Crew Dragon won’t be flying today, and after nearly three-and-a-half hours of watching NASA TV until the weather-related scrub of the launch, I have two very important critiques.
First, the new SpaceX-dominated regime of launch coverage desperately needs to learn that not every single second needs to be filled with videos and/or chatter. At one point, they interviewed Elon Musk who made a point of saying that they made many decisions thinking about creating a launch system which would inspire a new generation of astronauts and engineers. Sometimes the way you do that is to let the scene do the inspiring, not fill every waking moment with a lesson. The old NASA TV regime knew that sometimes you can just let the sights and sounds play, often for minutes at a time.
Second, I don’t know whether it was the decision of NASA or of SpaceX to get rid of the verbal “go/no go” poll but that decision absolutely must be reversed immediately.