XPRS explosion photos

My friend took a few photos at XPRS from a two stage rocket (M to O I think) that exploded about 1,500 feet. A few big flaming pieces fell into into the crowd near the LCO. Luckily nobody or nothing was damaged. I feel bad for the nice group of people working on that project. It looked like the first stage CATO'd.

Too bad but really great photographs. Thanks for posting.

I wouldn't characterize it as an "explosion." It was a motor failure.

This was not good. Everyone is safe, there were no injuries, and no property was damaged.

Some people should read the instructions that come with their motors. There's epoxy in that reload kit for a reason.

And everyone should learn the minimum distances required for complex flights. This could have been worse than a disaster.

cherokeej said:

Everyone is safe, there were no injuries, and no property was damaged.

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That's good news.

cherokeej said:

Some people should read the instructions that come with their motors. There's epoxy in that reload kit for a reason.

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cherokeej said:

And everyone should learn the minimum distances required for complex flights. This could have been worse than a disaster.

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It wasn't an explosion. Don't use that word.

It didn't happen at 1500 feet. See your photo #4.

Every time something like that happens, it confirms our distance safety rules. That said, the stack should have been on the away pads.

cls said:

...It wasn't an explosion. Don't use that word...

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Certainly looks like an explosion...

KidRockET said:

Certainly looks like an explosion...

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We don't say "explosion"! That word reflects badly on Our Hobby. If we must talk about such things, we say "major malfunction" instead.

Bummer. Rapid unplanned disassembly.

tmacklin said:

We don't say "explosion"! That word reflects badly on Our Hobby. If we must talk about such things, we say "major malfunction" instead.

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Wrong Teddy-boy! We say "We have an anomaly". It's in the acronym-Not Another Stupid Anomaly. Major malfunctions are designated only for wardrobes and MTV award shows......

Explosion = When something gets really big, really fast.

Anomaly = Rapid, unplanned re-kitting

Setting SCE to Aux would not have helped this one.

Dave, Your humor cracks me up.

Looks like a classic cato to me...

Is there any video of that duration-challenged flight to be had?

"Overpressurization" is another descriptive term. Kurt

cls said:

That said, the stack should have been on the away pads.

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This rocket was on the away pads. XPRS had 4 "groups" of pads, about 10 model rocket pads up close (pads 1-10 I think), about 10 high-power pads at the normal HP distance (pads 21-30), and then about 5 away pads at a much farther distance (pads A-E, I had to go to or past these pads a few times to pick up rockets I flew from he HP pads and it was a good walk to these pads even from the HP). There was one way-away pad that had a triangular truss tower that some really large projects went up on, and a few people set up their own pads even farther away for special projects. But this flight went up on pad A, which was an away pad, but as the motor fragmented it came towards the far-east end of the flight line, thankfully those two pieces were either just past the flight line or between the first and second row of RVs (my RV was towards the east-end of the second row, so people from my group went running when the pieces came down to make sure our RV wasn't in trouble, I was watching these launches because my dad's rocket was on one of the HP pads waiting to do his L2 cert (unfortunately that turned out to be an AT J250 DMS motor CATO which nearly destroyed the insides of his rocket on the pad, we were able to re-build it and fly the next day for a successful L2). It was also announced as a heads-up flight, though personally I wish these all used 10-counts instead of 5-counts as to me that's also more of an attention-getter when you hear the longer countdown.

I managed to leave my best video camera at home for XPRS , but for this rocket failure I had video from my older camera (lower zoom, harder to keep the target in-frame because of the screen size and brightness) as well as the away pads being within view of the pad camera I had set up at the HP pads for my dad's flight. Neither one had a great shot of the actual event however. Both videos are in the XPRS album I just uploaded, a bit past the half-way point, the two videos immediately before the picture of the fractured J250W DMS motor casing.