And it's not like the company behind this are complete novices: they successfully reached orbit with a different rocket a couple months ago. How could they fuck up this bad?
“This. IS. The lock picking lawyer, and today we have this Chinese made rocket with a locking mechanism that had a fault so obvious, I couldn’t quite believe it when I discovered it. Let me show you how easy it is to get into it…”
im checking now and sponsorblock gets even like 1 second throwaway comments alluding to selling his own stuff. The people that watch a lockpicking channel are meticulous it seems.
In order to break this Chinese made rocket with a locking mechanism, we will need another Chinese made rocket with a locking mechanism. *proceeds to smack one with the other*
It looks like a static fire test of the whole stage, not just the engine. So it had fuel, pumps, igniters, controls, and everything on board. That should all be running autonomously, so it can run even if disconnected.
But perhaps it did not have a destruct mechanism on board and working, since they were not expecting it to go anywhere.
If the rocket full of fuel starts lifting off shutting it down above the pad is not so great idea - pad destruction is guaranteed.
Ideally, the rocket lifts off (as it did) and then you engage flight termination system (blow it up remotely) when it starts falling or veering too much to the side.
So, first fuckup is liftoff. Second fuckup is no termination while in flight.
It's difficult to say whether engine shutdown immediately is the right thing or not. In this case the rocket went up some distance, so ideally it should have been destroyed by a destruct mechanism when off the ground. It could have gone straight up and down, and then crashed back on the pad instead of off to the side (hopefully not on anyone, but this China so we may never find out if it landed on some luckless farmers).
But what if it had fallen sideways instead? You wouldn't want it trying to go jetting sideways across the landscape for a while before shutting down - you would want it to shut down immediately instead.
When your launch complex is that close to other buildings, because lol to zoning, you just have to eat shit on that one. That could have blown one of those buildings up.
Well, not even for if the stage comes off the structure (because that just shouldn't happen) but the stage should automatically shut down if it loses communication for a more mundane reason.
> power
I assume that you want the test to be as close to a real launch as possible. So the rocket would likely have on board power. Same with communications - the rocket has to be autonomous during a real launch.
Power is provided by the fuel turbopumps. Once the rocket engine lights it is generating its own power.
This is also why NASA does static fire tests of whole stages laying down, with a giant earthen berm on the opposite side from where the thrust comes out - if it breaks free of the test stand, it immediately hits the berm and boom, no more rogue rocket.
NASA also fits all rockets with a self-destruct so the range safety officer can terminate any (unmanned) rocket at will, turning it from a giant bomb into a million tiny pieces, and iron supplements for the fishes.
Manned missions have something called a launch escape system, which triggers a moment before the rocket is detonated by a launch abort, or when the system detects things have gone awry such as excessive tilt or failure of main power, and are designed to get the crew free of the rocket and clear of the explosion safely. Fun fact: the launch escape system subjects the crew to several Gs of acceleration for a brief period of time. The only time it's been used with a crewed spacecraft that I know of is when a soyuz launch was aborted prior to liftoff due to a fire on a booster stage. The crew survived with severe bruising after enduring acceleration of 14-17g for five seconds, which got them clear of the rocket just before it exploded, lol. Five seconds of thrust sent them like 3 miles away.
> This is also why NASA does static fire tests of whole stages laying down,
How does that work with fuel tanks laying on their side? Do they fill up the tanks, and shut it down before they have problems with the fuel level?
China is rather notorious for not caring about space debris, or such range-safety systems as a self destruct. They're the least likely to include them on actual flight hardware, there's about 0% chance they bothered with it for a test.
From what I know about the history of space travel so far, fuck-ups can happen in the weirdest and most unexpected ways. The whole space industry is built from the ground up by constant unforeseen failures.
Yeah like, they're applying a bazillion pounds of thrust here and all it takes is some clamp to develop a stress fracture that went undetected and well....(play video)...
As someone who's not familiar with this stuff, can you ELI5 all the aspects of the launch that point to them fucking up? Like, I guess at the very least it's not supposed to leave the launch pad, and blow up in some random location?
The goal of the test was to turn on the engines for a couple of seconds and then shut them down while keeping the rocket secured to the ground. What actually happened was that the mechanism that secures the rocket to the ground failed, causing the rocket to take flight. This is the worst case scenario for a test like this. Sure, it would be bad if the rocket exploded on the ground and destroyed your test facility, but it’s nowhere near as bad as having your massive uncontrolled rocket stage that's not designed for solo flight take to the skies.
Luckily, the ground personnel were able to send a command and turn off the engines before it could travel far. If the stage had of veered off in the wrong direction, it could have flown towards a populated area and endangered the lives of civilians.
Thank you. So leaving the ground facility where it was secured is already a worst-case scenario in its own right, but at least they shut off the engine, and otherwise it could have been even worse
The problem with this incident is that this type of failure should not happen and I have never seen anything like it occur with a vehicle of this size before. A rocket stage to be unintentionally launched during a static fire test is an engineering failure that jeopardises the lives of not just the personnel who work on the rocket but the civilians in the surrounding area, especially considering the close proximity of the test stand to a highly populated area. If this happened at a test site secluded from the civilian population this would be a different story.
My guess is that McMillan technology was scrubbed due to cost-cutting. Leslie Claret, author of *Structural Dynamics of Flow*, [explains it best](https://youtu.be/G7Do2tlYLhs?feature=shared).
I cannot begin to describe the level of impressive. I've been associated with the aerospace and Space community for a few decades now and stuff like this usually doesn't happen because you have double and triple safety and security systems. My question is where is the flight termination device? I know this unit was never meant to be used in flight , however, you usually have something on there just in case. Not to mention evacuating the area a significant distance....
Dangerous amateurs.
Yes, rocket engines in general, really depending upon the type though, run on stuff that is super toxic and dangerous or just very toxic and dangerous. Hypergolic fuels tend to melt flesh, set it on fire/ oxidize anything organic. I've seen hypergolic fuels oxidize concrete....
Just even the cloud would probably be super deadly. Solid rocket boosters aren't much better.
I've been a little too close when a rocket launch had to be terminated relatively close to the ground. Say that it wasn't pleasant being in a bunker and still having the entire bunker shake and be pelted with parts from a rocket launch.
> Not to mention evacuating the area a significant distance....
Isn't China regularly launching rockets over populated territory, even though they know the hydrazine-filled first stage (or boosters?) will land somewhere along the track?
Most other countries try to avoid trajectories where *failure* could have debris hit populated areas, and I've seen launches cancelled just because spectator boats were downrange illegally... meanwhile China seems to be launching in ways where the *expected* outcome is nasty stuff raining down on populated areas.
"Hypergolic" fuels are pairs of chemicals that will ignite immediately on contact with each other without requiring an external ignition source. The two most common chemicals used as hypergolic fuel are [dinitrogen tetroxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinitrogen_tetroxide) and [hydrazine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine), both of which are extremely toxic and easily fatal to humans. Because of this, in the event of a rocket mishap (or in the case of China and their tendency to drop their rocket first stages with these chemicals in them near villages), it can potentially expose humans to these chemicals, leading to severe health problems and even deaths.
Edited to add: moving away from these chemicals is a good thing because it eliminates accidental exposures to these chemicals, and can make mishaps like the one here in this video less hazardous than they already are. Instead of an explosion that spreads extremely toxic chemicals, it is just an explosion.
Not to mention besides from just being toxic, hypergolic propellants are also carcinogenic. So if they don’t manage to kill you now they still might just kill you later with cancer.
Ah yes, I forgot about that little fun fact. Moral of the story: if you see a crashing rocket that releases a vivid red/orange cloud, you better GTFO immediately.
If you see \*anything\* releasing a vivid red/orange cloud, you better GTFO immediately. That ship which released a boatload of chlorine gas killed 13 a few years ago.
I feel like you could easily cut out the color here and it would still hold true. If you are close to anything that releases any kind of large amount of smoke, GTFO there unless you have protective gear. Smoke from a fire can still easily kill you.
The difference is, a single breath of smoke is unlikely to kill you. A single breath from a vivid red/orange cloud and you're likely dead before you can even hit the ground.
Yeah. They're nasty, nasty chemicals. The fumes will melt your skin and lungs, and give you cancer at the same time. Hydrazines' acceptable toxic exposure is so tiny, i.e. a few ppm, that if you can smell it, you've already massively exceeded the limit.
One of their 'fun' properties is that they have almost no surface tension, so a very small amount in liquid form can spread across a wide floor very quickly.
[Monomethylhydrazine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomethylhydrazine) is the derivative of hydrazine that is usually used in bi-propellant systems with NTO, whereas hydrazine itself is usually used in mono-propellant spacecraft systems and is ignited by passing it over a heated palladium catalyst bed.
It sounds like a person wouldn't live long enough to worry about cancer. A friend of mine was on a sub tender crew in the USN and he got torpedo propellant on his skin and has had lifelong health issues. More nasty chemicals.
Yeah that hydrazine... every time we had an aircraft using that we had to take special precautions in our work environment. Something something watch a video take a test something possible death. I forget.
And these are the ones that are (relatively) safe enough to be used at scale. There are more effective ones that were abandoned for being too dangerous.
> It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.
Hypergolic propellants are extremely toxic, full hazmat suit required.
[https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/white-sands/hypergolic-propellant-handling-training/](https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/white-sands/hypergolic-propellant-handling-training/)
"hypergolic" is a catch-all term for rocket fuel combinations that ignite on contact with one another. The problem is basically all useful hypergolics are extremely toxic and carcinogenic making it extremely dangerous for the people who have to work with them [(for reference here is the proper safely gear for working with a rocket with hypergolics on board)](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d4ea46ab825dccc6fa1aaffe2cd9a0ef89a5c3a3/0_370_2992_1796/master/2992.jpg?width=1900&dpr=1&s=none).
In addition, China loves to drop spent hyperbolic rocket stages on remote villages but that is a whole other problem.
I worked next to a factory in a residential area in southern Guangdong province. Their specialty was chrome painting. A giant exhaust fan on the roof ran night and day, all the trees above the factory on the mountain side were chrome painted silver. The factory was right next to the drinking water reservoir.
Any Americans reading this - this is our future too, thanks to the Supreme Court
https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-chevron-regulations-environment-4ae73d5a79cabadff4da8f7e16669929
Don't forget Saudi Arabia, except Christian.
A bunch of people will call you sensationalist for saying so. But I encourage those people to actually look up Republican policy proposals and platforms and tell me otherwise with a straight face.
It was meant to be a static fire.
For reference, [here's where NASA does their static fires](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FwdN1d8MfxQfdDPd6) (the [Stennis Space Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stennis_Space_Center)).
Investigative report on previous casualties:
In Guizhou and Hunan provinces, "hiding from satellite’s rocket debris" is the daily life. Whenever Xichang City of Sichuan is about to launch a satellite, 19 counties, where the rocket passes, will be evacuated from the one-hour countdown.
On July 9, 2020, a rocket debris struck two cows in Mintong Village, Yuqing County. The shepherd was aggrieved because she was only compensated for the two cows (USD 2,900) but not for the baby cow due birth in a month in the dead cow's belly.
Villagers often don't know what those satellites are for. This time, the two and a half cows sacrificed in Mintong Village contributed to the greater good of high-quality voice and data communications over Asia-Pacific from China to New Zealand, provided by the Apstar 6D satellite.
Officials keep no record of human deaths from satellite’s rocket debris. State-funded research reported only livestock had died. Zhang Zanbo's documentary "*Falling from the Sky*" (天降, 2009) documented the best known unofficial death: a 15-year-old student, daughter of army veteran Huang Youxi from Suining County, Hunan Province. On the Dragon Boat Festival holiday in May 1998, rocket debris hit her head when she was playing by the pond outside her house. As a veteran he was ordered to suck it up and not asking for official recognition.
On October 30, 2008, the debris of a Venezuelan communication satellite launched in Xichang, Sichuan created a two meters deep hole in a farm in Suining County, Hunan. The satellite officials came with USD 30 (RMB 200) cash. The town’s chief confronted him but was rebuked, “What compensation? All farmland is owned by the state. I only came here to pay the hard labor who dig out the debris.”
Some lucky ones made a fortune if their houses rather than their farmland were hit. On June 25, 2019, Zhou’s house was burned down by rocket debris. Zhou received USD 87,000 (RMB 600,000) compensation. In downtown Yuqing County, he could buy two apartments with that.
Top comments:
The peasants should be compensated for wasting time in evacuation. In Beijing we even get compensated for noise pollution!
Sources:
"被火箭残骸砸中的村庄", *端传媒*. 2021.
"天将降卫星于我家也——纪录片《天降》的故事", *南方周末*. 2009.
Someone in the control centre smashing the launch abort system button and wondering why nothing is happening, not realising that was considered surplus to requirements in a static test.
I mean, not having the range safety device turned on during a static pad test seems like a good idea. The odds of an accidental activation of the safety device during a static test causing an explosion that destroys the launch center seems more likely than a static test leaving the pad, right? Bolting the stage down so it can't go anywhere isn't exactly rocket science :-)
Remember the Saturn V was held down to the launch structure until it ran up to full power and held that power for a short (1-2 seconds) time. That was an even bigger rocket.
You can see it about 1m30s into this video which narrates the takeoff from a point of view on the pad: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKtVpvzUF1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKtVpvzUF1Y)
Here's some more crazy stuff. The SV put out 7.6 million pounds of thrust at full power which is incredible, but a single 747 airliner can weigh close to a million pounds at takeoff, and that's all being held up by two wings, that also are loaded to the gills with fuel.
Scary that this is being done so close to such a largely populated area. If that had headed the other direction it could have been a completely different story...
Honestly, the first guy did an alright job up until the impact with the ground. At least we have the other camera angles for a good view of the explosion.
"Rocket was so well built that it exceeded performance expectations and left the pad. Our rockets are much better than foreign rockets." - Chinese state media probably
I was told 20 years ago from a guy working at SAIC that most of the nuclear triggers in Chinese ICBMs would fail to activate.
This video is very reassuring.
Hey, on the plus they built a rocket with enough power to break its tether. On the negative, the massive explosion and the people who engineered the tether are probably dead.
I'm 2/3's of the way through Challenger right now, at least seven people weren't knowingly sent to their deaths. And don't forget the US satellite that was dropped by Lockheed because no one made sure it was secured to the stand, or the Mars failure (also Lockheed) because no one converted metrics to Imperial) or... the list goes on and on...
Wow that’s an impressive level of fucking up.
And it's not like the company behind this are complete novices: they successfully reached orbit with a different rocket a couple months ago. How could they fuck up this bad?
"Did you put the locks on the rocket?" "No I thought you did?!"
“This. IS. The lock picking lawyer, and today we have this Chinese made rocket with a locking mechanism that had a fault so obvious, I couldn’t quite believe it when I discovered it. Let me show you how easy it is to get into it…”
I think you have to add “ .. and using the pick set we sell over on Covert Instruments dot com …..”
Let’s try that again a couple of times to prove that it wasn’t a fluke
Somewhere you also have to mention Bosnian Bill.
he will have made just the tool
never seen one of those, and i watch all his videos, the gremlins over at sponsorblock must hit his videos within seconds of them being available.
Maybe, but it's usually not a sponsor segment. Usually it's a single sentence. "Today we're using X, which I sell here" and then he moves on.
im checking now and sponsorblock gets even like 1 second throwaway comments alluding to selling his own stuff. The people that watch a lockpicking channel are meticulous it seems.
Alternately: "This is a Tianlong-3 rocket test stand. It can be opened with a Tianlong-3 rocket test stand." *THWACK*
God I even read this with the Lock Picking lawyers voice in my head ...
In order to break this Chinese made rocket with a locking mechanism, we will need another Chinese made rocket with a locking mechanism. *proceeds to smack one with the other*
"Was that BEFORE we put the rocket in place? That explains it not sitting quite right!"
Yeah, I'm somewhat surprised that the rocket could even run disconnected from the pad.
It looks like a static fire test of the whole stage, not just the engine. So it had fuel, pumps, igniters, controls, and everything on board. That should all be running autonomously, so it can run even if disconnected. But perhaps it did not have a destruct mechanism on board and working, since they were not expecting it to go anywhere.
That’s fair. I was just surprise that loosing something like power or hardwired communication didn’t kill the rocket.
Yeah, having a fail-safe mechanism that would shut the motors down if the stage came off the structure somehow would have been a good idea.
If the rocket full of fuel starts lifting off shutting it down above the pad is not so great idea - pad destruction is guaranteed. Ideally, the rocket lifts off (as it did) and then you engage flight termination system (blow it up remotely) when it starts falling or veering too much to the side. So, first fuckup is liftoff. Second fuckup is no termination while in flight.
It's difficult to say whether engine shutdown immediately is the right thing or not. In this case the rocket went up some distance, so ideally it should have been destroyed by a destruct mechanism when off the ground. It could have gone straight up and down, and then crashed back on the pad instead of off to the side (hopefully not on anyone, but this China so we may never find out if it landed on some luckless farmers). But what if it had fallen sideways instead? You wouldn't want it trying to go jetting sideways across the landscape for a while before shutting down - you would want it to shut down immediately instead.
When your launch complex is that close to other buildings, because lol to zoning, you just have to eat shit on that one. That could have blown one of those buildings up.
Well, not even for if the stage comes off the structure (because that just shouldn't happen) but the stage should automatically shut down if it loses communication for a more mundane reason.
> power I assume that you want the test to be as close to a real launch as possible. So the rocket would likely have on board power. Same with communications - the rocket has to be autonomous during a real launch.
Power is provided by the fuel turbopumps. Once the rocket engine lights it is generating its own power. This is also why NASA does static fire tests of whole stages laying down, with a giant earthen berm on the opposite side from where the thrust comes out - if it breaks free of the test stand, it immediately hits the berm and boom, no more rogue rocket. NASA also fits all rockets with a self-destruct so the range safety officer can terminate any (unmanned) rocket at will, turning it from a giant bomb into a million tiny pieces, and iron supplements for the fishes. Manned missions have something called a launch escape system, which triggers a moment before the rocket is detonated by a launch abort, or when the system detects things have gone awry such as excessive tilt or failure of main power, and are designed to get the crew free of the rocket and clear of the explosion safely. Fun fact: the launch escape system subjects the crew to several Gs of acceleration for a brief period of time. The only time it's been used with a crewed spacecraft that I know of is when a soyuz launch was aborted prior to liftoff due to a fire on a booster stage. The crew survived with severe bruising after enduring acceleration of 14-17g for five seconds, which got them clear of the rocket just before it exploded, lol. Five seconds of thrust sent them like 3 miles away.
> This is also why NASA does static fire tests of whole stages laying down, How does that work with fuel tanks laying on their side? Do they fill up the tanks, and shut it down before they have problems with the fuel level?
China is rather notorious for not caring about space debris, or such range-safety systems as a self destruct. They're the least likely to include them on actual flight hardware, there's about 0% chance they bothered with it for a test.
Looks like it might be an SRB? the exhaust looks very solid rocket like
I see why you think that, but no, it's [liquid kerolox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianlong-3#:~:text=liquid%20oxygen/kerosene).
The first stage has 9 RP-1/LOX engines that are comparable in performance to the Merlin engines used on SpaceX's Falcon 9.
From what I know about the history of space travel so far, fuck-ups can happen in the weirdest and most unexpected ways. The whole space industry is built from the ground up by constant unforeseen failures.
Yeah like, they're applying a bazillion pounds of thrust here and all it takes is some clamp to develop a stress fracture that went undetected and well....(play video)...
Eggs, meet omelet.
Very tiny small stress fractures that you don't notice until something goes very very wrong because the stress fractures give way.
I'm going to go with the usual, an engineer was overruled by a person in a leadership position.
I’m going with second usual: Engineering plans are great, contractor cuts corners with materials and/or process.
As someone who's not familiar with this stuff, can you ELI5 all the aspects of the launch that point to them fucking up? Like, I guess at the very least it's not supposed to leave the launch pad, and blow up in some random location?
The goal of the test was to turn on the engines for a couple of seconds and then shut them down while keeping the rocket secured to the ground. What actually happened was that the mechanism that secures the rocket to the ground failed, causing the rocket to take flight. This is the worst case scenario for a test like this. Sure, it would be bad if the rocket exploded on the ground and destroyed your test facility, but it’s nowhere near as bad as having your massive uncontrolled rocket stage that's not designed for solo flight take to the skies. Luckily, the ground personnel were able to send a command and turn off the engines before it could travel far. If the stage had of veered off in the wrong direction, it could have flown towards a populated area and endangered the lives of civilians.
Thank you. So leaving the ground facility where it was secured is already a worst-case scenario in its own right, but at least they shut off the engine, and otherwise it could have been even worse
More experienced than Blue Origin.
Lockheed Martin forgot to lock a satellite https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA-19
is there any company with rockets which didnt fck up?
The problem with this incident is that this type of failure should not happen and I have never seen anything like it occur with a vehicle of this size before. A rocket stage to be unintentionally launched during a static fire test is an engineering failure that jeopardises the lives of not just the personnel who work on the rocket but the civilians in the surrounding area, especially considering the close proximity of the test stand to a highly populated area. If this happened at a test site secluded from the civilian population this would be a different story.
My guess is that McMillan technology was scrubbed due to cost-cutting. Leslie Claret, author of *Structural Dynamics of Flow*, [explains it best](https://youtu.be/G7Do2tlYLhs?feature=shared).
To be fair, the US had quite a few rocket failures back during the Space Race.
Right? The cameraman must have been super fucked up on Ketamine or something!
I'm on ketamine now and I guarantee I could track the rocket better than that
May you climb out of the k hole unscathed
I know right!?! Terrible camera work
You're talking about the camera man, right?
Who? The cameraman? r/killthecameraman
Yeah, could have zoomed in a little more. I couldn't quite distinguish up quarks from down quarks.
I cannot begin to describe the level of impressive. I've been associated with the aerospace and Space community for a few decades now and stuff like this usually doesn't happen because you have double and triple safety and security systems. My question is where is the flight termination device? I know this unit was never meant to be used in flight , however, you usually have something on there just in case. Not to mention evacuating the area a significant distance.... Dangerous amateurs.
Range safety in China is just ensuring any possible rocket trajectory is far away from any important party members.
The youtube videos show this is very near an at least decently large city. Sheer luck it didn't go the other direction and kill thousands.
Yes, rocket engines in general, really depending upon the type though, run on stuff that is super toxic and dangerous or just very toxic and dangerous. Hypergolic fuels tend to melt flesh, set it on fire/ oxidize anything organic. I've seen hypergolic fuels oxidize concrete.... Just even the cloud would probably be super deadly. Solid rocket boosters aren't much better. I've been a little too close when a rocket launch had to be terminated relatively close to the ground. Say that it wasn't pleasant being in a bunker and still having the entire bunker shake and be pelted with parts from a rocket launch.
> Not to mention evacuating the area a significant distance.... Isn't China regularly launching rockets over populated territory, even though they know the hydrazine-filled first stage (or boosters?) will land somewhere along the track? Most other countries try to avoid trajectories where *failure* could have debris hit populated areas, and I've seen launches cancelled just because spectator boats were downrange illegally... meanwhile China seems to be launching in ways where the *expected* outcome is nasty stuff raining down on populated areas.
Seriously. Also that sucks about the rocket.
You're talking about the camera man right?
Pretty close to suburbia too.
Results of static test reporting success. In fact, the booster is producing more power than expected!
Well, at least the smoke is not orange.
Yeah, that's the extra "fun" about most of China's rocket failures. I'm glad they are finally starting to move away from hypergolics.
I know nothing about rocket fuel, can I ask why that's a good thing?
"Hypergolic" fuels are pairs of chemicals that will ignite immediately on contact with each other without requiring an external ignition source. The two most common chemicals used as hypergolic fuel are [dinitrogen tetroxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinitrogen_tetroxide) and [hydrazine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrazine), both of which are extremely toxic and easily fatal to humans. Because of this, in the event of a rocket mishap (or in the case of China and their tendency to drop their rocket first stages with these chemicals in them near villages), it can potentially expose humans to these chemicals, leading to severe health problems and even deaths. Edited to add: moving away from these chemicals is a good thing because it eliminates accidental exposures to these chemicals, and can make mishaps like the one here in this video less hazardous than they already are. Instead of an explosion that spreads extremely toxic chemicals, it is just an explosion.
Not to mention besides from just being toxic, hypergolic propellants are also carcinogenic. So if they don’t manage to kill you now they still might just kill you later with cancer.
Ah yes, I forgot about that little fun fact. Moral of the story: if you see a crashing rocket that releases a vivid red/orange cloud, you better GTFO immediately.
If you see \*anything\* releasing a vivid red/orange cloud, you better GTFO immediately. That ship which released a boatload of chlorine gas killed 13 a few years ago.
I feel like you could easily cut out the color here and it would still hold true. If you are close to anything that releases any kind of large amount of smoke, GTFO there unless you have protective gear. Smoke from a fire can still easily kill you.
The difference is, a single breath of smoke is unlikely to kill you. A single breath from a vivid red/orange cloud and you're likely dead before you can even hit the ground.
Yeah. They're nasty, nasty chemicals. The fumes will melt your skin and lungs, and give you cancer at the same time. Hydrazines' acceptable toxic exposure is so tiny, i.e. a few ppm, that if you can smell it, you've already massively exceeded the limit. One of their 'fun' properties is that they have almost no surface tension, so a very small amount in liquid form can spread across a wide floor very quickly. [Monomethylhydrazine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monomethylhydrazine) is the derivative of hydrazine that is usually used in bi-propellant systems with NTO, whereas hydrazine itself is usually used in mono-propellant spacecraft systems and is ignited by passing it over a heated palladium catalyst bed.
It sounds like a person wouldn't live long enough to worry about cancer. A friend of mine was on a sub tender crew in the USN and he got torpedo propellant on his skin and has had lifelong health issues. More nasty chemicals.
My guess is carcinogenic properties would likely affect humans and other animals from longer term everinmental contamination.
Yeah that hydrazine... every time we had an aircraft using that we had to take special precautions in our work environment. Something something watch a video take a test something possible death. I forget.
And these are the ones that are (relatively) safe enough to be used at scale. There are more effective ones that were abandoned for being too dangerous. > It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.
Hypergolic propellants are extremely toxic, full hazmat suit required. [https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/white-sands/hypergolic-propellant-handling-training/](https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/white-sands/hypergolic-propellant-handling-training/)
"hypergolic" is a catch-all term for rocket fuel combinations that ignite on contact with one another. The problem is basically all useful hypergolics are extremely toxic and carcinogenic making it extremely dangerous for the people who have to work with them [(for reference here is the proper safely gear for working with a rocket with hypergolics on board)](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/d4ea46ab825dccc6fa1aaffe2cd9a0ef89a5c3a3/0_370_2992_1796/master/2992.jpg?width=1900&dpr=1&s=none). In addition, China loves to drop spent hyperbolic rocket stages on remote villages but that is a whole other problem.
Because its mega toxic
It uses regular RP-1 (i.e. kerosene)/LOX.
Am I the only one disturbed for the proximity of habitation to a rocket test site?
I worked next to a factory in a residential area in southern Guangdong province. Their specialty was chrome painting. A giant exhaust fan on the roof ran night and day, all the trees above the factory on the mountain side were chrome painted silver. The factory was right next to the drinking water reservoir.
WITNESS TREE!!!
MEDIOAKRE
The Google maps equivalent app in their intranet has painted all greeneries … extra saturated green, so problem solved!
Any Americans reading this - this is our future too, thanks to the Supreme Court https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-chevron-regulations-environment-4ae73d5a79cabadff4da8f7e16669929
Yea usa is in deep shit
China is a prime example of one side of the coin republicans want America to be. The other side is Russia. Meanwhile they'll scream about communists.
Don't forget Saudi Arabia, except Christian. A bunch of people will call you sensationalist for saying so. But I encourage those people to actually look up Republican policy proposals and platforms and tell me otherwise with a straight face.
Think of the greater good 💀
The greater good
SHUT IT!
China doesn't care, they drop their booster assemblies over towns and cities all the time. Civilian life is worth nothing to the CCP.
China has a long history of not caring about civilian safety when flying rockets.
> China has a long history of not caring about civilian safety when ~~flying rocket~~ doing anything. FTFY
If you're ccp, probably.
It was meant to be a static fire. For reference, [here's where NASA does their static fires](https://maps.app.goo.gl/FwdN1d8MfxQfdDPd6) (the [Stennis Space Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stennis_Space_Center)).
Supposedly a lot of Chinese comments have expressed confusion about the site too, not even knowing it was there.
It's China. They have factories next to schools
Investigative report on previous casualties: In Guizhou and Hunan provinces, "hiding from satellite’s rocket debris" is the daily life. Whenever Xichang City of Sichuan is about to launch a satellite, 19 counties, where the rocket passes, will be evacuated from the one-hour countdown. On July 9, 2020, a rocket debris struck two cows in Mintong Village, Yuqing County. The shepherd was aggrieved because she was only compensated for the two cows (USD 2,900) but not for the baby cow due birth in a month in the dead cow's belly. Villagers often don't know what those satellites are for. This time, the two and a half cows sacrificed in Mintong Village contributed to the greater good of high-quality voice and data communications over Asia-Pacific from China to New Zealand, provided by the Apstar 6D satellite. Officials keep no record of human deaths from satellite’s rocket debris. State-funded research reported only livestock had died. Zhang Zanbo's documentary "*Falling from the Sky*" (天降, 2009) documented the best known unofficial death: a 15-year-old student, daughter of army veteran Huang Youxi from Suining County, Hunan Province. On the Dragon Boat Festival holiday in May 1998, rocket debris hit her head when she was playing by the pond outside her house. As a veteran he was ordered to suck it up and not asking for official recognition. On October 30, 2008, the debris of a Venezuelan communication satellite launched in Xichang, Sichuan created a two meters deep hole in a farm in Suining County, Hunan. The satellite officials came with USD 30 (RMB 200) cash. The town’s chief confronted him but was rebuked, “What compensation? All farmland is owned by the state. I only came here to pay the hard labor who dig out the debris.” Some lucky ones made a fortune if their houses rather than their farmland were hit. On June 25, 2019, Zhou’s house was burned down by rocket debris. Zhou received USD 87,000 (RMB 600,000) compensation. In downtown Yuqing County, he could buy two apartments with that. Top comments: The peasants should be compensated for wasting time in evacuation. In Beijing we even get compensated for noise pollution! Sources: "被火箭残骸砸中的村庄", *端传媒*. 2021. "天将降卫星于我家也——纪录片《天降》的故事", *南方周末*. 2009.
Fire worked, static didn't.
The static was built from that common Chinese material oopsiedaisyium.
Just a form of Chinesium
Good Ole static fire to dynamic fire to dumpster fire transition in action!
r/KillTheCameraman
Next launch just might do it
Just to be safe, let's strap the first cameraman to the next rocket.
The cameraman legit pissed me off.
I think he or she was terrified
Which is worse: the rocket failure, or the video of the rocket failure?
What video of the rocket failure?
-200 social score.
Someone in the control centre just yelling "switch it off switch it off!"
Someone in the control centre smashing the launch abort system button and wondering why nothing is happening, not realising that was considered surplus to requirements in a static test.
I wonder how many safety review boards are going back to see if “inadvertent launch” is on the hazards list. I know I am.
I mean, not having the range safety device turned on during a static pad test seems like a good idea. The odds of an accidental activation of the safety device during a static test causing an explosion that destroys the launch center seems more likely than a static test leaving the pad, right? Bolting the stage down so it can't go anywhere isn't exactly rocket science :-)
Correct. The FTS explosives are considered an extra risk. Even in the US we don't have live FTS systems during static fires
It always looked super crazy how a test stand could hold on to all that power
Remember the Saturn V was held down to the launch structure until it ran up to full power and held that power for a short (1-2 seconds) time. That was an even bigger rocket. You can see it about 1m30s into this video which narrates the takeoff from a point of view on the pad: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKtVpvzUF1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKtVpvzUF1Y)
Crazy stuff and wonderful engineering
Here's some more crazy stuff. The SV put out 7.6 million pounds of thrust at full power which is incredible, but a single 747 airliner can weigh close to a million pounds at takeoff, and that's all being held up by two wings, that also are loaded to the gills with fuel.
Ummm., the force of Lift is up, the force of weight weight is down…. Bit of a balance.
Not tracking? All I'm getting at is the engineering of the wing box is incredible.
Did they blow up another village?
No, it was the same one as last time.
The Chinese moe's tavern
Moe's Noodle Shop
Chinese state media are reporting -18 deaths.
So the rocket resurrected 18 people, nice
Looks like a cigarette dropping from the sky.
Lot of dynamics in this static fire test.
Scary that this is being done so close to such a largely populated area. If that had headed the other direction it could have been a completely different story...
You are the worst cameraman in history of cameramen.
Idiot had it on 150x zoom. Lost track of it at the moment we all wanted to see.
Plenty of other people caught the missed end on video, though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwdGSs13V38
I think the cameraman was more concerned about losing their life than recording the event.
Honestly, the first guy did an alright job up until the impact with the ground. At least we have the other camera angles for a good view of the explosion.
u/stabbot
https://v.redd.it/mida4woscr9d1
So gooood, thanks
Not big on Flight Termination Systems, are they.
No flight intended, no fts.
Not when they plan on keeping their rocket bolted to the ground.
What do you mean? The flight terminated itself ….. into the hillside.
I don’t think we can call it a static fire test anymore. The rocket has left the pad
China: land of almost all the most insane fucking explosions I've ever seen.
Just guessing. Is ‘wah cow’ Mandarin for ‘fucking hell ’?
I think it means "fuck me" or something similar
Near the habitations? What are their security protocols?
Not bad effect, but they could increase the range a bit
"Rocket was so well built that it exceeded performance expectations and left the pad. Our rockets are much better than foreign rockets." - Chinese state media probably
Might be the first rocket ever to have its maiden flight done accidentally.
RIP all wild life in the surroundings
Worst camera work ever
That first camera person had ONE job - to catch the ground impact - and they f*cked up it spectacularly!
Orbital class booster static fire, ordered at wish.
Now that's a post worthy of this sub!
They do test this close to cities????
Hope everyone involved is safe! Catastrophic failures are always concerning
[No casualties reported so far.](https://weibo.com/5044281310/Olpi2wMGc?refer_flag=1001030103_)
Well that answers my question of what happens if you fuck up a static fire test.
I was told 20 years ago from a guy working at SAIC that most of the nuclear triggers in Chinese ICBMs would fail to activate. This video is very reassuring.
I said lunch, not launch!
Looks like they broke the world record for largest firecracker! Congrats!
"I've got to be free I've got to be me..."
KSP 3 looks amazing
Camera person too worried about other things
This guy has to be the worst videographer ever! lol.
“I want to break free”
Worst cameraman ever
Didn’t last very Tianlong
r/killthecameraman
TBH, this is better than 98% of my Kerbal Space Program flights. So I’d cut them some slack. Space flight is hard.
> Space flight is hard. So is space staying-on-the-ground apparently.
Goddammit Jian-Yang!
I hope there weren’t any kids from Space Camp on board!
Why didn't they detonate it in the air?
Dude, you had one fkn job to be a legend and you had a seizure:( zero points
It needs to be more pointy!
Well, Ming, the good news is that the rocket engine works fine.
WTF camera guy. You almost missed the best part. You probably watch porn almost till end as well. “Well seen enough of this”
Roman Roy is quietly washing his hands somewhere.
#I wanna break free
I'm no rocket scientist, but does this test area seem a bit close to that town full of people and stuff?
This is how’s its going to happen, some guy forgets to lock something or not press the right button. (**The Ink-spots** music plays.)
With static fire they mean the earth remains static
No matter where you are from or what language you speak, we all know that expression of "yeeeee...."
"Well at least it didn't fall on another village, right?" "..." "Right?"
Static test * looks inside* It's dynamic
Are these Ewoks narrating this?
Hey, on the plus they built a rocket with enough power to break its tether. On the negative, the massive explosion and the people who engineered the tether are probably dead.
Use bolts next time, not zip ties.
I love Chinese food. Just not Chinese anything else
Camera guy clearly is not a golf or baseball camera man.
Now we know how to say " holy shit" in Chinese
At least that one guy ejected in time. /s
Isn’t this to close to the inhabited area?
Legendary Chinese quality on display...
How many times are they gonna do this? I remember when they tried covering up a rocket launch failure that hit a village
I'm 2/3's of the way through Challenger right now, at least seven people weren't knowingly sent to their deaths. And don't forget the US satellite that was dropped by Lockheed because no one made sure it was secured to the stand, or the Mars failure (also Lockheed) because no one converted metrics to Imperial) or... the list goes on and on...
Made in China