Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Australia

First Australian-Made Rocket Crashes After 14 Seconds of Flight (apnews.com) 50

Posted by BeauHD from the practice-makes-perfect dept.
Australia's first domestically built rocket to attempt orbital launch crashed just 14 seconds after liftoff, though the company still declared the mission a success for igniting all engines and leaving the launch pad. The Associated Press reports: The rocket Eris, launched by Gilmour Space Technologies, was the first Australian-designed and manufactured orbital launch vehicle to lift off from the country and was designed to carry small satellites to orbit. It launched Wednesday morning local time in a test flight from a spaceport near the small town of Bowen in the north of Queensland state. In videos published by Australian news outlets, the 23-meter (75-foot) rocket appeared to clear the launch tower and hovered in the air before falling out of sight. Plumes of smoke were seen rising above the site. No injuries were reported. The company hailed the launch as a success in a statement posted to Facebook. A spokesperson said all four hybrid-propelled engines ignited and the maiden flight included 23 seconds of engine burn time and 14 seconds of flight. "Of course I would have liked more flight time but happy with this," wrote CEO Adam Gilmour on LinkedIn. Gilmour said in February that it was "almost unheard of" for a private rocket company to successfully launch to orbit on its first attempt.

"This is an important first step towards the giant leap of a future commercial space industry right here in our region," added Mayor Ry Collins of the local Whitsunday Regional Council.

First Australian-Made Rocket Crashes After 14 Seconds of Flight More | Reply

First Australian-Made Rocket Crashes After 14 Seconds of Flight

Comments Filter:

  • That's no rocket (Score:5, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Wednesday July 30, 2025 @05:43PM (#65556216)

    THIS is a rocket!

  • "declared the mission a success for igniting all engines and leaving the launch pad"

    yup bar is low when Musk rocket scorches off engines, showers debris on civilian cars and real estate and wildlife reserves, goes to 24 miles and explodes.

    Everyone gets a blue ribbon!

    • "Move fast and break things" is just a wonderful approach for things that kill people when it goes sideways.

      • Re:declared mission success for igniting all engin (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2025 @06:31PM (#65556306) Homepage
        This is pretty standard for rockets. That's why they have range restrictions and also have range-safety officers who send a self-destruct if the rocket fails to launch. Most rockets have failed to successfully launch on their first attempt, and that's been true for 80 years. One serious worry with the Space Shuttle initially was that there was no way to do any test launch without a crew.

        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          > One serious worry with the Space Shuttle initially was that there was no way to do any test launch without a crew.

          Good thing none of those blew up, can you imagine?

        • you're funny trying to whitewash SpaceX's sins. Range restrictions? They were raining down debris on people in nearby town, cars closer by, a wildlife refuge. No flame trench that any cursory study of the history of rocketry would have shown was necessary.. and which of course Space Shuttle and craft decades before had.

          Fucking idiots and bad engineering with total disregard for human or environmental safety at SpaceX, that's all it is.

          • Huh? The topic of this is about Gilmour Space Technologies's rocket, not SpaceX. Experimental rockets going boom is standard. In the particular case of SpaceX, multiple Starship launches resulted in debris outside the declared range. That was in fact bad, and for good reason resulted in FAA investigations and pauses on their launches. I'm not sure why you think this is a relevant topic when the entire discussion was about a separate Australian rocket. It seems like you are being a little bit obsessive about

            • Huh? read my post that started this thread and get back to me.

              The topic is SPACEX setting the low bar.

              • Sigh. You brought up SpaceX in a thread about the Australian company and said:

                "declared the mission a success for igniting all engines and leaving the launch pad" yup bar is low when Musk rocket scorches off engines, showers debris on civilian cars and real estate and wildlife reserves, goes to 24 miles and explodes.

                The point that you appear whether or not Musk or SpaceX existed, it is highly reasonable to for a first rocket launch attempt to be considered pretty successful if all engines ignite and you get off the pad. That was true before Musk and SpaceX even existed, and is still the case independent of whatever SpaceX is doing.

  • forgot to adjust for coriolis effect? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    also they're all alcoholic criminals

  • As an American I think I see the mistake (Score:5, Funny)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2025 @06:17PM (#65556268)
    The entire country is upside down but they didn't fire the rocket upside down so of course it crashed. That's just basic scinck.

  • NASA has been able to make rockets that don't blow up since the 1960's.

    Why can't the Australians do it? Was that knowledge filed away in a locked cabinet somewhere, or has rocket science made no strides in the past half century? Why isn't rocket design a "trivial" problem in engineering?

    If they took the same approach to computer science, the Australians would still be trying to refine silicon from sand.

    • Re:Honest question (Score:4, Informative)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2025 @06:38PM (#65556316) Homepage Journal

      NASA hasn't really designed many new rockets since the 60s, only refinements of older designs. New designs, like the Starliner capsule, that NASA has been involved in the design of, don't exactly have a stellar record, either.

      They also have always spent a lot more time designing, testing, refining, and redesigning every component before actually building the first prototype, to eliminate every possible flaw they can (and when they were working on new designs, they still had a lot of them blow up), where the private companies use the "fail fast" philosophy, of "take your best shot, build it, and figure out why it blew up and fix it on the next version." They get a lot more failures, but it's a lot cheaper in the long run.

      And rocket science/engineering is never a trivial task. Ever. Rockets are some of the most complex machines ever built, and very, very small failures can, and will, cause catastrophic failure. No amount of redundancy can protect it from a leaky fuel line in a simple piece of tubing.

      • Is not a lot cheaper in the long run. It does however get investors excited because you can constantly be presenting a new rocket that's going to be a revolutionary success. And the idea is you've got more than enough investors that you can keep blowing up rockets and moving on to the next batch.

        It's the difference between doing something right and doing something to bring cash in. The government didn't have the luxury of failure because people expected real success not a short-term stock bump that woul

    • Re:Honest question (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Wednesday July 30, 2025 @06:41PM (#65556324) Homepage Journal

      > Was that knowledge filed away in a locked cabinet somewhere

      Space rockets are the same thing as ICBM's so it's not going to be published in Popular Mechanics.

      SpaceX is put under NatSec restrictions and ITAR even as a private company.

      But getting a successful liftoff is a great achievement. Many first rockets detonate on the pad, even Starships.

    • NASA has been able to make rockets that don't blow up since the 1960's.

      So why did the Space Shuttle Challenger explode in 1986 then? Nobody knows how to build a rocket that will always work and never explode.

  • Australia's first domestically built rocket to attempt orbital launch crashed just 14 seconds after liftoff.

    "Success!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by taustin ( 171655 )

      If they learned something useful from it, it was a success. It was, after all, a prototype test. That's simply how it's done.

      If you require 100% success on even the first test, you'll never accomplish anything.

  • We do these things ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2025 @07:01PM (#65556394)

    ... not because they are easy. But because we thought they were easy.

    • ... not because they are easy. But because we thought they were easy.

      Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your multi-national corporation!

    • thats the funniest thing I've read for a long time.

      very good.

  • at least the front didn't fall off.

  • You name your rocket after the goddess of discord and chaos, and then you're surprised when this happens?

  • Not the first Australian rocket (Score:3)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2025 @10:16PM (#65556768)

    The Royal Australian Navy had an anti-submarine guided missile in the 70's It was called Ikara (an Aboriginal name)

    BTW the Aussie launch site is called Woomera after the Abo word for spear thrower which they invented independently umpteen thousand years ago.

  • Our first rocket made it to space, years ago

  • It seems a bit crazy to build rocket engines that burn hybrids as a propellant.

Slashdot Top Deals

Statistics means never having to say you're certain.

Close