and let go.
The trouble started after that. The capsule, built for NASA by Boeing, was supposed to ignite its own engines to boost itself higher into orbit, where it would chase after the space station. But the engines didn’t start when they should have. Engineers watched, unable to help from below, as the spacecraft became disoriented.
Before the launch, NASA was optimistic. SpaceX had carried out
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