Business, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

Quite the “Static” Test

31 Comments

I’m guessing this will delay their orbital test…

[Update a while later]

If this was the static test, the orbital one will be very exciting.

[Monday-afternoon update]

Brian Wang has more info.

[Bumped]

[Wednesday-morning update]

Jonathan O’Callaghan has the story, with a quote from Your’s Truly.

[Bumped]

31 thoughts on “Quite the “Static” Test”

  1. Now that’s the China we all know and love that sells all that stuff at amazon.com.

  4. I’m guessing this will delay their orbital test…
    Maybe the ‘orbital test’ stays on the pad? You sure it’s not a matter of translation?

  5. Structural failure of Stage 0 led to accidental launch of Stage One according to Wikipedia. YMMV.

    A quickie analysis shows what appears to be thrust pulsations shortly after ‘lift-off’. Hard to say if that was part of the test software running or due to pressurization issues due to damage. The engines are clearly throttled back to the point of non-thrust, forcing the whole rocket to come down. Structurally the rocket held up well in horizontal orientation all the way to the ground under an immense fuel load, which speaks well of its construction. And since this stage is supposed to be reusable, we know throttling down at least works. Actually not a bad unintentional test flight. Does Space Pioneer not equip with FTS? Maybe thinking it was not needed for this test…. The launch pad however, and whatever Stage 1 landed upon, is going to need some work…

  6. Not a lot of people have been rammed by rockets in peacetime. But twice, accidentally? I can’t make up stuff this stupid.

    Early on we were broke. I mean, couldn’t afford rocket propellants AND fire extinguishers broke. So Dan DeLong assembled a small pressure bottle, maybe 3″ in diameter and a foot long with a plug valve he already had, and an AN-4 flare nose. Fill it with CO2 through the flare fitting, close the valve, double check the weight to make sure it wasn’t overfilled. Hold the damn thing tight when you use it because it kicks!

    You can see where this is going.

    We had the first generation of the “teacart” engine fastened to a workbench (before it was installed on the roll-around cart) and it was burning propane that we filtered through a homemade charcoal bed to remove the mercaptans that had a bad habit of forming waxy blobs in the injector head. This deodorized propane had almost no smell, and we inevitably had an undetected small leak, forming a pool of propane vapor on the benchtop. We discovered this when an engine run ignited the entire bench on fire! I aborted the run (that is, stepped back in alarm and released the button) and Dan gave it a zot of CO2, putting it out. He had to actively open and close the valve, no spring-loaded-to-close functionality for us, no sir. Jeff closed the propane bottle valve and we paused for a few seconds, and another fire sprung up from the last bits of propane leaking out. Dan went to give another zot, but the tank was apparently out of CO2, so he bent over and blew it out.

    The stand was safe so he set the extinguisher down on the bench and turned to get some tools to tighten the fittings. But the bottle wasn’t empty, the brief flow and closure had trapped some liquid CO2 in the valve which bled off and formed a plug of dry ice inside the valve so when he tried to use it again, there was no flow. Until the dry ice plug blew out.

    Unfortunately, the valve was still open, so it took off like a steam rocket, smashed the high voltage transformer for the igniter, came off the table and nailed me right on my sternum, then went flying all over the hangar while we ducked and cringed. Shooof! Bang! Oof! Clang! Thud! Clang! For some unknown reason nothing (and no one) else got damaged, and after a few seconds of terror it fell back to the floor with one last CLANG.

    I only had a bruise with a twinge when I breathed deeply and the transformer still worked, but we already had a better one on order. So that was the first time I was hit by an XCOR rocket.

    The second time I got hit by a rocket was more dramatic but less traumatic, go figure. We were doing a static test of the Ez-Rocket right outside Hangar 61 (which we sometimes called Area 61) and Buzz Lange claimed to be an old sailor and a whiz with ropes and knots, so we had him tie it off to a couple of tiedown points on the ramp.

    You can see where this is going.

    I didn’t inspect the tie-downs, trusting my co-worker a bit too much, and Dan DeLong and I were in front of the aircraft, Buzz was in the cockpit, and others were off to the sides. I had the checklist to lead us through the steps methodically, Dan was the test conductor and also had a video camera on a tripod in front of him. Buzz lit the first engine, the ropes took up the strain, lit the second engine, the ropes held- then came loose. The rocket plane accelerated toward me, but thankfully 700 lb of thrust on a 2000 lb vehicle is quick but not blistering acceleration. Dan grabbed the camera and ran, I (in an excess of team spirit, I guess) put my hands on the front of the left wing and tried to hold it back.

    This didn’t work, of course. I staggered back but didn’t lose my balance, turning the plane to its left, and after a VERY long two seconds, Buzz shut the engines down. No damage, no injuries, but a lot of harsh words.

    So that was the second time I got run over by a rocket. Good times.

    1. Very entertaining, thank you!
      I imagine there are a lot of stories like this that never get spoken of outside of friends talking about ‘remember when?’!

    2. I’m familiar with the P90X program for abdominal conditioning. But I was, until now, totally unfamiliar with the XCOR method…

    3. Blowing a fire out with your lungs has unanticipated dangers.

      A family member set toast on fire in a toaster oven. Not wanting to discharge a fire extinguisher, I took a deep breath and successfully blew the fire out.

      What happened next is that I took a breath after deeply exhaling. Bad move. My lungs just ached. I now know why it isn’t the flames but inhaling the smoke that gets you.

    4. I’ve always enjoyed Doug’s rocket reminiscences, and now that I’m firmly retired, I’ve been offering mine to any hapless soul too nice to tell me to shut up. How does one characterize the tales we tell? Well, subconsciously at least with me, the phrase “fish story” has always lurked.

      This event absolutely sets “fish story” for our type of reminisce in stone. The first thing I thought of after watching it was a scene years in the future, with two elderly Chinese aerospace engineers sitting on a porch in rocking chairs, and one of them starts telling the other about “the one that got away.”

  8. It looks like it only had enough propellant for the test, not a full load. The rocket itself was burning so there was probably an oxygen leak. That explosion on the ground though… it landed very close to the pad, so I bet the dead rocket hit a tank on the ground.

    1. I’ve been in discussions with the rocket scientists out of the public eye.

      They all have sharp minds. They understand rocket science. They have a great rocket program.

      They just had a bad day.

        1. Don’t make me explain this joke!

          Isn’t anyone here going to make me explain the joke?

  9. It might be amusing if someone translated the Chinese in the commentary on the video.

  11. Brian Wang has more info.
    Actually Brian embeds a Scott Manley video with lots of info.

    To quote Scott: This wasn’t so much a failure of Rocket Science as it was Bolt Science 🙂

    I disagree with Scott on whether or not there was a controlled shutdown. The video doesn’t convince me it was engine failure all the way to apex.

    I think there is some evidence on the slowed down video of one, perhaps two engine failures out of nine.

    But I don’t put too much stock in the idea that lots of smoke means engine failure. A shutdown mode could be LOX cutoff followed by RP-1 cutoff which would naturally produce lots of smoke on shutdown.

    As Tim Dodd points out you just don’t slam a rocket engine off, esp. a regenerative gas rocket engine.

    Parts of the outer rocket skin was on fire, but was that due to RP-1 leaking out on the surface and subsequently catching fire? Was the leak due to damage or due to only partial combustion because of a commanded shutdown?

    I’d be very careful second guessing Rocket Pioneer.
    I still say the 1st Stage structurally held up very well in the horizontal. Manley’s projected crash zone didn’t look like it involved any ground infrastructure, so that’s hopeful.

    Clearly this is not a flight test range… I would hope!

  13. Seems like a failure of range safety too. I count around 12 seconds till thrust gave out. When the thing broke loose, that should have resulted in an automated shutdown or button mashing that would take it down one way or another before it had time to gain altitude or wander off.

    Still, if the Chinese government doesn’t shut down the program, they probably can recover and do better next time.

    1. I’m not sure something that doesn’t exist can fail, because there seemed no signs of range safety present.

      1. Yep. Not a range so no range safety.

        And there are precedents for large rocket test facilities comparably close to significant population. There was once such a facility in the mountains just north of the San Fernando Valley here in California.

  14. You’re all deluding yourselves by calling this failure.

    What it clearly means is that the Chinese are ahead of us in launch technology. Here (in the US) we have separate events for static fires and suborbital test flights. China, obviously, has managed to combine the two.

    Not only that, they’ve also managed to combine their dual static-fire/suborbital launch test with vegetation and infrastructure clearing at the launch site. Now that’s efficiency!

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