Europe's 1st commercial rocket by RFA explodes on test stand at Scotland spaceport

Space dot com ^ | August 20, 2024 | Brett Tingley

[SunkenCiv]

A rocket engine has exploded during a test at Britain's newest spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The rocket body, developed by German start-up Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), burst into flames seconds after ignition while on the launch pad on Monday night.

The start-up said the "hot fire" test of the first stage rocket resulted in an "anomaly" and the loss of the spacecraft.

Rocket engine explodes at Shetland spaceport | 1:00
The Telegraph | 5.69M subscribers | 26,006 views | August 20, 2024

[SunkenCiv]

Just the other day SpaceX had its 340th successful landing of a Falcon 9 booster.

[srmanuel]

SpaceX and Elon Musk make it look so easy to launch a rocket, it’s led some people to believe anyone can do it, until they try to build one and it blows up on the launch pad.

[cgbg]

If they had some decent PR hacks they could label the explosion a “success”.

:-)

[wildcard_redneck]

SpaceX has engine technology that is a decade ahead of the Eurotrash.

[nevadapatriot]

Calling Wernher von Braun

[Mogger]

Space X went through the same growing pains with boosters blowing up.

[V_TWIN]

“RFA posted a statement to X following the incident”

Oh the irony.....perhaps they should contract Elon for their aerospace work as well as social media 😏

[DesertRhino]

Suddenly, being rude to Elon looks like a bad decision.

[Ezekiel]

RFA has conducted several previous hot fire tests, including one in May 2024 that saw the same rocket stage fire four of its nine Helix engines. It is unknown how many engines were fired in yesterday's cat-astrophic test.

"If that thing had nine lives he just spent 'em all."

~ Cousin Eddie

[NorthMountain]

The first three Falcon-1 launches catastrophically failed.

Rocket science isn’t easy.

[MCF]

Sounds like they need more DEI.

[SunkenCiv]

Yup. Just the other day a cashier started a short conversation about a space book I was getting, and my main contribution to this was, I watch the Falcon 9 launches on YT, but they go so smoothly they’re almost boring.

Generally I watch up to max Q, to see if it’s a lighter or heavier load [anecdotally the avg is 72 seconds, used to be 74, but the engines have been tweaked] then speed through to the landing burn.

No one aboard the drone barge.

No one aboard the booster.

They stick the landing something like 99% of the time.

[1066AD]

“Once ze rockets are up, who cares where zey come down . . . . .”

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TjDEsGZLbio&pp=ygUidG9tIGxlaHJlciB3ZXJuaGVyIHZvbiBicmF1biBsaXZlIA%3D%3D

[SunkenCiv]

While looking for something a few minutes ago, I saw that the SpaceX YT channel has a video about that fourth test flight, haven’t watched it yet.

[dfwgator]

A classic, as everything was with Tom Lehrer.

[SunkenCiv]

They’re often way more fun to watch. :^)

[SunkenCiv]

Of everyone.

[Teacher317]

SpaceX has engine technology that is a decade ahead of the Eurotrash.

Yeah but the Eurotrash have DEI hires, so there!

[SunkenCiv]

Gee, y’think? If the Biden junta were all about getting any given job done right, they’d worry about it. But, they’re all about getting their jackboot on our necks.