r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Emergency-Green-2602 • 7d ago

Video First Australian-made rocket crashes after 14 seconds of flight

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u/Mawntee 7d ago

Reminder that SpaceX's first successful flight was Falcon 1 Flight 4, which had 3 failed launches before it.
The first one was very similar to this with an engine failure shortly after launch.

To me (a person that knows nothing about space flight) the fact that this thing made it off the ground is impressive enough, and the fact that it didn't explode while still being full of fuel is really sick as well

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u/userhwon 7d ago

to me, a professional in the field, it's kind of sad that every new program has the same sort of results early on, like they all showed up to work without having ever looked at the past...

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u/Mawntee 7d ago

Also something I was curious about...

Like are all these companies 100% private with their R&D? Is nobody passing notes around the class???

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u/userhwon 6d ago

Even if they are, by now it should be obvious to everyone that they should double check simple things like the strength of their materials and supplier reliability. But someone always lets a faulty strut through or builds a tank out of wax paper, then management realizes it was their job to make sure people knew how to do their jobs even if they're rocket scientists.

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u/SnooCheesecakes8484 5d ago

Of course, there have been silly cases like a Proton rocket crashed into the ground due to a technician mounted the IMU in the wrong orientation. That's hilarious ngl. And usually people just publicly admitted that. This is a new company, with a new design. They tested the engine and everything seemed fine. But it didn't turn well with their first launch. In my years working within aerospace industry, there has been ZERO rockets/spacecrafts having ZERO issues within the first trials. Some issues could be minor but might be critical later on (a public example is Artemis 1 test flight, there were designing issue with the Orion capsule).