Hopefully, attempt #3 won't go anything like this:
Mercury-Redstone 1, November 21st 1960 Quote:Mercury-Redstone 1 (MR-1) was the first Mercury-Redstone uncrewed flight test in Project Mercury and the first attempt to launch a Mercury spacecraft with the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle.
Intended to be an uncrewed sub-orbital spaceflight, it was launched on November 21, 1960 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
The launch failed in abnormal fashion: immediately after the Mercury-Redstone rocket started to move, it shut itself down and settled back on the pad, after which the capsule jettisoned its escape rocket and deployed its recovery parachutes. The failure has been referred to as the "four-inch flight", for the approximate distance traveled by the launch vehicle.
Quote:In the end, all that had been launched was the escape rocket. However, the fully fueled and powered-up Redstone was now sitting on LC-5 with nothing securing it to the pad. Various other dangers existed as well, such as the capsule's retrorocket package and the range safety destruct charges. Furthermore, the capsule's main and reserve parachutes were hanging down the side of the rocket, threatening to tip it over if they caught enough wind; this did not occur, however, as the weather conditions were favorable. Amid the panicked atmosphere in the control room, the launch team was unable to come up with quick and viable options to rectify the situation. Flight director Chris Kraft rejected several unsafe interventions, including using a rifle to shoot holes in the booster's propellant tanks to depressurize them.