On the scale of bad 1-10 where 10 is the absolutely worst case this is a 12 easily.

(Elon’s strategy of blowing up smaller versions of their rockets more or less deliberately doesn’t sound so insane in the light of this.)

▲ perlgeek 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'd say on a scale of bad 1-10, 9 and 10 are reserved for incidents that cause loss of human life. YMMV.

▲ AustinDev 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Loss of human life in a static fire is criminal. Why would anyone be that close?

There was no loss of life in this static fire failure.

▲ kqr 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I can think of a few reasons:

- Test commences prematurely when people are still around

- Test is aborted partway through but then spontaneously resumes when people have started coming back

- Error in design or failure of hold-down structure turns static fire into dynamic fire, moving fire to where people are

These are unlikely, of course, but they are the things we have to seriously think about and try to design out of the system in order to create safe systems.

▲ tmtvl 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

No one should ever be that close, but it's a worst case scenario within the realm of possibility (people do get themselves into danger sometimes, for example by wandering onto a railroad track when there's a train approaching). I don't think it's unreasonable to reserve the 10 on the 1-10 scale for 'loss of human life'.

	▲	robocat 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		`The train driver saw a man on the track ahead holding a cell phone to one ear and cupping his hand to the other ear to block the noise.` https://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-24.html

▲ krisoft 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Loss of human life in a static fire is criminal.

True. And yet it is not without precedent.

Scaled Composites had an explosion while performing a cold flow test of SpaceShipTwo’s engine which killed 3. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-jul-27-me-explo...

▲ russdill 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I mean, there was that one static fire recently where the rocket broken loose and started flying. This was not for from a populated area. Ok, maybe that was pretty criminally negligent.

▲ dlcarrier 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Plainly Difficult channel on YouTube reserves 1 and 2 for incidents that don't cause loss of human life.

▲ logicallee 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

yeah if you want to put it in the best light in terms of 9/11's this is zero 9/11's of casualties. Not how I'd judge it.

▲ contactlight11 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

SpaceX had a very similar failure during a static fire test in 2016 that destroyed the rocket, payload, and a few key parts of SLC-40 that took them over a year to repair and return to service (September 2016 -> December 2017). The concrete flume trenches were literally melted.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/09/01/spacex-rocket-and-isra...

That was a full size rocket on a real mission with the $200M payload on board during the static fire, which is ostensibly worse. The payload was not integrated yet in Blue Origin’s case.