Absolutely bonkers, they were testing that thing so close to population. There are residential areas within about 1km/mile from the test site. In one of the videos, it sounds like the blast wave destroyed some window. So, even if that thing would have only exploded during the test, it would have caused harm in those areas. Luckily, it landed on an empty area.
The CCP has been dropping booster stages into populated areas for decades. Itโs nothing new. Itโs effectively standard practice for them. Also, note that none of what I said disagrees with the fact that most other nations consider this sort of thing to be wildly dangerous.
Just last week they crashed a hypergolic first stage crashing on/near a village. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/24/china/china-rocket-debris-falls-over-village-intl-hnk/index.html
I could never figure out why they do it. You want to be far south and have an open ocean to the east of the launch site.
Why are they not launching from Hainan or somewhere on the south coast, west of Hong Kong?
What makes it a "SpaceX Clone", is it because it's a reusable rocket?
That and kerosene fuel and engine configuration (9 engines). Grid fins and landing legs etc.
The fact that any headline with SpaceX in it gets more attention.
Genuinely crazy situation, I don't think that's ever happened before. Either they underestimated the thrust they had, or they saved money on hardware. Possibly calculated shear force for the full stack instead of just the booster. Somebody is definitely fired.
You gotta calculate the uggas AND the duggas.
How do you even handle that? Do they load an actual flight program for these tests, or does it just go off uncontrolled until range safety hits the destruct button? (Do they even have range safety and a destruct button?)
Task failed successfully.
You should see what happened to the "original"
What do you mean by that?
SpaceX
I don't recall Falcon 9 ever breaking free from the test stand and launching accidentally...
You are right, out of the bingo board of things that could go wrong, this one they have yet to check. Check again next year, they might get it by then!
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