NASA Television Airs Pre Launch Status Briefing for Resupply Mission to Space Station

NASA TV aired a pre-launch news briefings from Wallops Flight Facility to update the status of Orbital Sciences' Cygnus spacecraft and Orbital's mission to resupply the International Space Station . Cygnus will carry 2,780 pounds of supplies to the space station, including vital science experiments that will expand the research capabilities of the Expedition 38 crew members aboard the orbiting laboratory. The launch of Cygnus atop an Antares rocket from Pad 0A at Wallops Flight Facility, is currently scheduled for Jan. 8 at 1:32 p.m. EST. NASA TV will carry the launch live.

[gregoryalasday]

I don't want to be a jerk but Antares is nearly twice the cost of Falcon and the AJ26-59 engines it uses in the first stage are not even an original design - ripped off Soviet moon rocket engines that had the rust scraped off, and re-branded as Aerojet. They are Soviet NK-33 engines (designed by Nikolai Kuznetsov), which were the first closed cycle engines - considered to be far ahead of their time in terms of performance. I heard somewhere that they are not even being recovered after being used! It's such a huge waste! These engines should be considered historical artifacts!

[oreomasta]

29:40 the panel collectively laughs off the solar radiation concern... ends up being the cause for the launch delay a day later ;) It kind of blew my mind today that we now know enough and monitor enough to avoid the radiation danger though.

[Ihavenoideamonkey]

Uhhh.. most of the audio was out of sync with this video, basically from minute 2 to minute 6.