There's an old quote that seems applicable here:<p>"It's better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air, than to be in the air wishing you were on the ground."
This is far from the closest to launch SpaceX has called an abort. Many may not remember 3 years ago when they called the abort at T-1 after main engine ignition: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v0k_0PTLnI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v0k_0PTLnI</a><p>To be honest, though, neither case is really abnormal. There's a whole reason it's "T-minus" and "T-plus". T-zero is the point of no return (on the STS, this was when the solid boosters were fired). An abort at any point before then is still considered normal. Aborts <i></i>after<i></i> T-zero are anomalies.<p>(FWIW, even the STS has aborted take-off post-main-engine ignition: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bkYP3pU76I" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bkYP3pU76I</a> . The main difference between the SpaceX Falcon and the STS is that the Falcon is capable of re-igniting its engines almost immediately, making a same-day re-attempt of a post-engine-ignition abort possible. The STS main engines require a manual reset, making abort post-engine-ignition more costly.)
Musk tweeted last night that there was a potential leak issue that might cause a scrub during the launch. They added an automatic check for the problem, and it appears that's what caused the scrub.<p>Since this is a launch to the ISS, the launch window was tiny- miss it by a second, you've missed it completely.<p>They'll fix the issue and probably try again tomorrow.<p>Edit: my mistake, Musk has tweeted that there was another probably-unrelated-maybe-issue, and they called it off just to be safe. Still, provided the minor issue doesn't turn out to be something more major, tune in tomorrow at 9:30 am EST.
I just can't get over how terrible an idea a PayPal founder starting a rocket company sounded. "Good ideas often sound bad," no joke. I was a pretty harsh critic of SpaceX in its early days (I was an aerospace engineer and have followed private spaceflight since its inception) and once they got over some failures and staffing issues, they've really blown me away.
The right call was made, yet they still need to start showing that they can regularly launch without blowing up on the pad, cargo and all. In other words, this was the right choice in a bad situation.