Chinese Space Company's Static Rocket Test Ends In Premature Launch, Huge Explosion (spacenews.com) 70
Commercial space efforts continue around the world, as the Chinese company Space Pioneer fired up a partially-fueled rocket engine Sunday for a short-duration test of its reusable rocket on the ground. But Space News reports that the test "ended in catastrophic failure and a dramatic explosion."
"Amateur footage captured by Gongyi citizens and posted on Chinese social media shows the nine-engine test stage igntiing and then, exceptionally, taking off." Hold-down clamps and other structures are typically used to securely keep stages in place. The stage is seen climbing into the sky before halting, apparently with its engines shutting off, and returning to Earth. The stage impacted the ground around 50 seconds after it took off, apparently with much of its kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant remaining, causing a large explosion.
The Tianlong-3 first stage would likely fire for a number of minutes on an orbital flight. Space Pioneer was conducting its test as a buildup to an orbital launch of the Tianlong-3, which is benchmarked against the SpaceX Falcon 9, in the coming months. The company announced earlier this month that it has secured $207 million in new funding.
Shanghai-based digital newspaper The Paper reported Henan officials as saying there were no casualties reported. Space Pioneer issued its own statement later, stating there was a structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench. The rocket's onboard computer automatically shut down the engines and the rocket fell 1.5 kilometers southwest. It reiterated earlier reports that no casualties were found. The company said the test produced 820 tons of thrust.
The article speculates on whether the event will delay the development of the rocket — or the planned launches for a Chinese megaconstellation of satellites. "Space Pioneer says it will conduct an analysis and restart testing with new hardware as soon as possible."
"Amateur footage captured by Gongyi citizens and posted on Chinese social media shows the nine-engine test stage igntiing and then, exceptionally, taking off." Hold-down clamps and other structures are typically used to securely keep stages in place. The stage is seen climbing into the sky before halting, apparently with its engines shutting off, and returning to Earth. The stage impacted the ground around 50 seconds after it took off, apparently with much of its kerosene-liquid oxygen propellant remaining, causing a large explosion.
The Tianlong-3 first stage would likely fire for a number of minutes on an orbital flight. Space Pioneer was conducting its test as a buildup to an orbital launch of the Tianlong-3, which is benchmarked against the SpaceX Falcon 9, in the coming months. The company announced earlier this month that it has secured $207 million in new funding.
Shanghai-based digital newspaper The Paper reported Henan officials as saying there were no casualties reported. Space Pioneer issued its own statement later, stating there was a structural failure at the connection between the rocket body and the test bench. The rocket's onboard computer automatically shut down the engines and the rocket fell 1.5 kilometers southwest. It reiterated earlier reports that no casualties were found. The company said the test produced 820 tons of thrust.
The article speculates on whether the event will delay the development of the rocket — or the planned launches for a Chinese megaconstellation of satellites. "Space Pioneer says it will conduct an analysis and restart testing with new hardware as soon as possible."
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
That's what she said!
What Rocket? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I was unaware that SpaceX ever managed to have their static test framework fail and have the rocket lift off the pad when it wasn't supposed to. Do tell.
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That is where chinese innovation comes to play. If the static test works well enough, you don't waste time waiting, and instantly fire the rocket :)
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This was a private company's rocket, nothing to do with the government. The published photos from before the test started on social media, it wasn't a secret. From what I can tell the video, taken by a third party from outside the exclusion safety zone, is going viral and is uncensored on Chinese networks.
Not that the government bothers to cover up any of their very rare space related failures anyway these days. Launches are announced in advance and live streamed.
Move fast and break things. (Score:3)
"Move fast and break things."? I think I've heard that before.
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"Move fast and break things."? I think I've heard that before.
Yup, apparently from Mark Zuckerberg [snopes.com], though it really sounds like something Elon Musk would say, especially as this type of thing - rocket test ends in explosion - would simply be called "Tuesday" at SpaceX (not meant as a slight).
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Who said it is actually irrelevant. The concept of "move fast and break things" is firmly understood not to belong to a company, but to the "Silicon Valley ethos", and while Musk may not have quoted this, he very much runs his companies in this way and openly admits to doing so - as do many in Silicon Valley (to be honest I'm surprised it was Zuckerberg, I would have attributed it to Google...)
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There's a lot of good things to be said about the move fast and break things motto, and it's a big part of why SpaceX has advanced as quickly as it has.
But common decency means you really need to think about what exactly whose things you are breaking. It's fine to break your own stuff, if you think that's a quicker and cheaper way way to get to the end product. It's another thing entirely to risk breaking other peoples' stuff, or stuff that belongs to the public. That is in effect helping yourself to an
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Did you watch the footage that was taken from a nearby city? The fireball was enormous. So there was clearly plenty of fuel in the booster.
Space Pioneer also claimed to have initiated an abort, which is also clearly a lie.
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I didn't say it was invented by Silicon Valley, I said it is the Silicon Valley ethos, and Musk's company is one that follows this ethos since it's born out of it.
Re: Move fast and break things. (Score:2)
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Now I agree with you, but certainly not in the past. There were a world of amazing things which came from Google Labs back in the day.
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Except the issue at hand was not the explosion. The issue at hand was the rocket was supposed to have remained on the pad, thus the moniker of static test fire, and instead managed liftoff. That indicates major problems with the least complicated part of the rocket assembly.
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It will be interesting to see what they say happened. Clearly the test fixture was not adequate to hold the rocket down, but maybe they were not expected so much thrust from the engines. Arguably a design defect anyway, it should have been more than capable of handling any amount of trust that could potentially have been generated.
The fact that it fell on the test fixture and blew up may hamper efforts to diagnose the issue.
There is another possibility - someone screwed up, or rather didn't screw up enough
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"Move fast and break things."? I think I've heard that before.
As applies to the cutting edge technology you're trying to develop. Not rudimentary things like how a rocket is mounted to the ground. You don't "move fast" and destroy millions of dollars of rocket to realize the way you mounted the rocket to the launch pad was totally inadequate - that's not the part of the technology you're trying to advance! That is pure incompetence.
After all, humanity has been static firing rockets since the 1940s with Germany's V2.
typical small dong problems (Score:1)
Typical small dong problems, premature launch, huge explosion, great disappointment.
Re: typical small dong problems (Score:1)
At least they're not suing their competitors to give themselves time to catch up, unlike a certain Talosian from the Amazon.
Youtube Links (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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"Glorious Chinese rocket lifts off, lands"
No casualties were found (Score:5, Funny)
Is that the best way to say that?
Re:No casualties were found (Score:4, Funny)
"I don't see anything and neither do you."
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Is that the best way to say that?
Define best? Do you mean best = nicest, or best = accurate?
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Actually, I meant best as in "leaves the best impression", which is not necessarily either of those things but could be one or the other.
Re: No casualties were found (Score:2)
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but was it shaped like a frazzled coyote?
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but was it shaped like a frazzled coyote?
Probably depends on whether the design engineers were sufficiently wily.
Re: No casualties were found (Score:2)
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Re:No casualties (Score:4, Funny)
No casualties on the ground, but the reputations of some engineers and scientists have taken a serious hit. Rocket science is hard, but bolting down the stage should not be.
I heard that they recently hired a few assembly workers who were recently let go from Boeing.
Re:No casualties (Score:4, Funny)
>> assembly workers who were recently let go from Boeing ... from Boeing"
You probably mean "disassembly workers
AliExpress (Score:5, Funny)
more pro tips: (Score:2)
a couple more:
1) those clips you built? Fasten them!
2) It might be better to focus your industrial espionage somewhere other than Boeing & ULV . . .
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It might be better to focus your industrial espionage somewhere other than Boeing & ULV
That shows how much you know - they've been focusing their recent espionage efforts on Spirit Aerosystems!
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Jokes on them: Boeing is now acquiring Spirit Aerosystems!
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I order my rocket parts from a hot Nigerian Princess on Craigslist. Only exploded once so far.
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You mean Temu, right? AliExpress is now the expensive "high quality" option compared to Shien and Temu.
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The engines are their own design and are well proven. In fact they are the first commercial company to succeed at reaching orbit on the first try with a liquid fuelled rocket.
It looks like the engines worked perfectly. The issue was that the rocket was supposed to be held down so it couldn't move away from the test fixture, but clearly whatever was holding it didn't work. The audio from the videos suggests that it was either not held at all, or whatever was holding it broke pretty soon after the engines ign
Launched and returned to Earth (Score:3)
Mission successful.
Re:Successfully returned to Earth (Score:2)
Gotta love commie news [reddit.com]
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What do you think they stole? 95% of any rocket is stuff previous people built. Speaking of which, do you know who invented rockets?
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"Chinese employees leaked data to China"
funny, i didn't realize Musk was Chinese.
Stupid test design (Score:2)
I understand the desire to do a full test of all onboard systems under onboard power, but it seems like a simple thing to have the flight system "know" that it is a static test and any net velocity over a certain tiny amount (remember that this thing on the test stand's going to be rockin', so don't come a-knockin') of the vehicle should cause a commanded shutdown.
Re: Stupid test design (Score:4, Insightful)
Scott Manley breaks it down (Score:5, Informative)
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One correction to his video. It's not a "clone" of a SpaceX vehicle. It's just that all engineers end up with broadly similar designs when aesthetics are not an issue, only functionality is. Like with the Buran shuttle, there is the most efficient shape and it looks like the US shuttle, so either they deliberately make theirs worse to avoid accusations of copying, or they do the best engineering they can.
There is no suggestion that it is based on espionage or some kind of superficial copy. They developed ev
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Yes, and crushing the bottom of an egg [wikipedia.org] is the best way to get it to stand on its end [maucherjenkins.com]. It's pretty eas
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The ideas that SpaceX implemented, and that the Shuttle implemented, have been around for a long time. As for the actual implementation though, look at how vastly different Buran is. No main engines, it uses boosters to get to orbit, for example. Very different head shielding too. Completely different mission profile due to those decisions. And then look at the history of it, and see that planning started in the 1960s, and Russian scientists were talking about it long before that. Now look at the X-37B and
FAA alternative (Score:1)
"Unintended take off"? (Score:2)
...Has that happened before? I know jillions of rockets have exploded, but has there ever been a case of unintended launch? Did Boeing leave bolts out of the lock-bars or something?
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Yes, and a bunch of kids got launched into space on the Shuttle. It was all the droid's fault. Didn't you see the documentary [imdb.com]?
It wasn't an "explosion" (Score:2, Informative)
It was a "rapid unscheduled disassembly".
Or is it only Space-X that's allowed to use that phrase?
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It was a "rapid unscheduled disassembly".
Or is it only Space-X that's allowed to use that phrase?
No it wasn't, that is one of the problems. It hit the ground. RAD systems are in place to make sure the big bang happens rapidly in the air, and does not happen on the ground.
Damn! (Score:2)
Isn't that the one they were going to use to get Mark Watney?
Launching into space is hard (Score:1)
China competing on the fail fast methodology (Score:3)
China puts SpaceX and the West in their place by demonstrating capability to fail even faster.
Just a little misunderstanding... (Score:2)
Spacecamp ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0... [imdb.com] )was a movie, not a training video
Sounds like they fueled it (Score:1)