The fuel leaks are the most serious glitches. There was also a crack in the insulating foam and what engineers believe to be a faulty sensor telling them that one of the
There was a time back in the early 1960s when NASA was having trouble with the Atlas booster rocket. The first two Mercury astronauts went into space using a modified Redstone rocket — an ICBM that could carry a nuclear warhead. It was slated to carry all seven original astronauts on suborbital missions to test out the hardware before orbital missions began using a much more powerful Atlas booster.
But the Atlas was an experimental rocket. So when NASA was forced to accelerate its plans to put an American in orbit after the Russians sent Yuri Gagarin into space, NASA knew it had to speed up the development program.
Each astronaut was a test pilot and knew the drill; new aircraft always go through a shakedown period where they frequently crash. The Atlas was no different.
