The Moon Will Have to Wait
By now, the spaceship should have been on its way to the moon. By now, NASA had hoped, the gumdrop-shaped capsule—designed to carry astronauts someday—would be sending all kinds of data back home, showing engineers how its first journey to space was going.
But the capsule is still here, sitting atop a giant rocket that has so far refused to leave Earth. NASA spent weeks hyping up the inaugural flight of the Space Launch System, the rocket at the center of America’s ambitious effort to land astronauts on the moon again in this decade. Celebrity appearances and musical performances were lined up. There were enough Krispy Kreme doughnuts at the Kennedy Space Center to feed the whole state of Florida. Even the vice president flew in. And yet, the rocket has stayed put.
Plenty of natural factors can lead to a launch delay: nearby lightning, hovering cumulus clouds, the rotation of the planet itself. But in the case of the Space Launch System, the problems were with the rocket. NASA postponed its first
