Tianlong-3 Y1 “Static Fire”
 

Now, about those tie down bolts…….

Photo before test and video of test……..

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f246de6f7.jpeg

Video:

Looks rather like the down pipe from my guttering. 'cept I haven't got a bin liner stretched over the top.

This is beyond crazy. Very lucky escape.

Really! With China being such a large country one wonders why they make these tests so close to a town. But the belly-flop-manoever worked nicely ;-)

Funny side note, after a little bit of investigation w/ others, the patent for the pad (which was originally for Tianlong-2) was only designed to support up to 600t of force. T3Y1 has a thrust of 820t, w/ 220t of propellant by the time cutoff occurred

How on earth was this supposed to work lol…..

This is an old patent but the organization has stated in the past that only the propellant system was modified, as a show of simplicity in ground infrastructure. They even tried to throw shade at LandSpace with their expensive hardware versus the "reusable" ground system between launch vehicles of Space Pioneer

I am actually laughing so hard right now what the hell is up with Chinese companies…..

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"You tightened those bolts... right?"

Looks like an expensive mistake :hmm:

They probably ordered the bolts from AliExpress. David Beckham has a lot to answer for.

Actaully by their own admission they exceeded the specs of the test rig by quite a margin. It was never going to fly (pun intended).

Rumo(u)r has it that the former Spirit employee who had worked on the Alaska Airlines 737-900 MAX door/plug was responsible for the installation of the tie-down bolts on the test stand....

- Ed

Back to bolts - but on the rocket not the text stand.

Mind you, on the figures, the stand would have gone next if the bolts holding the hooks in the rocket didn’t…..

Aftermath pictures.

Looks like it wasn't some clamp mechanism failure as there was no clamps in pic 1. More like the test stand latched onto the rocket body's v-shaped hooks (pic 3 and 4 have more details). Upon ignition, the 4 hooks that are part of the rocket body got sheared off cleanly.

So wasn't really the test stand fault as we initially thought - it was how those hooks attached to the rocket. Either bad / low-grade bolts gave away or they didn't do enough stress calculation/simulation?!

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....8baa5a91dd.png

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d975da5896.png

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Crazy how quick this failure happened! Near instantaneous.

​​​​​​​Drone footage from the Tianlong-3 static fire test and accidental launch emerges.

Probably a stupid question, but does the first stage of a multi stage rocket, without any of the other stages installed, have any operating guidance equipment in it?

Most likely not.
This was a pure ballistic 'fligh'. Could have ended much worse...

Since this is supposed to be the Chinese clone version of the SpaceX Falcon 9, yes. It is, after all, supposed to be able to fly back to and land on its planned landing site.

Whether this test uni5 had any is moot, as it had already ripped its arse out getting airborne and is missing any planned steering vanes.