Antares test launch poll

In a week, Orbital is planning to launch the first Antares rocket from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. I wasn't really sure where to post this, as the first stage engines and other parts are Russian, the second stage is a solid rocket motor made by ATK which is the darling of the Senate, and the launch itself is done commercially by Orbital under COTS, so partially paid for by NASA...

Anyway, they're going to try to send this Frankensteinian contraption spaceward, which gives us a nice opportunity for some armchair prognostication. Will it work?

Edit: Fixed up thread name, doh!
Edit: Updated poll for second attempt.

...and Cygnus is built in Europe, so I guess we should be rooting for Orbital

EDIT: Said I, while wearing a SpaceX tee-shirt...

Why so cynical?

Not sure what you're referring to, I wasn't trying to be cynical at least. I did think it an interesting contrast with the other COTS supplier, which likes to do everything in house. And Antares is a heck of a lot more expensive than F9 in terms of price per kilogram of cargo delivered to ISS. Or are you referring to the 0% success votes?

For those who want to watch live

http://www.universetoday.com/101520/wat ... es-rocket/

in less than an hour from time of posting if weather good

looks like an abort for today due to an umbilical on 2nd stage becoming dis-attached prematurely.

Nice one again Lourens, those options always put a broad smile on my face

(too bad I missed this poll until now, so no voting from me)

Well, there's word of a retry soon, so given that there were only two votes, I'll just reopen it I think when there's a date.

There is your date:

http://www.parabolicarc.com/2013/04/18/ ... y-evening/

Poll duly updated. I've removed the time limit and you can re-vote, so I expect all of us to get it right this time .

just in case you missed it: launch time has been changed again (the url above is still valid, but content was updated)

-> new target date is Saturday instead of Friday

I voted for the Kim Jung Un option. Mainly because I am an optimist . By the way, don't you think it's kind of interesting that a ruthless dictator is named after a psychologist?

postponed again...
Next attempt: Sunday

I'm actually curious what the problem is with winds at altitude. Obviously you don't want to have too much wind on the pad, since the rocket is moving slowly there and you don't have sideways thrusters to compensate. But if the rocket is going Mach 1+, does a 100 mph wind really matter that much?

Looks like it might launch today in about 30 mins see it live :-

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

They are saying it seem good athe moment.