What goes up must come down...

[rootabaga]

sometimes lots sooner than expected.

Rocket blows up seconds after launching - The Washington Post

Also a good reason that the observation area is a long way from the launch pad...

 

[Gmash]

Not really a fan of privatizing the space program. NASA needs to go back to rolling their own.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

If NASA keeps slacking off we'll have giant billboards on the moon.

 

[sfbloodbrother]

Rockets are cool, but they are so dangerous. I would never be an astronaut. Or even be working for one. Spend millions and millions of $$$$ in R&D for one rocket, then BOOM, it blows up...

 

[bjacks12]

I hate when shit like this happens, because it makes it harder for me to laugh at the DPRK or PRC when they screw up.

 

[Gmash]

Well, they were using old Soviet rocket engines from the 60's. That's pretty funny.

 

[zuben el genub]

Now it was Spaceship 2.
HARDOCP - Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo Crashes During Testing

 

[nickdalzell]

The Challenger disaster certainly didn't cause the level of fear most in this thread is experiencing...

 

[bjacks12]

I don't think anybody is experiencing fear.

My favorite line from Armageddon is when Steve Buscemi talks about all the components on the shuttle that are built by the lowest bidder, lol.

 

[mikedt]

Well, they were using old Soviet rocket engines from the 60's. That's pretty funny.

China uses very much the same designs and ideas from the Soviet and Russian space programs, Chinese space suits are identical to Russian, and the current Shenzhou ships, they're slightly larger versions of the Soyuz spacecraft, originally designed in the 1960s.


North Korea space program:

 

[mikedt]

Rockets are cool, but they are so dangerous. I would never be an astronaut. Or even be working for one. Spend millions and millions of $$$$ in R&D for one rocket, then BOOM, it blows up...

Yeh, it serves as a reminder as to just how dangerous space exploration can be.

 

[mikedt]

I don't think anybody is experiencing fear.

My favorite line from Armageddon is when Steve Buscemi talks about all the components on the shuttle that are built by the lowest bidder, lol.

There's the movie Capricorn One, about a NASA Mars mission that has to be faked.

Where we find out why the mission has to be faked...
"And guess what! We had a screw-up! A first-class, bona-fide, made-in-America screw-up! The good people from Con-Amalgamate delivered a life-support system cheap enough so they could make a profit on the deal. Works out fine for everybody. Con-Amalgamate makes money. We have our life-support system. Everything's peachy. Except they made a little bit too much profit. We found out two months ago it won't work. You guys would all be dead in three weeks."
Capricorn One (1977) - Quotes - IMDb

 

[zuben el genub]

Wallops must a bit closer to civilization than the big guys in FL. There were warnings about people picking up debris. I think what rattled people the most is that any rocket launched in the US has a destruct button. All of the manned space vehicles had one. Those destruct overrides have to be in working order before any launch.

From what I heard about safety for the Antares, it sounded like it had slacked off a bit due to costs. If a procedure had been tried and had no problem for years, some QC (like having a live watcher) might have been skipped. Probably recorded, though.