NASA scrubs the launch of its Space Launch
System rocket due to fuel leak

This is disgraceful. Can't this government under Biden do anything right? Are they too busy worrying about three legged, one eyed transgender lesbians getting jobs that they aren't in any means qualified for?

Was it leaking when they filled it earlier in the week?

Government space program is a man made black hole for $$$ billions. Each SLS launch tower costs a billion. Can't be reused. NASA should be defunded.

Dump SLS, and let SpaceX to the lunar program. The SLS rocket is LITERALLY recycled hardware from the Space Shuttle program.

Just let Elon do it. It will cost less.

If Congress someday comes to its fiscal responsibility, it will drop the ultra-wasteful Musk-lead insanity of trying the inhabit and terraform Mars. In any case it will be after far too many $billions of tax money has been poured into this black hole.

Hydrogen, by it's very nature, with the smallest atoms of any matter, works its way INTO metals and for many metals causes a phenomenon called "hydrogen embrittlement" which, unsurprisingly, makes the metal brittle, sometimes as bad as glass. And the most microscopic path will leak hydrogen - cracks or joints or seams that would NOT leak oxygen or air, or water, WILL leak hydrogen. It's a PITA to work with, really. And then you cool it down to liquid form at about -240 on C scale. That alone causes problems with bending, shifting and cracking due to the extreme size change over that temperature range. For example, a two foot long piece of aluminum when at -240C will be about 1/8th of an inch shorter than at room temp. A 20 foot diameter tank will change diameter by about 5/8 inch, and this just moves stuff around, bends and breaks stuff sometimes. The first cooldown is always a learning experience on large structure taken to cryogenic temps.

Correction, that 20 ft diameter tank will shrink by about an inch and a quarter when cooled down. These tanks may be twice that size, I don't know.

attn: NASA - park your jalopy at the end of the runway and wait until Spring, there is obviously no way this tin can is getting off the ground any time soon

#7, thanks for the perspective.

I suspect we have a diverse launch crew. I remember when they launched Alan Shepard on our first manned launch down range. The nation literally held its breath. The idea of a live human on the tip of that rocket was mind boggling. But that was long ago and far away in a nation that took pride in its accomplishments. You should have been there......it was a good time to be alive.

This is the result of 8 years of doing Muslim outreach instead of science.

Its good they halted it. I am gonna give them a break on something like this. It is literally rocket science. Although its unmanned it perhaps was a hazard on the ground to life and limb. A worse result would be a political push to launch when problems were known like in the case of the challenger explosion. I would rather waste money on space exploration which surges our technology then burn money in a corrupt over seas hell hole like ukraine.

Someone noticed they forgot the add the Pride and BLM flags, and an Islamic crescent, to the rocket. Shouldn't take long to fix.

This reminds me of the movie "The Mouse on the Moon" where the country of Grand Fenwick fooled the world into giving them money for their new space program but was just a way to get money for plumbing for their country. Up close, the SLS looks like it was made from parts from a local ACE hardware store. By the way, the engines and boosters ARE from the Space Shuttle program. So mostly leftover parts from other programs. What a Mickey Mouse operation.

Re #15. Using the very reliable, durable and extreme well proven shuttle main engines is a good choice, in this retired aerospace engineer's opinion. Rocket motors are extremely difficult to design and make durable. Many years ago I shared an office with one of the grad students who helped develop the turbopumps on the shuttle main engines at a university. His explanation of their difficulties making the turbopump bearings run stable at extremely high RPMs with cryogenic fuel and oxidizers without vibration was fascinating to a tech guy. He pointed out that after blowing a number of prototypes to smithereens, their biggest problem was figuring out, from the tiny shards what had caused the initial failure. The turbopumps develop, from memory, 50,000 horsepower in a very small package, like a two foot cube, IIRC, and if one percent of that power gets diverted into a vibration mode, there is 500 horsepower working furiously to tear the turbopump apart. They needed to add some very sophisticated, new concept, internal vibration dampers to the bearing design. And taking advantage of this proven design seems excellent to me. Starting from scratch would have added a decade and billions to the development time and cost, so using these, what you call so derisively, "leftover parts", they get proven quality and relibility, lowering cost and reducing risks, of catostrophic failure. And one of the watchwords of modern weapon and aerospace design programs is an effort to use "COTS", which stands for Commercial Off The Shelf parts wherever they are of sufficient perfomance and proven reliability. The shuttle main engines are pretty much COTS, and aabsolutely a known quantity. One of the other choices is Russian rocket motors, and I applaud using American made and designed motors. Having worked on programs that were smaller but just as complex and difficult, I am impressed with their work, and hope that they manage to get reliability right away, with so many "expert critics" standing on the sidelines throwing tomatoes for the slightest thing.

I am with #5. Elon Musk has been able to do things NASA could only dream of. I also agree with #7/8. The only question I would have is the following. We were successfully launching hydrogen fueled manned flights on a regular basis since the 1960s up through the space shuttle, so why didn’t we get it right in 2022? Could it be that NASA’s mission changed from sending rockets into space to outreaching the Muslim religion (under Obama) or now to reaching out to transgenders and of course equity is more important than quality. Nuff said.

NASA's last great accomplishment was Apollo 17. It's been downhill since then. It has turned into nothing more than a charity organization for the military-industrial complex.

How much of this rocket is Chinese produced parts? I have serious doubts that this rocket will every fly correctly.