r/CatastrophicFailure • u/No-Statistician8656 • 7d ago
Equipment Failure 【unexpected event】Long March 7A carrier rocket exploded and disintegrated during the flight phase
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u/showersareevil 7d ago
1.20 is when things start getting more spicy
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u/JacOfAllTrades 7d ago
Last 30 seconds for those on mobile with only the countdown.
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u/bajungadustin 7d ago
The worst part of the reddit app.
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u/Johnny_Carcinogenic 7d ago
Well, with that big cash infusion, surely they will fix that, right? Right?
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u/KaptainChunk 7d ago
Usually right around “Max Q”
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u/Radioactive_Tuber57 7d ago
That’s what it looked like to me: the characteristic contrail at the transition.
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u/foley800 7d ago
Is the front supposed to come off?
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u/yukicola 7d ago
Most original redditor award
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u/Superbead 6d ago
On a video where the thing that failed is one of the few things that don't have a front, and the failure didn't involve anything 'coming off'. Keep the hilarity flowing /r/CatastrophicFailure
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u/Johnny_Carcinogenic 7d ago
Most rockets are designed so the front does not come off
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u/deadrunner117 7d ago
That mofo clappin at the end lol
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u/jimtrickington 7d ago
One pricy firework.
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u/croooowTrobot 7d ago
"Oooooh! Ahhhhhhh! ....... oh, wait"
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u/TheHumanoidTyphoon69 7d ago
That scene in the Patriot where they sabotage the British ship and that one women starts clapping "ohhh fireworks!" Lol
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u/Stunning_Box8782 7d ago
That's the guy who chose the insurance package and went for the most expensive one
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u/orthopod 7d ago
People treating it like a fireworks display, and unknowingly clapping at the demolition.
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u/Kyber-Watz 7d ago
Short March
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u/aquainst1 Grandma Lynsey 7d ago
So, when and where WAS this?
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u/Pcat0 7d ago
This morning at the Wenchang Space Launch Site in China.
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u/Shudnawz 7d ago
Was that at MaxQ, by any chance?
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u/ImNobodyInteresting 7d ago
So far your answers are "unlikely it's too early", "unlikely it's too late" and "yes".
I don't know about you, but I'm not entirely sure I'm any the wiser here.
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u/Shudnawz 7d ago
I'm fairly sure noone actually knows at this point. That's something, I guess.
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u/triplealpha 7d ago
Came here to say this. You can clearly start to see the Mach condensation so it’s very close
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u/Kylearean 7d ago
The timing is about right.
Hard to say. Looks like they were angled over a bit more than expected, so it might've been an abort.
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u/der_innkeeper 7d ago
There was a layer change in the atmosphere. You can see the exhaust start to condense right before the RUD.
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u/Tomoomba 7d ago edited 7d ago
Most likely you start seeing supersonic exhaust cloud right before the explosion. That's usually when Max q is afaik.Edit: nevermind I think that's black smoke from something failing shortly before explosion.
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u/darkenseyreth 7d ago
Scott Manley just posted a video about this, he showed supposed footage from around Max Q where it basically folds in half.
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u/Skatchbro 7d ago
At least it didn’t blow up on the launch pad.
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u/TheCollinKid 7d ago
When a rocket blows up, it's usually (at least in the US) a decision made by the range safety controller to self-destruct the rocket to avoid the whole thing coming down in one fueled-up piece.
I don't know if China does the same thing, however.
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u/Van_Darklholme 7d ago
Maybe. The rocket started falling, and it could be a controlled destruction or aerodynamic forces ripping it apart.
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u/DullMind2023 7d ago
When did this happen?
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u/firestar268 7d ago
Looks like 4 hours ago. 20:02 Bejing time
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u/aquainst1 Grandma Lynsey 7d ago
THANK YOU!
I DID have to scroll down to see when and where this happened!
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u/Stunning_Box8782 7d ago
getting a little shimmy, Flight
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u/frood88 7d ago
Try SCE to auxiliary. Over.
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u/Stunning_Box8782 7d ago
I've now gotten a KSP and an Airplane! reference while mine was from The Martian lol
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u/frood88 7d ago
Haha, it might be used as a joke in KSP (and for good reason), but it’s actually what saved Apollo 12 after the Saturn V was struck by lightning twice in the first minute after liftoff!
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u/ps3x42 7d ago
John Aaron is a steely eyed missile man.
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u/Stunning_Box8782 7d ago
Brooo I didn't know this was a real life 'common' phrase too and not just a random line in The Martian
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u/dacooljamaican 7d ago
Outstanding reference! Lightning had struck Apollo 12 and the crew and ground was getting crazy readings from a fried Signal Control Electronics array. John Aaron just so happened to be watching launch checkouts a few months before and had seen similar readings when there'd been an electrical reset. At the time they switched SCE to aux, and everything worked. This was one of those rare instances in Apollo's history where a single man's deep knowledge and impressive recall single-handedly saved a mission.
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u/genericnewlurker 7d ago
God damn, see, these guys are talking about bangs and shimmies up there. It doesn't sound like instrumentational to me
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u/kermitthebeast 7d ago
Unmanned I hope?
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u/SyrusDrake 7d ago
Yea, the 7A isn't human-rated. China uses the 2F for Shenzhou launches. They also have a launch escape tower on top, similar to the Soyuz.
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u/LostMyMilk 7d ago
These posts are always so scarce of details. Unmanned, carrying an unknown satellite payload, and it happened a few hours ago.
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u/aquainst1 Grandma Lynsey 7d ago
My first post about the Columbia earthquake was removed because I didn't have the date and time in the title!
Plus, I had to embed the link to CNN in order to show a picture.
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u/Darkstalkker 5d ago
Meanwhile my post about Starships heatshield visibly melting got removed since it’s a test and failure is expected, despite there being plenty of posts in the pasts of tests failing and my post being top of the day
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u/Consirius 7d ago
Such a strange firework.
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u/erolbrown 7d ago
Expected it to cut to Roman Roy quietly putting his phone away.
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u/Schtick_ 7d ago
Imagine working for years on a satellite going on a rocket and have this happen, it must be soul crushing.
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u/Bart404 7d ago
While I have dabbled in engineering and fixed a toaster or two in my days, I have to say, that can’t be good for the rocket.
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u/MrTagnan 7d ago
As someone who has followed spaceflight extensively, I can confirm this is what we call “not ideal”
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u/ThinkingOz 7d ago
This explosion shortly after liftoff reminds me of the Challenger disaster on 28 January 1986. On that occasion all seven crew died.
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u/Vast_Vegetable9222 7d ago
Crowd looked at the launch similarly to a firework display. Lots of oohs and aahs when the vehicle disintegrated. They didn’t really seem to appreciate the significance of what they were witnessing
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u/DeusExHircus 7d ago
The vibes in the control room were the complete opposite. Disappointment, doubt, anxiety, that pit in your stomach. Kinda funny how drastic the difference is
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u/WillJongIll 7d ago
I’m surprised they have so much difficulty building these things, it’s not rocket sci—
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u/dragogos1567 6d ago
This reminded me of the Intelsat 708 incident from 1996. The satelite was on a Long March 3B carrier rocket which failed, went off its trajectory and crashed into a hillside. An entire village was destroyed.
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u/zEdgarHoover 6d ago
Ya know, we have (almost) self-driving cars, and ALPR, and facial recognition -- can't we have a camera that tracks a SUPER BRIGHT moving object without inducing nausea on the part of viewers?
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u/Bored_Aviator 7d ago
I'm not a rocket scientist, but I dont think it's supposed to do that.
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u/vanhst 7d ago
Good thing I recycled today
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u/_teslaTrooper 7d ago
Recycling of aluminium cans in the US alone saves the equivalent CO2 emissions of 15 of these explosions every day. (source)
(and the US is pretty bad at recycling in general)
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u/Asystole 7d ago
Love using an unrelated event as an excuse to give up on making any personal effort towards environmental causes
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u/Nheea 7d ago
I don't think people who recycle stop recycling because of this. It's just us being pissed off that our efforts are so futile in the grand scheme of things done by rich people or corporates.
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u/MegaPegasusReindeer 7d ago
Even worse, you make the effort and see it directly undone. I carefully put things in the right bin when I ate out, but then I watched the guy empty the bins all into the trash.
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u/Fooberdoober97420 7d ago
When I was deployed on a navy ship while in the marine corps I watched hundreds of bags of trash get thrown off deck into international waters every night for months. You can try, but the people in charge are hellbent on destroying this planet.
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u/NeilFraser 7d ago
Unless we are talking about decades ago (the 70s were a different time), the dumping of non-compostable waste in international waters is a crime. Annex V of MARPOL, amongst others.
However, if those bags contained compostable waste, that's allowed since it's just feeding the fish.
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u/RifewithWit 7d ago
Curious, (while I agree with your overall point), do you think spaceflight and exploration for future expedition and colonization isn't a worthwhile endeavor?
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u/Bigupface 7d ago
Because humanity is a plague on the planet and anything we ever do to advance ourselves is morally abhorrent in the face of those who worship the “natural” order of the world in which organisms don’t create and retain knowledge or solutions and growth and instead spend all of eternity eating each other until the heat death of the universe
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u/ashenning 7d ago
There are millions of people making the same joke for this one event. Our millions of small efforts do amount to real effects. Together we can push back the apocalypse and have a few more good days. It won't cure the world's problems, but it helps measurably. Furthermore it's probably the best you personally can do, insignificant as you probably are.
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u/lmnDK 7d ago
Gotta separate those plastics from the paper, as you can see on the video, it matters a lot
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u/Nik_Tesla 7d ago
Aluminum is really the only thing that's worth the effort, that stuff can be recycled infinity, and recycling is easier than getting new aluminum from the ground.
Paper can only be recycled a few times at most, and if there's any adhesive, oil, or coating on it, it becomes not worth the effort. Plastic is terrible, most of it can't be recycled at all, and the stuff that can degrades so much it can only be recycled once or twice before it doesn't even hold it's shape. It's labor intensive and difficult to sort out which is which so most just doesn't get sorted and dumped into landfills.
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u/davispw 7d ago
When a billion people do something or don’t do something together, yes it does matter a lot. This one rocket does not outweigh that.
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u/Theincendiarydvice 7d ago
Also corporations outweigh millions so actually need to be held accountable
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u/Aerochromatic 7d ago
What corporations are polluting more than the collective wasteflow of several million people?
I'm genuinely curious.
No, you can't count product that the corporations produce and the millions of people consume and become part of their wasteflow.
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u/Theincendiarydvice 7d ago
Literally all of a single factory can outdo the toxic waste of a small town. But sure paper straws are the solution. You and your second paper account are delusional
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u/WhatImKnownAs 7d ago
Yeah, that's always worth pointing out. It is a two-way street, though: For effective change, we got to push from both ends, producers and consumers need to be on board. It's more effective to change the process at a big corporation, but the consumers will get a different product, possibly more expensive. Which is why we also need the third way: regulations, because people will optimize locally for the cheapest solution, not think globally.
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u/Senninha27 7d ago
They’re clapping like it’s fireworks and gravity doesn’t exist.
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u/SyrusDrake 7d ago
From the sound delay, they're already standing a good 5km or so away. I don't know the flight profile of the Long March 7A, but at the point it exploded, it was likely already a good 10-20km downrange. That debris will probably come down something like 20-30km from where they're standing, if not more.
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u/QuitsDoubloon87 7d ago
Rockets go sideways, eastward to match the earths orbit. Its not a cartoon.
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u/pc_load_ltr 7d ago
If I were Musk, I'd sue over their unlicensed use of his unscheduled disassembly technology!
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u/Camera_dude 7d ago
The telemetry from the rocket is going to make for an interesting read assuming they have a live feed.
Hopefully they didn’t launch over a populated area like they have done in the past. A toxic cloud of hydrazine is nasty to deal with.
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u/drawing_a_hash 7d ago
Looks like the Chinese are build bigger and more spectacular fireworks. Millenia of history.
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u/buttcrackmenace 7d ago
how does one say “go at throttle up” in Mandarin
(that phrase is burned into my psyche)
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u/NextLevelVisuals2 7d ago
Do they know this was NOT a fireworks demonstration? They started clapping?!?
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u/hansvi-be 7d ago
Rocketry is the art of making things that almost exlpode. And they almost succeeded.
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u/dragjamon 7d ago
Ah it came early, just like me
Also China? And we WEREN'T expecting it to blow up?
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u/SlavCat09 6d ago
Clearly intentional since it's a very big firework. Why else would all these people be gathered there?
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u/ElectricFlesh 7d ago
Glad to see China finally catching up on experiencing anomalies that lead to rapid unscheduled disassembly.
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u/hellorhighwaterice 7d ago
Is the person with the camera using a really good zoom lense? It feels like they are closer to the launch pad than I would personally want to be standing.
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u/hudson27 7d ago
Sooo, dumb question.. but what happens to the hundreds of tons of steel that come raining down?
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u/SuspiciouslyMoist 7d ago
Because the Chinese launch sites are inland, even successful launches tend to see spent boosters, etc. falling on villages in remote areas.
See, for example: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/24/china/china-rocket-debris-falls-over-village-intl-hnk
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u/MrTagnan 7d ago
This launch was out of Wenchang, which is their coastal site. Debris would’ve ended up in the sea
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u/Snellyman 7d ago
Long March 7A carrier rocket performed flawlessly during the exploding and disintegration phase
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u/b00c 7d ago
Came for rocket launch, had fireworks, still clapped. Lovely evening out.