South Korea Delays Nuri Rocket Launch
With North Korea preparing their own rocket launch it would be embarrassing for the ROK if this launch fails. So it is best to not take any chances and double check everything before launch:
South Korea decided Wednesday to postpone the launch of its space rocket Nuri due to a technical glitch found during final preparations, the science ministry said.
“While controlling a helium valve, aerospace engineers found a communications problem between a launch control computer and a launch pad facility control computer,” Vice Science Minister Oh Tae-seog said in a briefing at the Naro Space Center in Goheung. “The valve is OK, but the system might matter when it goes into the automatic operation system. So we inevitably canceled the scheduled launch.”
The engineers detected the problem at around 3:30 p.m., just before they were to start injecting fuel and oxidizer into the rocket.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but ROK officials are still determining if they will be able to launch the rocket with its 8 satellite payload either today or later in the week.
Don’t worry, it’s not going to be like the latest Japanese H2 rocket failure – 3 launch failures in a row, with the Japanese space agency announcing they don’t have a clue what is wrong with their newly built rocket. Some Japanese experts are saying that Japan’s rocket program has been set back decades, after the miserable failure to launch for reasons unknown for its newly developed H2 rocket engine. Japanese netizens are hoping against hope that South Korea’s rocket launch fails too because if it succeeds, it would mean the inferior Koreans would be bypassing Japan’s space industry (which began with America’s help) compared to South Korea’s (no help from America) which began 50 years after Japan’s industry began. It would be humiliating for the Japanese who firmly believe Koreans are uncivilized subhumans incapable of being intelligent.