Large Transport; Low Wing; 2 Turbojet Eng
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP); Flight Crew Instrument; Flight Crew Multiengine
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 180; Flight Crew Total 21000; Flight Crew Type 3451
Communication Breakdown
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Weight And Balance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Fuel Issue
Flight Crew Returned To Gate
Procedure; Human Factors; Environment - Non Weather Related
Due to a crew misconnect; I was reassigned to fly Aircraft X on [date] from ZZZ. I accepted release 2 of the flight plan for routing to arrive at destination with 1:16 REMF (Remaining Fuel). We blocked out 22 minutes late and proceeded towards runway XXR. On initial contact with ZZZ Ground Control; we were informed to contact Clearance Delivery for a reroute. The reroute [had to avoid a rocket launch that was occurring near our original route of flight]. I knew we didn't have the fuel for that reroute and told ATC we could not accept the new routing. Delivery took a few minutes to see if we could get something more acceptable and ultimately came back with the offered reroute as the only option we had. We had to back to the gate to get a little more than 10;000 pounds of fuel. The new route added 450 NM; 1 hour and 11 minutes additional flying time and 8;924 lbs more fuel burn. Result was that after refueling; we departed the gate 82 minutes late. [Load Planning] could not send us final weights due to [Operations] not closing out the seat map which turned out to be an IT issue further delaying us on the ground. The original seat map apparently could not be reinstated even though I told dispatch that we didn't lose any passengers during the refueling. The word I received from ZZZ Operations was that [Load Planning] refused to take any verbal updates that there was no change on the seat map. The normal seat map system was locked out after so many repeat attempts forcing them to manually input the information into [the program]. Problem with that is that not very many people know how to do that in [the program] today. Ultimately; it was a supervisor that manually updated [the program] that allowed us to finally get our final weights. The rocket launch went off on schedule as we saw it from about 160NM away. We arrived at destination 142 minutes late. The concern I have is the awareness of the planned rocket launch on the Dispatch side of the equation. I would think that this was not a surprise and that we did not fully plan for this event is troubling.
Air Carrier Captain reported that Dispatch failed to plan the flight around a scheduled rocket launch; necessitating a reroute.