"While space travel is safe for the most part"

Huh? What planet do you live on?

TommySez

Hello...Mr Claims Adjuster?....Yeah, dude, I have to report a loss....uh-huh...my car melted....is that covered?

Curves

I wonder if they are now hiring for someone to check for cracks...

youngjjohnson

nasa didn't make that movie. every video that guy narrates is "deadly" - even birthday parties where a little kid farts.

and, i've got a 6 inch crack in my ass that i don't notice every day. granted, a difference on the maginitude of 34, but still.

Flugenhiber

For those who didn't catch this - the video is NOT about the rocket the article is referring to - it's about an earlier "anomaly" in 1997. Hence the ATX launch vehicle/Wallops Island vs. Delta 2/Cape Canaveral difference.

phealy

"deadly"

from m-w.com "1: likely to cause or capable of producing death"

That would make it seem "deadly" no one is saying someone died. Just that they could of. Your not to smart judging from your first statement. And I'm sure NASA is much smarter then you. And trust me they have ways to figure out what is wrong.

fleebailey33

Seems like they would have noticed a 17 ft long crack before launching. Maybe they were too busy painting a shark grin.

thegadgeteer

Mmmmmm rocket fuel....tasty...

thekanester

1) It was not deadly, (1:40) "Amazingly, no one was injured."

2) How can they tell there was a 17 foot crack after a boom like that?

myotheralt

Damn.

Hvedhrungr

@fleebailey33:

Step 1: Learn proper English grammar/word usage.

Step 2: Use said grammar/word usage in a sentence to call someone dumb.

WARNING: DO NOT SKIP STEP 1!

"Your (should be: you're) not to (should be: too) smart judging from your first statement. And I'm sure NASA is much smarter then (should be: than) you.

Concrete_Particulars

hey Jesus, cover more gadgets and less spike tv's Worlds Most Somethingest Something.

im_back

Spectacular, but if I was there for it I'd need a new pair of drawers afterward.

strider_mt2k

@rocketgeek: Did you actually read the article?

Jesus Diaz

@myotheralt:

deadly |ˈdedlē|
adjective ( -lier , -liest )
causing or able to cause death : a deadly weapon.

Come see me after class.

Jesus Diaz

Phealy is correct -- that's a Delta II at the Cape, not the recent sounding rocket failure at Wallops. Bit of a difference. The ground-level fireworks are chunks of solid propellant from the boosters hitting the ground... which is a(nother) good reason to detest the bloody things. And it all landed in the clear area anyhow, so it's really not that big a deal.

rocketgeek

@Curves: well did you bother to spring for the "mad scientist rider?" so few people today do, you know. But they should, they should.

sqeakytoy of the apocalypse

Shame I had to turn off the sound due to that wretched soundtrack... Sometimes, I suffer from Accute Onset F*ckin' Annoyed (AOFA). The music totally made it flare up.

DustyButt

If that's what they call "an anomaly", I'd hate to see what happens when they "have a real problem".

scrag

@myotheralt: I at first understood 'crab' and got somewhat dumbfounded by the 17 feet of length but not too much, since I think metric anyway. However, that would be one hell of a bugger. Toasty too, by the looks of the fireworks. Bummer it was just a crack.

On another note: Wallops Island sure had to take a nice wallop... oK, that was kinda stewpitt....

yogibimbi

The Deadly Aftermat: In this case deadly is used as an adjective not an adverb beacause it is followed by a noun, so Deadly Aftermath really means that someone actualy died within this explosion. This style of writing is used to confuse people. Lawyers use it often.

Come see me after class.

danjuan

Holy awesomeness! Those cars were liquefied!

flynboarder07

Does that look like Power Rangers to anyone else?

Joseph

My dad worked on the navigation systems for the Gemini project. He's described how one unmanned test launch of an early rocket started out fine but then got into trouble when a course correction went haywire. The rocket was supposed to alter course slightly but instead it turned 180 degrees and started heading back towards the ground so they had to destroy it. They eventually found the problem to be a rather simple logic bug in the guidance system. The pseudo code was something like this:

if (seconds == 32) then stop_course_correction;

Well the problem was that the code was checked when 31 seconds and then again when it was around 32.2 seconds. So it never actually equaled 32, so the course correction never ended. It should have been this instead:

if (seconds >= 32) then stop_course_correction;

That's one costly logic error...

IphtashuFitz

Oh... it was only a 17 foot crack in the booster that caused this... thats easy to overlook. Those SEVENTEEN FOOT LONG CRACKS.

nystreetfilms

Anyone else see that one of the boosters didn't fire? Likely that that was the booster that failed. Also likely that the crack wasn't in the outer skin of the booster, but was in the fuel. The flames would have gone out through that crack, melted the outer skin, melted the Delta 2, and ignited it's fuel.

Isn't solid rocket fuel fun? Isn't it comforting to know that we are still using it for manned launches, and will be relying on it even more in the Ares?

Kodai1

@scrag:
I know. Those 17 foot cracks certainly aren't supposed to be there.

Announcer: We have an anomaly.
Engineer: No FUCKING SHIT!! It looks like Armageddon out there!!

Benjammn

So this is what the apocalypse is gonna look like eh? be pretty cool for the first few minutes till you go to hell.

FinalValgas

Will you grammar nazis just shut the f*ck up about the meaning of deadly already?

Incredible piece of video... what ruins it is the "World's something something" tone, replays, and tacky tunes.

Lady was lucky she could complete that whole sucessful launching sentence before the whole thing blow up.

Bokusatsu_Tenshi

OK, how far back does this setback cost us in getting the latest and the greatest GPS signal?

Also, why the the payload booster automatically eject and deploy parachute?

Noobs-R-Us

@Flugenhiber: His name is Stacey Keach. No one narrates a worlds wildest "XXXX" or worlds deadliest "XXXX" like her does. On a side note, did anyone hear about the passing of Don LaFontaine, the famous VO guy today?

Git Em SteveDave is starlost

Wow. Can you believe that? Someone wrote "Just that they could of. Your not to smart judging from your first statement."

Let us see if we can repair that 17 foot crack English usage. Start with "could of", replace that with "could have". "Your not to smart" is an all time classic - should that have been written "You're not too smart"? We may never know - the debris field is too large.

JDisnidiet

Where's Chuck Norris when you need him? He could have stopped it from exploding.

MyPetFly

I think this was in the "Destroyed in Seconds" Discovery Channel show's ad.

MePerson

This is why you shouldn't paint shark mouths on things that aren't explicitly for killing people. It makes them thirst for blood.

shini

Holy shit. Final Fantasy spells >.>

METEOR.

MastaFalse

"sometimes things go really wrong." Is there any inbetween?

@im_back: I think that the GPS satellite that was going to orbit would be gadget related. Not to mention, every loves stuff that blows up!

andrelix

Sounds like the lady announcing the launch was somewhere else, i.e. she just saw a small spike in heat in booster 5 on a monitor somewhere.. anomaly.. hahahaha

sxt173

Hmmm... looks like QA Testing screwed up.

stryder100

Jesus wept.

stryder100

Remind me, the next time I'm working at a rocket launching facility, to park in the overflow lot.

weatherman

could it be reproduced using over the counter estes parts and lighter fluid?

-goes to look for old launching control panel....

godwhacker

@im_back:

I chortled, hehe

General Halfshaftery

Sure it was deadly, it kill a bunch of cars.

Barry99705

@thegadgeteer: I mean the thing is worth how many millions of dollars or maybe even billions. Im sure i'd check to see if there was a crack anywhere.
The shark grin was blown to smitherens. Reminds me of a suicide bomber before he just blows himself to "heaven" where he'll get his 21 virgins. {-sigh-) hey its their beliefs.

SneakerFiend

@Git Em SteveDave is starlost: Yeah, him and his voice will be missed.

On a side note, isn't a 17 foot crack just a little hard to miss when doing the final inspections?

StopTheLHC

@FrankenPC: The only downside is it has to be launched from inside the country you wish to fire it at. So if Russia wouldn't mind you setting one up in Red Square, you're golden.

Git Em SteveDave is starless

Nothing like flaming magnesium to light up the sky!

Dinotech

Heyyyy....I just got an idea for a new ballistic missile. NASA could go military overnight.

FrankenPC

@FrankenPC: from wiki "In addition to the space program, it is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research.[4]"

NASA is military.

dysthymia

I hate when that happens.

bimplebean

all these comments and only one person who understands how a crack in solid fuel boosters works....

*sigh*

the internet fails again.....

mikeg916

@JDisnidiet: i read your post and breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. Reading posts anywhere on the Internet is a test of my patience with others' use of basic grammar.
I'm just glad someone else is paying attention.

kaylix

Does anyone know if insurance would cover a car melted in an "anomaly" like this? This sure isn't your typical fender bender accident.

ddaq89

"An anomaly" I like that. I'm going to start using that. "Honey, your sister and I had an anomaly after the party last night." Yeah, see that doesn't sound so bad.

phlavor

1997. Talk about OLD tech news.

I watched the video of this vehicle exploding 10 years ago.

thebear91

@ddaq89:
Somewhere out there, I'm sure there are over two dozen people who now know the answer to that question.

Purple Dave

I love how a giant rocket exploding into fiery shards that rain down upon the parking lot and grounds is called an "anomoly". Anyways, it's really odd to note that if you mark every NASA fatality on a calendar, they all fall within the same seven-day period (around the end of January/start of February as I recall). Even more interesting to note that, while we've lost the most astronauts, due in large part to the two Space Shuttle disasters, we still haven't even come close to touching the record for most lives lost, from when an early Russian rocket basically fell over on the launch pad and killed around 90 people who were dumb enough to stand too close, and out in the open where they had no chance at survival.

@im_back:
That's "World's Blankiest Blank", thankyouverymuch.

@IphtashuFitz:
If it was just a test launch, then they probably didn't have a real payload on it, and they probably didn't expect to recover it. So, in a way, that was a huge cost-saving mistake, since they figured it out before sending a pricy satellite into oblivion. Now, the Mars polar lander, on the other hand...

@scrag:
Judging by past experience, everyone gets home safe in the end and they make a blockbuster Tom Hanks movie out of it.

@phlavor:
Your rocket had a big fiery explosion that melted parts of her car? You probably ought to go to the clinic for that...

Purple Dave

that was so totally fake

HAH!

jk, jk, geezus. bad ass explosion! hope some vid game dev uses that in a sequence, f$#@ing sick.

oh yeah, btw, I just heard they're coming out with a new Castle Wolfenstein game. RTCW was so exTREME dudes. exTREME! (just watched that White Castle film for the 10th time :^)

banmojo

@dysthymia: NASA is a civilian administration. The military does not run it. Lots of civilian organizations do military R&D, and yes, NASA launches military equipment into space, but it's not a military outfit. There is no general or admiral in charge of NASA.

Barion

So....they saw a 17 foot crack after the explosion but not BEFORE the explosion? Yeah.... that's it!

JEmlay

Yeah I think a 17 foot crack would be hard to miss but believe it or not that stuff happens. My dad happens to work with the propellant of this stuff and it's crazy how long and hot it can burn.

Either way that was flipping awesome looking. It was like Armageddon in such a short period of time. Almost like meteors falling out of the sky.

I can only imagine this on a larger scale of say a real asteroid that launches hundreds of smaller meteors at the ground.

addiktion