As a repeat of the events of last night, tonight's attempted launch of the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation mission has been scrubbed due to problems with the launchpad/ground infrastructure.
“To allow more time to perform ground system checkouts, standing down from today’s launch of the COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation mission,” SpaceX said in a social media post. “A new target launch date will be shared once confirmed.”
FAA flight restrictions indicate the launch had slipped to at least Tuesday evening. The originally planned Saturday night liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4E was scrubbed due to a hydraulic problem with the launch pad’s hold-down clamps.
I see in looking at the previous stories that I haven't mentioned that this is Falcon 9 booster tail number 1081 flying on her 21st flight. Previous missions included Crew-7, PACE and TRACERS, all for NASA. B1081 will Return To Launch Site, to land at LZ-4 (Landing Zone 4). If successful, this will be the 31st landing at Vandenberg's landing zone, and the 554th Falcon booster landing so far.
Another thing going on in life that has been a bit of a distraction or complication (or some combination of those words) is in our church life. I've told that story a couple of times in my Easter post but in the months since last April, our story has gotten more complicated. We left our old church because of the way they treated our pastor. To borrow a paragraph from my Easter post:
I went forward for Baptism in an evangelical church and an important part of that change was because the pastor had a similar background to mine, at least in the biochemistry/microbiology portion. He was a pharmacist and the director of the pharmacy department in one of the local hospitals. He quickly became one of our closest friends in the worst time of our lives - Mrs. Graybeard's cancer in 1997. It's a long story, but in the last couple of years the church's elders dumped him. As the story about how they treated him in private came out, we found a new church - a nearby Southern Baptist church. Our pastor who had been kicked out of his position (and practically founded our church) also started going to another Baptist church, but closer to his home. He passed away a little before Easter last year.
The complication is that a few months ago, our new pastor announced his retirement. The process this church used was much, much better than the evangelical church (a Calvary Chapel) and a new pastor has been elected. Our senior pastor will be leaving the church early in January and the elders used a much better approach to choosing and finding people to run for the position, then an election where people who are members of the church voted to choose the new pastor.
This has led to some feelings of instability. The new guy, who has been an associate pastor as long as we've been going to this church, hasn't really come across well in his teachings, but the fact that the church handled the succession so well makes me feel like we should give him a chance to get used to the changes he's going through while we see how his style grows. Today ranks as the best lesson I can recall him teaching.
There's no rush in needing to get into another church fast enough, so we'll go until the current senior (lead?) pastor retires and watch how the new guy progresses. Give him a chance to grow.
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