That's probably a "layman's terms" translation of a more technical term NET April 1, which would be "Not Earlier Than" and is widely used in the industry.
Being a few months behind schedule is forgivable for human space flight.
If a SpaceX Falcon blows up on the pad, that's one thing. It's expensive but they accept that risk to move faster. At least they gain knowledge of what failed, to do better next time.
You can't apply that mentality once a human is piloting it however. That's how you get Columbia, Challenger, or Apollo 1.
> If a SpaceX Falcon blows up on the pad, that's one thing. It's expensive but they accept that risk to move faster. At least they gain knowledge of what failed, to do better next time.
Assuming it's not carrying a SpaceX Crew Dragon with crew onboard ;)
Also, it's a bit of a dated metaphor. Falcon 9 is by most accounts, now the most reliable rocket in history and is pretty design-locked. The modern metaphor is SpaceX Starship :)
In a month is why. It seems if it was fixed that fast it was easy to find. If it was so easy to find, why was it not found. These are the types of questions that seem to make NASA push things further than just a month. So again, it seems fast to me
It feels fast to you because you don't know what happened, and you are asking questions that have been answered by NASA already in public.
It was easy to find because they knew what valve was leaking.
It was not found beforehand because they don't have the ability to do the tanking test without rolling it to the launch pad and its very hard to know how a system responds to liquid hydrogen.
