Space rocket crashes in flames after accidental launch | Hacker News Reader

Space rocket crashes in flames after accidental launch

theguardian.com

29 pointsavivallssa16 comments

Static test became a dynamic test. Bad look for sure, flight was most definitely not terminated intentionally and the rocket, still full of fuel, crashed back down to earth after multiple engine failures and exploded. This happened in a relatively populated area and there the resulting overpressure definitely at least broke some windows in a relatively dense metro.

It’s not clear if Chinese rockets even have flight termination systems. Russian rockets don’t.

It's fine. The Chinese launch from the west of the country, so it'd never fall on anythi... oh.

Less "accidental launch" and more "failure of the bits that were securing the rocket for a static test."

What’s the distinction?

What broke.

There is some indication that the failure point was in the rocket’s structure itself. So, the bits doing the securing may have worked fine, but the rocket just ripped itself off the pad and left the bolted-down bits behind.

Either way, a very embarrassing engineering and operational failure.

[dupe]

Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40837229

You left the most important part out of the title.

"accidental launch" - I am no rocket scientist, but that sounds bad.

I was curious how often this happens. I couldn’t find many examples, and they’re all military:

In 2022 India accidentally fired a missile at Pakistan: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/indias-inadverten...

In 1970 the USAF accidentally launched a missile carrying nuclear material, and it landed in Mexico: https://unredacted.com/2015/07/13/usaf-accidentally-launched...

I’m 1967 the accidental launch of a rocket on board the USS Forrestal killed 134 people and nearly destroyed the ship: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/uss-forrestal-acciden...

I think 'accidental launch during a static fire test' deserves a distinction; the ignition wasn't accidental, the restraint failure was.

My brief searching couldn’t find any previous examples of a rocket escaping during a static fire test, or even of an orbital class rocket being launched accidentally, so this may be unique.

Why didn’t you add “Chinese” space rocket?

Hold down bolts from Temu that were pot metal plated plastic? :)

For those downvoting me for humour (no one one hurt), the explanation was, due to the rush it had no tie downs or top weights like a normal SpaceX engine test.

The only thing holding it down was scaffolding. If you look at the photos of the site, you can see it's just a weight bearing scaffold and not a engine load bearing structural brace. This is very hard to believe.

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