4 years in the making, yet the NASA rocket scientists will have to wait at least 1 more day.  A freighter in the danger zone and chronic unfavorable weather forced NASA’s Ares 1 X launch director to scrub the launch attempt Tuesday.    For 4 hours, mission managers went through delay after delay.  First it was too many clouds.  NASA has a triboelectrification flight rule, which means if there are clouds between 22,000 and 72,000 feet, through which the Ares 1 X rocket would fly, that could create electricity which could then strike the rocket and ruin the test flight.  After that, there was a short delay as a sensor cover was removed from the tip of the 327-foot tall rocket, but got stuck.  Once that fell out of the way, the weather again looked good—green for go-launch—but then a cargo ship entered the danger zone east of the launch pad.  By the time the ship’s pilot was contacted and turned around out of the way, the weather soured again.  And then winds violated the “no winds within 10 nautical miles of the launch pad that exceed 20 miles an hour” rule.

By 11:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, after 3 ½ hours of excitement and anticipation, the highly anticipated test flight was scrubbed for the day.

This flight is more than 4 years and $3 billion in development.  It’s the first test flight of the new Constellation space flight system that will replace the current space shuttle program once it’s retired, currently scheduled for 2010. The flight plan is for a short flight, just about 6 minutes from liftoff to splashdown.  The first  2 minutes are the crucial ones, where sensors on board the world’s tallest rocket will record vibration, thermal and aerodynamic data to help in the final design of the Ares 1 rocket.   The next launch attempt will be Wednesday at 8a.m. Eastern time at the soonest.