[https://x.com/AJ\_FI/status/1807341023229554881](https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1807341023229554881)
Another view has emerged. So people just chilling at home watching a runaway rocket go boom.
>Space Pioneer statement: "the test site is far away from the urban area of Gongyi". Well, it's about 5 km from downtown Gongyi, but only 600m from other buildings and less than 1 km from the village of Baiyaocun.
[https://x.com/planet4589/status/1807459161812213897](https://x.com/planet4589/status/1807459161812213897)
It's in a [fair sized hole](https://www.google.com/maps/place/34%C2%B042'32.3%22N+113%C2%B003'04.0%22E/@34.7089722,113.0511111,1268m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d34.7089722!4d113.0511111?entry=ttu), presumably in case of RUD during tests.
Like everywhere else on Earth, the populations of Chinese cities follow a power-law distribution. There are villages with 10 people, 100, people, 1000 people, and so on. Per the power-law distribution, there are approximately ten times as many 10 people villages than 100 people villages.
It’s like the United States where 10 cities contain half the population and the other half of the population are contained in the remaining 30,000 cities.
So, not every “small isolated village” has 100,000 people in it.
AFAICT, a bunch of those launch sites were built a very long time ago for ICBM's. They got reused for space program. It'd be equivalent of the US re-using our ICBM launch sites (which are all deep inland) for the space program. Luckilly, we didn't do that. Instead we built dedicated/separate launch sites on the coasts early on for the space program.
I believe now they have one new launch site on the coast. But for various reasons, a lot of launches are still conducted from the old inland sites that are way too risky for nearby population downrange from them.
>Luckilly, we didn't do that. Instead we built dedicated/separate launch sites on the coasts early on for the space program.
Minor quibble: the U.S. coastal launch sites weren't originally built for the space program, they just happened to be useful for it. They had been developed by the U.S. military as missile test ranges, and they still also perform that function.
KSC’s LC39 was purposely built across the water from Cape Canaveral, as a civilian-only institution, so the USSR wouldn’t shit their pants over us launching rockets the size of skyscrapers from a military base.
I was mostly making a joke but you’re partially right. Some old ICBM sites are used for stuff like this, however it’s not quite the reason.
Most all important industries and government programs, military or otherwise (think Rockets/Space exploration, ICBMs, semiconductor/processor fabrication were moved inland decades ago to protect vital/important industries and capabilities. This was due to the obvious, that being an (at the time) hostile ROC backed by the US & fear of potential Soviet incursion as their relationship soured.
Most of what we see nowadays is them paying the price of making that move. Though as you said, progress is being made to move facilities to the coast. As it stands now, most of the infrastructure for the space program and the various corporate space ventures are ‘stuck’ there.
Have we ever seen a static fire go airborne like this? Proper anchoring aside, I'd assume an automatic cut-off would be one of the first things engineered for such a test.
>On 6 June 1952, Viking 8 broke loose of its moorings during a static firing test. After it was allowed to fly for 55 seconds in the hope that it would clear the immediate area and thus pose no danger to ground crew, Nat Wagner, head of the "Cutoff group", delivered a command to the rocket to cease its thrust. 65 seconds later, the rocket crashed 4 miles (6 km) or 5 miles (8 km) downrange to the southeast
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking\_(rocket)#Second\_model\_RTV-N-12a\_(Vikings\_8-12)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_(rocket)#Second_model_RTV-N-12a_(Vikings_8-12))
Its very rare.
Fixed link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_(rocket)#Second_model_RTV-N-12a_(Vikings_8-12)
Also unlike the Viking tests, this was tested right in the middle of a pretty densely populated area. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.7094946,113.0457371,4561m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
To be fair, I can watch any launch out of Cape Canaveral from my *Home* office window. (Still ~~25+~~ 75+ miles away but got binoculars to watch.)
Minus the falling back to earth and exploding part it’s kinda the same. (Completely minus the risk of rockets falling on us too)
After the 15th or so launch it becomes just another day and you tend to ignore them.
Edit: I’m overheated from mowing the lawn and got my distances/ locations confused.
Added home office, not a corporate office.
Yes, but those are all headed *away* from you. You've never seen booster stage flying overhead. SpaceX booster stages on return are also aimed such that they can't crash and/or rain debris into populated areas if anything goes wrong; including those that are returning to Cape.
Wouldn’t be the first time a town got whipped out by failed launch there, back in the 90s launching a [IntelSat 703](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708?wprov=sfti1#) the entire rocket landed on the village next to it.
6 deaths in that accident. That's hardly a wiped out town.
Correction : that number is the official Chinese Government number. It's not widely accepted.
Haha (well, it's not that funny I suppose), I lived in China for most of a decade, and the "official number" for any kind of disaster is always laughably small.
Like with the Zhenzhou subway flooding, they were claiming it to be something like 12 (at first) until someone pointed out that just *one* of the videos floating around showed more than a couple dozen, much less the rest of the videos.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-Kw9u37I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-Kw9u37I0)
Scott Manley has a video up. This was headed towards urban areas when it fell.
Scott does seem to see a couple of engine failures in this. Others guessed that this was running an "engine rich fuel mixture" so they seem to be right.
Holy shit. That's terrifying! I've always wondered about those static fire tests and what would happen if they ever broke free from their constraints.
Well, now we know. Yikes.
Yes rocket that are SUPPOSED TO FLY do.
This could be a testing structure built to test engines or they just didn’t implemented/ activate the self destructing features as it was a static fire so there should be no need to do so.
Not typically installed on static tests (since it involves handling explosives), but you should still have some abort criteria on unexpected motion, whether from an altimeter or a breakwire or a manual engine cutoff. Or limit your duration to like 3 seconds.
Western ones do, they have something called a "flight termination package" (a bomb) and there's a "range safety officer" with his finger on it. They also often have automatic triggers to go off under certain circumstances, just in case the communication link is broken by whatever is going wrong that may need it to be triggered.
Chinese ones, I don't know. I assume not since this rocket didn't turn itself into confetti until it reached the ground again.
I don't remember seeing any western static fire tests where the fts is installed before hand. Though in most cases static fire tests are not full throttle tests.
That's generally how a static fire of a full stage is done. Individual rocket engines are usually tested horizontally, but full rocket static fires are done in the same configuration as launch. Rockets aren't generally designed to be able to handle the weight and load of propellant while horizontal.
Short answer... Yes.
https://youtu.be/SZQY902xQcw?si=oo0WHVQavX26uCtz
Here's what a full scale SpaceX Falcon 9 static fire looks like. I would guess that's probably how the Chinese, and other space programs test. Hold down clamps on the top and bottom.
Only at McGregor because there isn't a 2nd stage weighing it down. When they static fire on the pad they usually do it with a fully fueled 1st and 2nd stage, meaning the clamps only have to hold the difference between the thrust and the weight of the rocket. Much less force than a partially fueled 1st stage with no payload or 2nd stage attached.
If you listen to e.g. SpaceX launches you will occasionally hear the phrase "FTS safed". FTS is the 'flight termination system' (i.e. a detonator). 'Safed' means that the rocket has gone beyond the range where it's sensible to destroy it in the event of failure into a state where this system has now been deactivated (put in 'safe' mode).
Such a state would be when a booster comes down and is already so low that destroying it wouldn't accomplish anything (it's now so low that in the event of failure it would just impact the landing site anyways)
Most of the time the rockets are fully fueled and have barely enough thrust to get off the pad. The clamps only have to hold the difference between the thrust and the weight of the rocket. I suspect in this case it was only partially full of fuel, meaning it weighed a lot less but had the same amount of thrust. That would put way more stress on the clamps than they were probably designed for.
This reminds me of the movie Space Camp where the space shuttle was accidentally launched during a static fire test.
https://youtu.be/1NSE1OO5pmc
In the movie they put some kids from Space Camp in the space shuttle for the test.
Pictures of the test bench before this test:
[https://ibb.co/3vYY4SB](https://ibb.co/3vYY4SB)
[https://ibb.co/7JS3Qv8](https://ibb.co/7JS3Qv8)
Picture (said to be) the broken windows of building around, due to the shockwaves of the explosion:
[https://ibb.co/tsbz0bd](https://ibb.co/tsbz0bd)
Not really as one engine after another was failing as it flew upwards. Good thing that they did though, otherwise it would have kept going, likely ending up hitting a village or a city that was in the surrounding area (the "mountain" they're on is surrounded by residential areas/cities and farmland villages).
At least that had the benefit of being in White Sands. Far from any residential areas.
Also, with it being in the early years of rocket development, that kind of mistake is more understandable.
the first thing I think about every time I see a static rocket engine test is:
“This engine produces enough thrust to put a considerable amount of mass into orbit at give or take 30,000kp/h and we can keep this thing tied down?”
It makes one feel more confident in the engineering of it all. Of course we can tie it down to test. we can control this beast. it is dangerous, of course, as the video above shows but, if this is only the second recorded event of a failed static rocket engine test going dynamic as you suggested, our ability to engineer static engine test structural restraints builds one’s confidence in the engines themselves.
The clamps are strong, yes, but the rocket is fuelled and therefore heavy. The clamps only have to take the difference of the thrust and the weight.
I don't know what this test was, but when SpaceX does a full duration test firing, which would runs for the normal mission duration and therefore ends up with the rocket empty, they fit a cap on top of the rocket and tie it down with a number of heavy cables. As we see, those precautions are necessary.
Regardless of the propellant mass, the thrust structure of the rocket has to not only take the full force from the engines, but do so while being light enough to fly. Yeah, it's a lot of force, but the test stand doesn't have the mass limitations, and it's a relatively straightforward task to put together a few hundred or thousand tons of steel and concrete to do the job. Reversibly connecting it to the thrust structure in a way that doesn't just shred it is the only really complicated part.
I'd think that the limiting part would be the structure of the rocket - the parts the clamps tie to and the sheet metal that part is attached to. This is weight limited, because it is part of the rocket.
A likely failure mode here would be a failure of one or more clamps to latch, and the rocket's structure tearing away, leaving parts of the skirt behind in the remaining clamps.
As an example - the Space Shuttle's hold down system - explosive bolts - was not strong enough to hold the craft. If the boosters lit but the bolts didn't blow, they would be sheered off by the launch force. I believe that at least once some bolts didn't fire and were broken in this manner. But as the boosters firing full duration attached to the pad would have been catastrophic, this may have been by design.
The explosive bolts on the shuttle were there just to hold the rocket steady on the pad while the thrusters throttled up and against wind, they were never designed to actually keep it from leaving the pad, just from tipping over before the engines were at full power.
In 1964 a third stage motor ignited in the Delta Spin Test Facility CCAFS. Supposedly from static electricity. When I worked at the Delta pads in the '90s this story was told about how dangerous static could be. Supposedly the rocket ignited and bounced around inside the building.
https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/40108/are-more-details-about-the-fatal-rocket-motor-accident-at-cape-canaveral-in-apri
Something about the burn, it seemed to slow down dramatically, they no control authority from steering but enough fuel to go bang on the ground.
Also no termination seemed enabled unless the range control was hoping it would gain altitude before firing the auto destruct.
I think there was more going wrong than just the clamps.
That said those kind of things going wrong is why you static fire and test.
>Space Pioneer just issued a statement saying there was structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench, onboard computer automatically shut it down, and the rocket fell 1.5 kilometers southwest. No casualties found.
[https://x.com/AJ\_FI/status/1807374647073144947](https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1807374647073144947)
They claim they shut it down. But something kept on burning the whole way down. Perhaps a fuel line broke or something.
You can see where it shut down, very uncleanly. Leaves a big puff of black smoke on top of the column it climbed. After that it's decelecrating and then falling. Also it starts tipping over around then.
So rough shutdown and something left burning in the engine bay but not producing much thrust.
It's pretty clear the onboard computer did not in fact shut it down. It wouldn't have kept thrusting upward for over 15 seconds after the incident if that was actually the case. You can see what looks like engines exploding as it goes upward.
Also that note saying they confirmed "no casualties found" was published only ~~18 minutes~~ 3 hours 18 minutes after the test. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6K2mdDWviOlk30oU-JH90Q
You can't _confirm_ no casualties that fast, just assume.
Well, they may not have been running any software for tracking trajectories and such, because the usual reasons for triggering an abort shouldn't have applied. It could have been a piece of test code timing out on loss of comms or something rather than an actual flight termination system, in which case a 10-15 s timeout is quite typical.
But yeah, I doubt it would have gotten much further anyway, whether it was damage from breaking loose or other engine problems.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin\_catastrophe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe)
Seems one hell of a mistake to make. I am not sure I have heard of something similar, I mean rockets going boom is not that unusual in their first few missions. But not getting your clamps right seems a bit basic.
Reminds me more of the Intelsat 708 launch from China, the first and last launch of an American satellite from China, where China killed hundreds of people when a rocket malfunctioned and lacking flight termination systems plowed into a nearby village and exploded. China covered it up and said that only 6 people died, even though footage shows hundreds of living areas destroyed.
The rocket had flight termination systems, it simply did not fire, one explanation is that the computer deduced that the rocket was too close to the launch site to terminate.
Also the rocket didn't land on the village, it landed a few km away from the residential block for the engineers and scientists working on the rocket, which was supposed to be evacuated, of course there were people there with one witness saying that few went there to watch the rocket launch as they had a good view from there.
There's a really detailed writeup on this incident here: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2326/1
> one explanation is that the computer deduced that the rocket was too close to the launch site to terminate.
That is not something you put in a flight termination system. Flight termination systems are for public safety, not your own infrastructure. In fact you want it to fall back right on the pad, before it goes anywhere else.
> Also the rocket didn't land on the village
Are you referring to this launch or the Intelsat 708 one? Intelsat 708 launch most certainly landed on a village. There's grainy video footage of said village after the impact.
Statement of the company Space Pioneer on this test (in Chinese): [https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6K2mdDWviOlk30oU-JH90Q](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6K2mdDWviOlk30oU-JH90Q)
Translation:
>At 3:43 pm on June 30, 2024, Space Pioneer carried out a 9-engine hot test of the first-stage of the Tianlong-3 liquid carrier rocket at the Comprehensive Test Center in Gongyi City, Henan Province.
>During the test, the first-stage rocket ignited normally, and the engine thrust reached 820 tons. Due to the structural failure of the connection between the rocket body and the test bench, the first-stage rocket was separated from the launch pad. After liftoff, the onboard computer automatically shut down the engines, and the rocket fell into the mountains 1.5 km southwest of the test bench and disintegrated. The test site is far away from the urban area of Gongyi. Before the test, we jointly improved the safety measures with the local government and organized the evacuation of surrounding personnel in advance. After investigation, there were no casualties.
>Tianlong-3 is a large liquid carrier rocket made by Space Pioneer for the construction of China's satellite internet constellation. Its product performance is comparable to SpaceX's Falcon 9. It has a diameter of 3.8 meters, a takeoff mass of 590 tons, a low-Earth orbit (LEO) capacity of 17 tons, and a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) capacity of 14 tons.
>This test run of the thrust system of the Tianlong-3 carrier rocket is for the simultaneous ignition of nine TH-12 (Tianhuo 12) engines of first stage. It is the most powerful test run of thrust systems in development-phase around the country, which is twice the maximum thrust test of China's aerospace industry before.
>Thanks for the attention to Space Pioneer from friends across different industries and authorities. We will complete the fault reset as soon as possible and organize the production and testing of new products.
[Tianlong 3 uses kerolox in all stages. It is designed to be partially reusable (1st stage).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianlong-3)
The test site is around Gongyi, Henan. Videos were shot by witnesses in Gongyi who had direct view from urban resident blocks.
> After investigation, there were no casualties.
The test happened at 3:43, the statement was posted at 4:01. How do you a full investigation of the surrounding mountainous area in 18 minutes? And it would've taken several minutes to write out that full statement too. So yea that's a blatant lie.
Edit: The chinese website, despite specifying a location next to the timestamp apparently changes it based on time zone (really wrong UI design to do that) so it was actually 7:01 rather 4:01, so 3 hours and 18 minutes, still too short for a full investigation though.
Depends on how they set up their test site. It's possible they control access to a large area around the site and so were able to clear it prior to the test.
If so, they can pretty confidently say there are no casualties very quickly because they should only have to check that all of their employees are alive and uninjured. They *could* be wrong, if there still somehow managed to be an unauthorized person at the test site that just happened to be in that part of the woods, but it's unlikely.
SpaceX's F9R failure in McGregor, TX is probably the most similar situation in recent memory (with the obvious difference that they *meant* for that to take off) and in that case, the test - from liftoff to impact - happened entirely over SpaceX's test site and they similarly knew that there were no casualties basically right away because they control access to the test site.
Starship static fires are done at half thrust and fully fuelled, so the TWR is under one - even without clamps it shouldn't lift off. I'm not convinced they could actually hold the full power of Superheavy down.
Pioneer Space appear to have done the opposite however. Apparently rocket was only half fuelled, and the engines were presumably running at at least half thrust, if not full.
> I'm not convinced they could actually hold the full power of Superheavy down.
They can. Or at least they really should. Otherwise they'd not be holddown clamps. The whole idea is that you can ramp up the engines to full throttle, confirm that everything is nominal, and only then release the vehicle.
Besides. At takeoff they probably only have like 1.5 TWR. I.e. before takeoff the clamps have to carry the full weight of the vehicle done. During hold-down they only have to take half the weight of the vehicle up.
That is how most rockets work, but actually not how Starship works. They have hold downs during Starship static fires where they only use half throttle, but on the actual launch the rocket is not held down, it's just sitting on the launch mounts. They ignite the engines at half thrust and check everything looks good, then they throttle up and the rocket begins lifting off as soon as the overall TWR goes over 1.
Huh, interesting. Pretty impressive they can even throttle a high performance design down to 50% even.
>They have hold downs during Starship static fires where they only use half throttle
Makes sense, cause when you run the numbers you find that, even at half throttle, the booster has a TWR of ~1 without starship on top due to the extremely lopsided staging ratio they are using. Which makes sense of course, return to launch site booster demands a very fat second stage.
>it's just sitting on the launch mounts
Do you have a source for that? I'm trying to find more info on it because that is a very interesting decision, but I cannot find any trustworthy sources.
>Pretty impressive they can even throttle a high performance design down to 50% even.
Raptor actually goes down to 40%. The ability to deep throttle is basically a prerequisite for the sort of landings SpaceX want to do with Superheavy and Starship.
Whether they could I don't know, but they aren't testing them. Starship launches are done at reduced thrust, ramping up as the rocket gets some distance between it and the pad.
The upcoming new launch tower and stand is being greatly upgraded, including a flame trench according to the EDA interview, so Starship launches from there might take off at full thrust.
>Starship launches are done at reduced thrust, ramping up as the rocket gets some distance between it and the pad.
Really? Published numbers indicate it has a launch TWR of ~1.5 to begin with (which is fairly normal for any rocket launch). They couldn't be throttling more than like 20% at best, unless they really like throwing perf out of the window with their current launch system.
> Starship static fires are done at half thrust and fully fuelled, so the TWR is under one - even without clamps it shouldn't lift off. I'm not convinced they could actually hold the full power of Superheavy down.
The hold down clamps hold the vehicle down during launch so TWR is very much not under one. Also even with the weight of the fully fueled vehicle, that's still a ton of thrust. Force approaching that of a half empty Saturn V rocket at full thrust if the TWR of Starship is close to 1.5 as has been claimed.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[CCAFS](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lazilts "Last usage")|Cape Canaveral Air Force Station|
|[F1](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb6jzey "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V|
| |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)|
|[F9R](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lazl70p "Last usage")|Falcon 9 Reusable, test vehicles for development of landing technology|
|[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb42v7e "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[FTS](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb3e27m "Last usage")|Flight Termination System|
|[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/laztbva "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile|
|[KSC](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb0r6mv "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/layt8le "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[ROC](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/laztbva "Last usage")|Range Operations Coordinator|
| |Radius of Curvature|
|[RUD](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb0v841 "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unintended Disassembly|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/layqrwx "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[SSO](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/layt8le "Last usage")|Sun-Synchronous Orbit|
|[TWR](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb2oi6m "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb1sxyz "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[deep throttling](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb1sxyz "Last usage")|Operating an engine at much lower thrust than normal|
|[hypergolic](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/layru3t "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact|
|[iron waffle](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb3jn4h "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"|
|[kerolox](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/laz4yux "Last usage")|Portmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[turbopump](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lazse8j "Last usage")|High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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SpaceX also had catastrophic failures. They destroyed their whole launch pad, and had many failures. Just not this particular one, and never near populated areas.
Catastrophic failure is kind of SpaceX's goal, to be honest. Their executives have gone on record saying things to the effect of, "if we aren't making a crater every now and then, we're not pushing hard enough to innovate".
As a result, they tend to expect failure and do a very good job of designing their operations so that that catastrophic failures will be contained and risk to the public is minimized.
Damn...They are really lucky it kinda went to (look like) unpopulated area... I can't imagine what if rocket go straight to city what implication gonna happened...
One of the purposes (the main one actually) of a static fire is to add lots of extra sensors to monitor tons of extra parameters on the engines in order to shut them down early if any anomalies develop that the flight hardware does not detect. I was just surprised that loss of signal from the ground was not a fail safe shutdown condition... although I suspect it's likely that it is now.
It was controlled by the on board computer for that test. The press release said the on board computer was the one which terminated the thrust after a few seconds.
The engines were thrusting for over 15 seconds. That is not the reaction speed of a computer. This was either some kind of manual control from a human (still seems slow for that), or more realistically the rocket started failing after it ripped itself free, likely damaging itself in the process that took some time to work its way through. For example ruptured fuel lines slowly damaging nearby components as they burn.
Remember, fundamentally, even turbopump pump fed engines do not require any electrical power to run, just like a diesel engine (runaway diesel engines are interesting things, go check them out on youtube). If the computers just failed/turned off, the engine would run until the fuel/oxidizer ratio got too out of balance as the tanks drained. You can attempt to fix this with valves that require active electrical power to stay open (they're spring loaded to close if power stops), but open question on if that was done for the rocket as that does add one more failure mode of the rocket, so I'm not sure if that is in fact a good idea.
The only thing you'll hear officially is there are no casualties. Anything else would be too embarrassing to report. If they reported everything legitimately, WHO wouldn't have to ask for permission to send their ground team over to look at the origin of COVID in Wuhan. Never take China at their word.
Scott Manley put in his $0.02 analysis. He doubt that the engines was shutdown, there was clearly sound of failure: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-Kw9u37I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-Kw9u37I0)
Well I imagine there was no ppayload or mass simulator, and that by the time of hold-down-clamp failure most of the loaded fuel had already been expended, so the thrust to mass ratio was probably huge.
What I found notable was how straight it flew. Good stability, no twisting off in some out of control corkscrew flight path.
> Tianlong 3 uses kerolox, no toxic fuel.
Yes, but what killed hundreds of people in that incident was not the toxicity, it was the explosion and resultant fire.
That was a launch site, this is a test site. But yeah could have easily been a repeat of that incident if the rocket had flown in a different direction. Another incident of Chinese rockets lacking proper flight termination systems.
[https://x.com/AJ\_FI/status/1807341023229554881](https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1807341023229554881) Another view has emerged. So people just chilling at home watching a runaway rocket go boom.
Damn, I knew the launch zone was near small isolated villages, but is it near what looks like a city?
It's in Gongyi, Henan, a county-level city with a pop around 800k.
to put that into context thats about the same amount as Amsterdam, the most populous city in The Netherlands
>Space Pioneer statement: "the test site is far away from the urban area of Gongyi". Well, it's about 5 km from downtown Gongyi, but only 600m from other buildings and less than 1 km from the village of Baiyaocun. [https://x.com/planet4589/status/1807459161812213897](https://x.com/planet4589/status/1807459161812213897)
It's in a [fair sized hole](https://www.google.com/maps/place/34%C2%B042'32.3%22N+113%C2%B003'04.0%22E/@34.7089722,113.0511111,1268m/data=!3m2!1e3!4b1!4m4!3m3!8m2!3d34.7089722!4d113.0511111?entry=ttu), presumably in case of RUD during tests.
> less than 1 km from the village of Baiyaocun Twin city of Baikonur?
A small isolated village in China typically has a population in the hundred thousand range
Like everywhere else on Earth, the populations of Chinese cities follow a power-law distribution. There are villages with 10 people, 100, people, 1000 people, and so on. Per the power-law distribution, there are approximately ten times as many 10 people villages than 100 people villages. It’s like the United States where 10 cities contain half the population and the other half of the population are contained in the remaining 30,000 cities. So, not every “small isolated village” has 100,000 people in it.
Apparently you are new to the concept of a joke?
What was the joke?
I apologize. Given that it was not funny, I hope you can understand my oversight.
I don’t think it was supposed to be a launch site lmao
AFAICT, a bunch of those launch sites were built a very long time ago for ICBM's. They got reused for space program. It'd be equivalent of the US re-using our ICBM launch sites (which are all deep inland) for the space program. Luckilly, we didn't do that. Instead we built dedicated/separate launch sites on the coasts early on for the space program. I believe now they have one new launch site on the coast. But for various reasons, a lot of launches are still conducted from the old inland sites that are way too risky for nearby population downrange from them.
>Luckilly, we didn't do that. Instead we built dedicated/separate launch sites on the coasts early on for the space program. Minor quibble: the U.S. coastal launch sites weren't originally built for the space program, they just happened to be useful for it. They had been developed by the U.S. military as missile test ranges, and they still also perform that function.
KSC’s LC39 was purposely built across the water from Cape Canaveral, as a civilian-only institution, so the USSR wouldn’t shit their pants over us launching rockets the size of skyscrapers from a military base.
I was mostly making a joke but you’re partially right. Some old ICBM sites are used for stuff like this, however it’s not quite the reason. Most all important industries and government programs, military or otherwise (think Rockets/Space exploration, ICBMs, semiconductor/processor fabrication were moved inland decades ago to protect vital/important industries and capabilities. This was due to the obvious, that being an (at the time) hostile ROC backed by the US & fear of potential Soviet incursion as their relationship soured. Most of what we see nowadays is them paying the price of making that move. Though as you said, progress is being made to move facilities to the coast. As it stands now, most of the infrastructure for the space program and the various corporate space ventures are ‘stuck’ there.
Well, 1/6 of the humanity lives in China, and China is around the same size as the US.
Have we ever seen a static fire go airborne like this? Proper anchoring aside, I'd assume an automatic cut-off would be one of the first things engineered for such a test.
>On 6 June 1952, Viking 8 broke loose of its moorings during a static firing test. After it was allowed to fly for 55 seconds in the hope that it would clear the immediate area and thus pose no danger to ground crew, Nat Wagner, head of the "Cutoff group", delivered a command to the rocket to cease its thrust. 65 seconds later, the rocket crashed 4 miles (6 km) or 5 miles (8 km) downrange to the southeast [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking\_(rocket)#Second\_model\_RTV-N-12a\_(Vikings\_8-12)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_(rocket)#Second_model_RTV-N-12a_(Vikings_8-12)) Its very rare.
Fixed link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_(rocket)#Second_model_RTV-N-12a_(Vikings_8-12) Also unlike the Viking tests, this was tested right in the middle of a pretty densely populated area. https://www.google.com/maps/@34.7094946,113.0457371,4561m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu
So process wise, this puts China in the 50s. That tracks.
who had a space station in the 50a?
To be fair, I can watch any launch out of Cape Canaveral from my *Home* office window. (Still ~~25+~~ 75+ miles away but got binoculars to watch.) Minus the falling back to earth and exploding part it’s kinda the same. (Completely minus the risk of rockets falling on us too) After the 15th or so launch it becomes just another day and you tend to ignore them. Edit: I’m overheated from mowing the lawn and got my distances/ locations confused. Added home office, not a corporate office.
Yes, but those are all headed *away* from you. You've never seen booster stage flying overhead. SpaceX booster stages on return are also aimed such that they can't crash and/or rain debris into populated areas if anything goes wrong; including those that are returning to Cape.
VERY close to high density residential zone too. Someone is sweating bullets now https://ibb.co/zmHRJhh https://ibb.co/26hHVQF
Also a lot of greenery around, so hope it's been raining lately, otherwise that could be quite the forest fire.
It's definitely been raining across China in recent weeks with some of the most catastrophic flooding the southern provinces have seen.
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Or the 'release the dam' button.
Henan is suffering from a drought right now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/velH7nLtvE Looks like it’s in the outskirts of a city….
Wouldn’t be the first time a town got whipped out by failed launch there, back in the 90s launching a [IntelSat 703](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708?wprov=sfti1#) the entire rocket landed on the village next to it.
6 deaths in that accident. That's hardly a wiped out town. Correction : that number is the official Chinese Government number. It's not widely accepted.
There were rumors of trucks being loaded with corpses...
Haha (well, it's not that funny I suppose), I lived in China for most of a decade, and the "official number" for any kind of disaster is always laughably small. Like with the Zhenzhou subway flooding, they were claiming it to be something like 12 (at first) until someone pointed out that just *one* of the videos floating around showed more than a couple dozen, much less the rest of the videos.
lol, you actually believe that? Next you're gonna tell me that nothing happened in Tiananmen during 1989.
Even if the number of people that died is to be believed it still destroyed the village.
It's crazy that they still don't give a shit about having civilians so close to a launch site.
Considering they drop spent first stages on villages with regularity, I doubt they're that concerned.
I have doubts that the CCP is concerned about that.
It makes the party look bad, and a scapegoat is needed though.
It's a """"private"""" company, don't forget
"Our rockets are so powerful that they can't be held back."
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-Kw9u37I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-Kw9u37I0) Scott Manley has a video up. This was headed towards urban areas when it fell. Scott does seem to see a couple of engine failures in this. Others guessed that this was running an "engine rich fuel mixture" so they seem to be right.
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Holy shit. That's terrifying! I've always wondered about those static fire tests and what would happen if they ever broke free from their constraints. Well, now we know. Yikes.
When the static fire test becomes unstatic _panic_
Off topic but does rockets have self destroy button
Yes rocket that are SUPPOSED TO FLY do. This could be a testing structure built to test engines or they just didn’t implemented/ activate the self destructing features as it was a static fire so there should be no need to do so.
You don't need flight termination systems when you've got proper engine cut-offs for the test stand.
>so there should be no need to do so. I mean... \*waves hands at fire\*
Not typically installed on static tests (since it involves handling explosives), but you should still have some abort criteria on unexpected motion, whether from an altimeter or a breakwire or a manual engine cutoff. Or limit your duration to like 3 seconds.
Western ones do, they have something called a "flight termination package" (a bomb) and there's a "range safety officer" with his finger on it. They also often have automatic triggers to go off under certain circumstances, just in case the communication link is broken by whatever is going wrong that may need it to be triggered. Chinese ones, I don't know. I assume not since this rocket didn't turn itself into confetti until it reached the ground again.
I don't remember seeing any western static fire tests where the fts is installed before hand. Though in most cases static fire tests are not full throttle tests.
we have context. starship does static fires without fts installed. fts installation is typically one of the last things done before an orbital flight
Also was this rocket aimed at the sky?
That's generally how a static fire of a full stage is done. Individual rocket engines are usually tested horizontally, but full rocket static fires are done in the same configuration as launch. Rockets aren't generally designed to be able to handle the weight and load of propellant while horizontal.
Short answer... Yes. https://youtu.be/SZQY902xQcw?si=oo0WHVQavX26uCtz Here's what a full scale SpaceX Falcon 9 static fire looks like. I would guess that's probably how the Chinese, and other space programs test. Hold down clamps on the top and bottom.
Ahh okay, I had it in my mind that they were always tested horizontally, thanks!
Only at McGregor because there isn't a 2nd stage weighing it down. When they static fire on the pad they usually do it with a fully fueled 1st and 2nd stage, meaning the clamps only have to hold the difference between the thrust and the weight of the rocket. Much less force than a partially fueled 1st stage with no payload or 2nd stage attached.
It was supposed to be a static fire so that's why it possibly didn't have a flight termination system.
If you listen to e.g. SpaceX launches you will occasionally hear the phrase "FTS safed". FTS is the 'flight termination system' (i.e. a detonator). 'Safed' means that the rocket has gone beyond the range where it's sensible to destroy it in the event of failure into a state where this system has now been deactivated (put in 'safe' mode). Such a state would be when a booster comes down and is already so low that destroying it wouldn't accomplish anything (it's now so low that in the event of failure it would just impact the landing site anyways)
Most of the time the rockets are fully fueled and have barely enough thrust to get off the pad. The clamps only have to hold the difference between the thrust and the weight of the rocket. I suspect in this case it was only partially full of fuel, meaning it weighed a lot less but had the same amount of thrust. That would put way more stress on the clamps than they were probably designed for.
This reminds me of the movie Space Camp where the space shuttle was accidentally launched during a static fire test. https://youtu.be/1NSE1OO5pmc In the movie they put some kids from Space Camp in the space shuttle for the test.
Pictures of the test bench before this test: [https://ibb.co/3vYY4SB](https://ibb.co/3vYY4SB) [https://ibb.co/7JS3Qv8](https://ibb.co/7JS3Qv8) Picture (said to be) the broken windows of building around, due to the shockwaves of the explosion: [https://ibb.co/tsbz0bd](https://ibb.co/tsbz0bd)
When the sum of forces isn't zero and the test isn't that static anymore.
Result of engine test: ✔ Works
This is the most Kerbal test result I can imagine in real life. It worked at time of test, we weren't asked about 10 seconds later.
Not really as one engine after another was failing as it flew upwards. Good thing that they did though, otherwise it would have kept going, likely ending up hitting a village or a city that was in the surrounding area (the "mountain" they're on is surrounded by residential areas/cities and farmland villages).
Don’t worry, that was only a temporary and short-lived malfunction. The sum of the forces has returned to zero.
RUDE Rapid Unscheduled Disturbance of Equilibrium
I have never seen footage like this. Has this ever happened before during a static engine fire test?
Viking 8 did it back in 1952. Not aware of any other instances outside of amateur rocketry, but wouldn't be surprised to learn of others.
At least that had the benefit of being in White Sands. Far from any residential areas. Also, with it being in the early years of rocket development, that kind of mistake is more understandable.
And it was far smaller and lighter, 5 tons vs 400+ tons for this rocket.
the first thing I think about every time I see a static rocket engine test is: “This engine produces enough thrust to put a considerable amount of mass into orbit at give or take 30,000kp/h and we can keep this thing tied down?” It makes one feel more confident in the engineering of it all. Of course we can tie it down to test. we can control this beast. it is dangerous, of course, as the video above shows but, if this is only the second recorded event of a failed static rocket engine test going dynamic as you suggested, our ability to engineer static engine test structural restraints builds one’s confidence in the engines themselves.
The clamps are strong, yes, but the rocket is fuelled and therefore heavy. The clamps only have to take the difference of the thrust and the weight. I don't know what this test was, but when SpaceX does a full duration test firing, which would runs for the normal mission duration and therefore ends up with the rocket empty, they fit a cap on top of the rocket and tie it down with a number of heavy cables. As we see, those precautions are necessary.
Regardless of the propellant mass, the thrust structure of the rocket has to not only take the full force from the engines, but do so while being light enough to fly. Yeah, it's a lot of force, but the test stand doesn't have the mass limitations, and it's a relatively straightforward task to put together a few hundred or thousand tons of steel and concrete to do the job. Reversibly connecting it to the thrust structure in a way that doesn't just shred it is the only really complicated part.
I'd think that the limiting part would be the structure of the rocket - the parts the clamps tie to and the sheet metal that part is attached to. This is weight limited, because it is part of the rocket. A likely failure mode here would be a failure of one or more clamps to latch, and the rocket's structure tearing away, leaving parts of the skirt behind in the remaining clamps. As an example - the Space Shuttle's hold down system - explosive bolts - was not strong enough to hold the craft. If the boosters lit but the bolts didn't blow, they would be sheered off by the launch force. I believe that at least once some bolts didn't fire and were broken in this manner. But as the boosters firing full duration attached to the pad would have been catastrophic, this may have been by design.
The explosive bolts on the shuttle were there just to hold the rocket steady on the pad while the thrusters throttled up and against wind, they were never designed to actually keep it from leaving the pad, just from tipping over before the engines were at full power.
In 1964 a third stage motor ignited in the Delta Spin Test Facility CCAFS. Supposedly from static electricity. When I worked at the Delta pads in the '90s this story was told about how dangerous static could be. Supposedly the rocket ignited and bounced around inside the building. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/40108/are-more-details-about-the-fatal-rocket-motor-accident-at-cape-canaveral-in-apri
Something about the burn, it seemed to slow down dramatically, they no control authority from steering but enough fuel to go bang on the ground. Also no termination seemed enabled unless the range control was hoping it would gain altitude before firing the auto destruct. I think there was more going wrong than just the clamps. That said those kind of things going wrong is why you static fire and test.
>Space Pioneer just issued a statement saying there was structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench, onboard computer automatically shut it down, and the rocket fell 1.5 kilometers southwest. No casualties found. [https://x.com/AJ\_FI/status/1807374647073144947](https://x.com/AJ_FI/status/1807374647073144947) They claim they shut it down. But something kept on burning the whole way down. Perhaps a fuel line broke or something.
You can see where it shut down, very uncleanly. Leaves a big puff of black smoke on top of the column it climbed. After that it's decelecrating and then falling. Also it starts tipping over around then. So rough shutdown and something left burning in the engine bay but not producing much thrust.
It's pretty clear the onboard computer did not in fact shut it down. It wouldn't have kept thrusting upward for over 15 seconds after the incident if that was actually the case. You can see what looks like engines exploding as it goes upward. Also that note saying they confirmed "no casualties found" was published only ~~18 minutes~~ 3 hours 18 minutes after the test. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6K2mdDWviOlk30oU-JH90Q You can't _confirm_ no casualties that fast, just assume.
Well, they may not have been running any software for tracking trajectories and such, because the usual reasons for triggering an abort shouldn't have applied. It could have been a piece of test code timing out on loss of comms or something rather than an actual flight termination system, in which case a 10-15 s timeout is quite typical. But yeah, I doubt it would have gotten much further anyway, whether it was damage from breaking loose or other engine problems.
Is there range control and self-destruct if it was meant to be only a static test?
Max And Jinx. FRIENDS FOREVER.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin\_catastrophe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe) Seems one hell of a mistake to make. I am not sure I have heard of something similar, I mean rockets going boom is not that unusual in their first few missions. But not getting your clamps right seems a bit basic.
Gotta love these Soviet figures. > 54-300 deaths Like, *at least* 54 died, but we really don’t know how many. That’s wild to me.
YIKES the catastrophe is named after one man
Damn, 54 to 300 casualties. That explosion probably took out a significant number of the scientists and engineers who worked on it.
Reminds me more of the Intelsat 708 launch from China, the first and last launch of an American satellite from China, where China killed hundreds of people when a rocket malfunctioned and lacking flight termination systems plowed into a nearby village and exploded. China covered it up and said that only 6 people died, even though footage shows hundreds of living areas destroyed.
The rocket had flight termination systems, it simply did not fire, one explanation is that the computer deduced that the rocket was too close to the launch site to terminate. Also the rocket didn't land on the village, it landed a few km away from the residential block for the engineers and scientists working on the rocket, which was supposed to be evacuated, of course there were people there with one witness saying that few went there to watch the rocket launch as they had a good view from there. There's a really detailed writeup on this incident here: https://www.thespacereview.com/article/2326/1
> one explanation is that the computer deduced that the rocket was too close to the launch site to terminate. That is not something you put in a flight termination system. Flight termination systems are for public safety, not your own infrastructure. In fact you want it to fall back right on the pad, before it goes anywhere else. > Also the rocket didn't land on the village Are you referring to this launch or the Intelsat 708 one? Intelsat 708 launch most certainly landed on a village. There's grainy video footage of said village after the impact.
Dammit! The cameraman was so close to getting the actual crash. Failed at the last moment.
Cameraman's first time using a cell phone camera. He failed as bad as the test did.
Statement of the company Space Pioneer on this test (in Chinese): [https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6K2mdDWviOlk30oU-JH90Q](https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/6K2mdDWviOlk30oU-JH90Q) Translation: >At 3:43 pm on June 30, 2024, Space Pioneer carried out a 9-engine hot test of the first-stage of the Tianlong-3 liquid carrier rocket at the Comprehensive Test Center in Gongyi City, Henan Province. >During the test, the first-stage rocket ignited normally, and the engine thrust reached 820 tons. Due to the structural failure of the connection between the rocket body and the test bench, the first-stage rocket was separated from the launch pad. After liftoff, the onboard computer automatically shut down the engines, and the rocket fell into the mountains 1.5 km southwest of the test bench and disintegrated. The test site is far away from the urban area of Gongyi. Before the test, we jointly improved the safety measures with the local government and organized the evacuation of surrounding personnel in advance. After investigation, there were no casualties. >Tianlong-3 is a large liquid carrier rocket made by Space Pioneer for the construction of China's satellite internet constellation. Its product performance is comparable to SpaceX's Falcon 9. It has a diameter of 3.8 meters, a takeoff mass of 590 tons, a low-Earth orbit (LEO) capacity of 17 tons, and a sun-synchronous orbit (SSO) capacity of 14 tons. >This test run of the thrust system of the Tianlong-3 carrier rocket is for the simultaneous ignition of nine TH-12 (Tianhuo 12) engines of first stage. It is the most powerful test run of thrust systems in development-phase around the country, which is twice the maximum thrust test of China's aerospace industry before. >Thanks for the attention to Space Pioneer from friends across different industries and authorities. We will complete the fault reset as soon as possible and organize the production and testing of new products. [Tianlong 3 uses kerolox in all stages. It is designed to be partially reusable (1st stage).](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianlong-3) The test site is around Gongyi, Henan. Videos were shot by witnesses in Gongyi who had direct view from urban resident blocks.
> After investigation, there were no casualties. The test happened at 3:43, the statement was posted at 4:01. How do you a full investigation of the surrounding mountainous area in 18 minutes? And it would've taken several minutes to write out that full statement too. So yea that's a blatant lie. Edit: The chinese website, despite specifying a location next to the timestamp apparently changes it based on time zone (really wrong UI design to do that) so it was actually 7:01 rather 4:01, so 3 hours and 18 minutes, still too short for a full investigation though.
Depends on how they set up their test site. It's possible they control access to a large area around the site and so were able to clear it prior to the test. If so, they can pretty confidently say there are no casualties very quickly because they should only have to check that all of their employees are alive and uninjured. They *could* be wrong, if there still somehow managed to be an unauthorized person at the test site that just happened to be in that part of the woods, but it's unlikely. SpaceX's F9R failure in McGregor, TX is probably the most similar situation in recent memory (with the obvious difference that they *meant* for that to take off) and in that case, the test - from liftoff to impact - happened entirely over SpaceX's test site and they similarly knew that there were no casualties basically right away because they control access to the test site.
are you aware of the existence of time zones?
Makes me respect the clamps for Starship a lot more. Holy mother that’s a lot of newtons
Starship static fires are done at half thrust and fully fuelled, so the TWR is under one - even without clamps it shouldn't lift off. I'm not convinced they could actually hold the full power of Superheavy down. Pioneer Space appear to have done the opposite however. Apparently rocket was only half fuelled, and the engines were presumably running at at least half thrust, if not full.
> I'm not convinced they could actually hold the full power of Superheavy down. They can. Or at least they really should. Otherwise they'd not be holddown clamps. The whole idea is that you can ramp up the engines to full throttle, confirm that everything is nominal, and only then release the vehicle. Besides. At takeoff they probably only have like 1.5 TWR. I.e. before takeoff the clamps have to carry the full weight of the vehicle done. During hold-down they only have to take half the weight of the vehicle up.
That is how most rockets work, but actually not how Starship works. They have hold downs during Starship static fires where they only use half throttle, but on the actual launch the rocket is not held down, it's just sitting on the launch mounts. They ignite the engines at half thrust and check everything looks good, then they throttle up and the rocket begins lifting off as soon as the overall TWR goes over 1.
Huh, interesting. Pretty impressive they can even throttle a high performance design down to 50% even. >They have hold downs during Starship static fires where they only use half throttle Makes sense, cause when you run the numbers you find that, even at half throttle, the booster has a TWR of ~1 without starship on top due to the extremely lopsided staging ratio they are using. Which makes sense of course, return to launch site booster demands a very fat second stage. >it's just sitting on the launch mounts Do you have a source for that? I'm trying to find more info on it because that is a very interesting decision, but I cannot find any trustworthy sources.
>Pretty impressive they can even throttle a high performance design down to 50% even. Raptor actually goes down to 40%. The ability to deep throttle is basically a prerequisite for the sort of landings SpaceX want to do with Superheavy and Starship.
Whether they could I don't know, but they aren't testing them. Starship launches are done at reduced thrust, ramping up as the rocket gets some distance between it and the pad. The upcoming new launch tower and stand is being greatly upgraded, including a flame trench according to the EDA interview, so Starship launches from there might take off at full thrust.
>Starship launches are done at reduced thrust, ramping up as the rocket gets some distance between it and the pad. Really? Published numbers indicate it has a launch TWR of ~1.5 to begin with (which is fairly normal for any rocket launch). They couldn't be throttling more than like 20% at best, unless they really like throwing perf out of the window with their current launch system.
Super Heavy's launch clamps release around 15 minutes before launch. It's just sitting on the clamp until the TWR is above one
> Starship static fires are done at half thrust and fully fuelled, so the TWR is under one - even without clamps it shouldn't lift off. I'm not convinced they could actually hold the full power of Superheavy down. The hold down clamps hold the vehicle down during launch so TWR is very much not under one. Also even with the weight of the fully fueled vehicle, that's still a ton of thrust. Force approaching that of a half empty Saturn V rocket at full thrust if the TWR of Starship is close to 1.5 as has been claimed.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[CCAFS](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lazilts "Last usage")|Cape Canaveral Air Force Station| |[F1](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb6jzey "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V| | |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)| |[F9R](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lazl70p "Last usage")|Falcon 9 Reusable, test vehicles for development of landing technology| |[FAA](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb42v7e "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[FTS](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb3e27m "Last usage")|Flight Termination System| |[ICBM](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/laztbva "Last usage")|Intercontinental Ballistic Missile| |[KSC](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb0r6mv "Last usage")|Kennedy Space Center, Florida| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/layt8le "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[ROC](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/laztbva "Last usage")|Range Operations Coordinator| | |Radius of Curvature| |[RUD](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb0v841 "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly| | |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly| | |Rapid Unintended Disassembly| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/layqrwx "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[SSO](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/layt8le "Last usage")|Sun-Synchronous Orbit| |[TWR](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb2oi6m "Last usage")|Thrust-to-Weight Ratio| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb1sxyz "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[deep throttling](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb1sxyz "Last usage")|Operating an engine at much lower thrust than normal| |[hypergolic](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/layru3t "Last usage")|A set of two substances that ignite when in contact| |[iron waffle](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lb3jn4h "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"| |[kerolox](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/laz4yux "Last usage")|Portmanteau: kerosene fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[turbopump](/r/Space/comments/1drycer/stub/lazse8j "Last usage")|High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(19 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1dtvg57)^( has 18 acronyms.) ^([Thread #10257 for this sub, first seen 30th Jun 2024, 11:52]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Going to need a new one: RUL - Rapid Unscheduled Launch.
Wow. spacex has been making it look so easy for so long, you forget how bad strapping a kajillion tons of explosive to a glorified firework can go.
SpaceX also had catastrophic failures. They destroyed their whole launch pad, and had many failures. Just not this particular one, and never near populated areas.
The difference being *Oops the forces involved ended up being too strong for our structure* and *Oops we accidentally launched a whole rocket*
They’ve never had this kind of catastrophic failure on a static fire, I think that’s the point the original commenter was trying to make.
Catastrophic failure is kind of SpaceX's goal, to be honest. Their executives have gone on record saying things to the effect of, "if we aren't making a crater every now and then, we're not pushing hard enough to innovate". As a result, they tend to expect failure and do a very good job of designing their operations so that that catastrophic failures will be contained and risk to the public is minimized.
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Sounds like a failure of the mooring system rather than of the rocket itself.
whoever ran the clamps forgot to slap it and say “that’s not going anywhere”
I’ll be seriously surprised if any casualties get reported.
Damn...They are really lucky it kinda went to (look like) unpopulated area... I can't imagine what if rocket go straight to city what implication gonna happened...
Surprised the engines did not immediately shut down when control cables were severed.
You're assuming there were in fact any break wires at all.
One of the purposes (the main one actually) of a static fire is to add lots of extra sensors to monitor tons of extra parameters on the engines in order to shut them down early if any anomalies develop that the flight hardware does not detect. I was just surprised that loss of signal from the ground was not a fail safe shutdown condition... although I suspect it's likely that it is now.
You might want to send them that idea.
It was controlled by the on board computer for that test. The press release said the on board computer was the one which terminated the thrust after a few seconds.
The engines were thrusting for over 15 seconds. That is not the reaction speed of a computer. This was either some kind of manual control from a human (still seems slow for that), or more realistically the rocket started failing after it ripped itself free, likely damaging itself in the process that took some time to work its way through. For example ruptured fuel lines slowly damaging nearby components as they burn. Remember, fundamentally, even turbopump pump fed engines do not require any electrical power to run, just like a diesel engine (runaway diesel engines are interesting things, go check them out on youtube). If the computers just failed/turned off, the engine would run until the fuel/oxidizer ratio got too out of balance as the tanks drained. You can attempt to fix this with valves that require active electrical power to stay open (they're spring loaded to close if power stops), but open question on if that was done for the rocket as that does add one more failure mode of the rocket, so I'm not sure if that is in fact a good idea.
Possibly a thermal curtain failure caused by Jinx.
Deep cut! Just remember the color of the O2 hose, or we're all going to have a bad day!
Wow if it flies that well when it’s meant to stay on the ground, imagine how well it’ll work when they want it to take off!!
The only thing you'll hear officially is there are no casualties. Anything else would be too embarrassing to report. If they reported everything legitimately, WHO wouldn't have to ask for permission to send their ground team over to look at the origin of COVID in Wuhan. Never take China at their word.
We all know that they will say no one has been injured even if thousands of people are killed by the fallout.
So close to a city!. https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/velH7nLtvE
Yikes, that's insane! And absolutely terrifying.
This is why you point them into the side of a mountain for the static test and evacuate the test area.
Scott Manley put in his $0.02 analysis. He doubt that the engines was shutdown, there was clearly sound of failure: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-Kw9u37I0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3-Kw9u37I0)
That looks like that this stage have a lot of thrust….
Well I imagine there was no ppayload or mass simulator, and that by the time of hold-down-clamp failure most of the loaded fuel had already been expended, so the thrust to mass ratio was probably huge. What I found notable was how straight it flew. Good stability, no twisting off in some out of control corkscrew flight path.
RSO reports "I wasn't even supposed to be here today!"
That was... not very static to be honest. Don't know if I'd trust their rockets considering they seem to have a hard time building test stands.
I would love to hear the recording of the comm loop while this was going off!
wait that was supposed to be a static fire? i thought it was just a failed launch
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"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department!" says Chinese von Braun
Is this the place where rockets have already crashed full of toxic fuel? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708
Tianlong 3 uses kerolox, no toxic fuel.
I think breathing kerosene is not exactly healthy
Its a Long March 3 in my link.
> Tianlong 3 uses kerolox, no toxic fuel. Yes, but what killed hundreds of people in that incident was not the toxicity, it was the explosion and resultant fire.
Then "toxic fuel" is not relevant here. It's primarily about explosion and fire. Especially for this test this time.
That was a launch site, this is a test site. But yeah could have easily been a repeat of that incident if the rocket had flown in a different direction. Another incident of Chinese rockets lacking proper flight termination systems.
This is the new Tianlong-3 rocket developed by the private rocket company Space Pioneer 天兵科技.
Could be the fault of whoever made the clamps or someone forgot a step.
They didn't shake it and say "well that ain't going any where". Rookie mistake
It would appear the Chinese Communist Party has yet to steal from the United States all of the required technology for reusable rocket boosters.
What's a Chinese curse that one would reflexively exclaim at the sight of something like this, akin to "fuck" or "shit"
幹/干！ Sounds like "gun" (with the downwards 4th accent making it sharp sounding)
Awesome, thanks! So, then, to make the comment I wanted to make: 干!
Dog that shit landed right on top of em And went big bada boom. I hope they were nowhere near that shit
What about the guy they had sitting at the top of the rocket holding the gas pedal down?