Accidental Launch in China. Oops.

[Marc_G]

Not quite sure how something like this happens.

https://spacenews.com/chinese-rocke...ults-in-unintended-launch-and-huge-explosion/

 

[SolarYellow]

E12s?

 

[neil_w]

Well there's something you don't see everyday.

 

[Rschub]

Looked like an upscale of some of Joe Bernard's early flights.

 

[les]

needed more duct tape to hold it down......

 

[Rob Campbell]

 

[Marc_G]

Brings to mind the Lunch/Launch oops:

 

[StreuB1]

 

[WizardOfBoz]

I thought that you'd tightened the hold down bolts, Chen!
Uhh, we outsourced that to Boeing, Wen.

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

No, I didn’t tie the rocket down — I thought you were supposed to tie it down!

 

[ReynoldsSlumber]

Gotta say, while it was under thrust, guidance and control looked like they were working just fine!

Love how in the second video the guy says "boom!" right before the boom arrives.

 

[tomsteve]

"Space Pioneer issued its own statement later, stating there was a structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench."

 

[lakeroadster]

Here's a video from a different vantage point. Check out the fireball when the rocket hits the ground... got to 6:38

China's SpaceX Copy Destroyed in Bizarre Test Failure - Booster Static Fire Becomes Flight Test

 

[KenECoyote]

Retention clamps were apparently bought off Temu.

 

[ReynoldsSlumber]

China's SpaceX Copy Destroyed in Bizarre Test Failure - Booster Static Fire Becomes Flight Test

Love me some Scott Manley, but regarding the video title... One might say not that the test "failed" but rather that it succeeded way more than intended! Oh ha, a the end of the video, he did just that

 

[OzHybrid]

Not quite sure how something like this happens.

https://spacenews.com/chinese-rocke...ults-in-unintended-launch-and-huge-explosion/

Boeing bolted it down?

 

[lr64]

The Zhenzhou metropolitan area, something like 35 miles from Gyonge, center to center, is supposed to have a population of about 12 million. It's a good thing it didn't go there. Gongyi itself is supposed to have something like 800,000 people. Some of the footage from the Scott Manley video looks like it was taken from much closer, and it appears to have been taken from an urban area. Manley points out what appears to be a densely settled area only about 4 miles from what he says is the launch site. https://maps.app.goo.gl/GQZNcHLmtBP5Ubk38



If they were sure they could have kept it going, maybe they could have flown it east and dropped it in the ocean, but I suspect, under circumstances like that, there would be no way to be sure.

 

[BEC]

This sort of thing has happened before...at White Sands. The 8th Navy Viking sounding rocket (the first of the larger-diameter, shorter version) broke loose during an intended static test and was lost.....this was in June of 1952.

 

[OzHybrid]

This sort of thing has happened before...at White Sands. The 8th Navy Viking sounding rocket (the first of the larger-diameter, shorter version) broke loose during an intended static test and was lost.....this was in June of 1952.

Pity the Chinese didn't steal those documents and learn from them.

 

[BEC]

I'll bet even they aren't great at retrieving 70+ year old documents...

 

[rocket_troy]

This sort of thing has happened before...at White Sands. The 8th Navy Viking sounding rocket (the first of the larger-diameter, shorter version) broke loose during an intended static test and was lost.....this was in June of 1952.

Indeed. There's been an interesting conversation about that today on Arocket in the wake of that happened in China and the supposed causes of that Viking mishap.

TP

 

[BEC]

Indeed. There's been an interesting conversation about that today on Arocket in the wake of that happened in China and the supposed causes of that Viking mishap.

TP

I just re-read the chapter called "We Learn a Lesson" in Milt Rosen's The Viking Story, which tells the story of Viking 8's unintended flight. Structural failure of the part of the rocket bolted to the pad, caused by an unexpected set of conditions that occurred during the early portion of the static firing. Something like that might well have happened in China the other day....

After that, they went back to tying the Vikings down at four points for static fires, which they did before every flight as SpaceX has mostly done with Falcon 9s.

The same story is told more succinctly in the second Viking chapter ("Viking Fulfilled") in Gregory Kennedy's The Rockets and Missiles of White Sands Proving Ground 1945-1958. It looks as if he relied on the Rosen book for most of the details.

 

[Cape Byron]

Chinese bolts. Nuff said.

 

[OverTheTop]

Same same...

 

[Art Upton]

This sort of thing has happened before...at White Sands. The 8th Navy Viking sounding rocket (the first of the larger-diameter, shorter version) broke loose during an intended static test and was lost.....this was in June of 1952.

What about the V2 that landed in Mexico across the border?

 

[Marc_G]

What I don't understand is why a flight termination system wasn't engaged once the rocket was high enough to not destroy the pad complex.

 

[Rschub]

What I don't understand is why a flight termination system wasn't engaged once the rocket was high enough to not destroy the pad complex.

It, uhm, wasn't supposed to fly. Supposedly.

 

[Antares JS]

What I don't understand is why a flight termination system wasn't engaged once the rocket was high enough to not destroy the pad complex.

It was a static test and probably didn't have an FTS on it.

 

[KenECoyote]

They couldn't figure out the horrible instructions included with the test stand.

 

[Rschub]

It's that last step, where you tighten all the bolts you previously installed loosely that trips up many people.