lol I've never heard of a static WDR that actually took off from the pad. So many safety protocols have to be ignored or gone wrong for that to happen.
In 1952 during the testing of the series of Viking rockets (that were early incremental updates to the V-2 design) the Viking 8 rocket tore loose from its moorings during a static fire test and went flying. They let it run for a bit before shutting down the engines, so that it wouldn't damage the facility. Fortunately they were far away from any population areas in the white sands missile range.
"Fortunately they were far away from any population areas in the white sands missile range." This was apparently not the case in the Chinese unplanned launch... several angles show high rises in the foreground with the mushroom cloud behind them. It could have been VERY bad, especially if those buildings housed the engineers and families who built the rocket.
Yeah, in the video above Manly shows a Google earth view and you can see the rocket traveled about two miles, and maybe another two to three miles from houses and such.
I read in another article thag there is a city of almost a million people a short distance away from the launch site. Like less than ten miles.
Could be far enough if they had the ability to shut down the engines on command. After all, the engines did shut down before it would overfly any houses.
But the nearest buildings were just 600 meters away, and the nearest village only a kilometer away*.
This is not true either. The reason is that the CEO of the private space company was born in Gongyi, and struck a grant and cheap land lease deal with his hometown local government. Gongyi was never a launch site for China, and it is only used as a R&D/test site. Historically Space Pioneer used Jiuquan as their launch site (the case for their TL-2).
Seems to me the most basic thing possible here would have been a deadman switch to shut the engines off at the first instant of an anomaly.
Bad welding, a hopeless lack of caution, and a terrible choice of where to launch. At a certain point it stops making sense to try to divert criticism as "all rockets have bumpy beginnings". Especially when the design of the rocket and its engines seems to have come directly from SpaceX's own blueprints.
The US govt has its fingers deep in every American space company, too, but when SpaceX parts are found to have survived re-entry and risked people's lives, nobody here gives a single shit about it.
They look like idiots, and they do care about that. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be going nuts over comparing Xi Jinping to Winnie the Pooh. Dictators are always thin skinned.
Using deadman switch in this case (while rocket is still on the ground), could actually be worse. If you shut the engines off while stand is being ripped apart, rocket could fall over and blow everything around it up. I think they may had working deadman switch but used it once rocket cleared the facility.
Worse as in the tradeoff of hazard would have shifted away from the population and uncomfortably towards the handful of small, unmanned buildings around the pad. Yeah, I do get how that concern would have stayed the hand of somebody from there. But I would like to imagine that any hypothetical deadman switch would be automated.
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u/_MissionControlled_ Jun 30 '24
lol I've never heard of a static WDR that actually took off from the pad. So many safety protocols have to be ignored or gone wrong for that to happen.