George Ok Dave, we are working an issue now on the countdown
George so, as long as you're here with us you have background on this kind of thing
George so can you tell us exactly what it is that they are talking about.
Dave George, I don't want to be the bearer of poor news
Dave but there is a problem with the vehicle that we're examining, right now,
Dave it's called a Low Level Fuel Cutoff LH2 low level cutoffs sensor,
Dave there's four of them on the vehicle.
Dave And if we really don't want the engine to be running
Dave at high speed and then suddenly run out of fuel,
Dave that can lead to a devastating breakdown of the engine
Dave even uncontained failure of the engine, if that should happen,
Dave therefore we have four sensors on the vehicle,
Dave and it requires two of those to detect a low level fuel in order
Dave to cutoff the engines early, before they would run out,
Dave and this is only comes into play in special conditions
Dave on the ascent, not on nominal ascent,
Dave so it's essentially a backup for a backup situation,
Dave but the flight director's here and the launch control directors
Dave are discussing this issue right now
Dave and this could lead to the scrub of this launch,
Dave I'm sorry to say, for today, for further testing
Dave but we'll have to listen in and and see where they go with this.
Team Looks like the weather is starting to come together for
Team the vehicle's ecos ensors for some reason, did not behave today
Team and so we're going to have to scrub this launch attempt,
Team so once we develop our scrub turnaround plan for you obviously
Team we'll get that back to you,
Team so appreciate all we've been through together,
Team but this one is not going to result in a launch attempt today.
George We'll probably need some time to determine how long this
George stand down is going to be, I assume,
Dave that's right to know for sure, at risk of being somewhat speculative
Dave George, there are several failure modes
Dave we could be in here which could allow rapid turnaround
Dave so I wouldn't rule out another attempt tomorrow,
Dave that's rather speculative and early information,
Dave but at such risk that could still happen for us
Dave we'll have to watch several hours and
Dave listen in on the technical teams' assessment of this problem.