The rocket was undergoing a static fire test of the stage, in which a vehicle is clamped to a test stand while its engines are ignited, when the booster broke free. According to a statement from the company, the rocket was not sufficiently clamped down and blasted off from the test stand “due to a structural failure.”

Video of the accidental ascent showed the rocket rising several hundred meters into the sky before it crashed explosively into a mountain 1.5 km away from the test site.

  • @rsh@lemmy.world
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    891 year ago

    I feel slightly better knowing that the Chinese suffer from Chinesium-based products as much as we do.

    • @remotelove@lemmy.ca
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      161 year ago

      I feel better knowing that Chinese military partners get to feel the joy as well. (Curbs can be a bitch sometimes…)

    • @CosmoNova@lemmy.world
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      31 year ago

      They suffer far more than anyone else from it. I mean just last week another rocket malfunctioned, lost a fuel tank that crashed close to a nearby village, enveloping homes in toxic gas. And spacecraft catastrophes are only the tiny tip if the tip of the iceberg.

      • Morphit
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        11 year ago

        I don’t think that was a malfunction…
        That was ‘working as intended’.

    • @ours@lemmy.world
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      121 year ago

      Someone messed up their staging… again.

      Lives were lost, equipment destroyed, lessons has been learned-ish.

    • Flying Squid
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      61 year ago

      But at least they already figured out how to land on the Mun and come back. They just need to go back to a previous save.

    • @Wooki@lemmy.world
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      31 year ago

      Except the test facility was dangerously close to city resulting at minimum in an enormous amount of broken windows (clearly heard in the recorded videos) and no doubt damage to people associated with large volumes of windows breaking.

  • Boomer Humor Doomergod
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    391 year ago

    To paraphrase Scott Manley; they got the rocket science down but need to work on their bolt science

    (Fly safe)

    • @Wooki@lemmy.world
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      21 year ago

      Actually - “structural engineering team”, you can see it was ripped apart when it came off the test stand.

      They should probably not rip off rocket (from spacex) when they dont have the intelligence to engineer it in the first place.

  • @ours@lemmy.world
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    191 year ago

    Uh, I guess that’s why many of the more reasonable static test rigs have the rocket flat on the ground with a hill on the pointy side just in case.

    • verity_kindle
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      51 year ago

      Plus some bay or gulf, relatively quiet, very close by the site helps. It’s too bad the Chinese don’t have any of those.

  • Bob
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    151 year ago

    Somebody just lost their job…

  • @masquenox@lemmy.world
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    71 year ago

    Maoist rocket says, “Fuck your imperialist and capitalist clamps” and commits revolutionary suicide.

  • @scrion@lemmy.world
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    51 year ago

    Is anyone speaking Chinese able to tell me what the guy in the first scene of the video is crying out? The one where the rocket falls horizontally. I mean, I have a general idea what is being said there conceptually, but I’d love to get an actual, accurate translation.

    • @Phoenix3875@lemmy.world
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      71 year ago

      Basically it’s two people saying “Is it falling? Wouldn’t it explode? I’m recording it. Fuck the rocket is falling!”

      From 5-8 seconds, the person seems to be saying争着争着中火大了, which doesn’t mean anything to me, but it may be something of the local dialect.

  • @PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
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    41 year ago

    Damn that rocket told everyone “fuck you” when it launched and then said “no seriously…fuck you” and then decided to meet its fiery demise.

  • Cyber Yuki
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    31 year ago

    By any chance, were the clamps filled with styrofoam or something? 😁 (Tofu-dreg joke)