Phazzee 🐼🚀 | 中国航天 🇨🇳 | 🇵🇸🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈@PhazzeeYeehaw
The Long March 2C Y50 first-stage booster, for the SVOM mission, fell in Guiding County (贵定县) in the province of Guizhou (贵州) within the designated hazard areas. However, the local government failed to evacuate the surrounding areas properly before launch, the booster hit the ground not long after 3pm local time. Evacuation responsibilities fall on the local governments after state-owned and private companies release information regarding hazard areas.
In the footage, the booster appears to fall on a hillside, with no explosion audible. Audio of the booster 'crumpling' can be heard as there is little propellant left. The yellow-ish smoke seen is from a propellant vent that is opened as soon as liftoff. Clean-up teams usually arrive not long after the booster is no longer airborne to isolate it from the public and remove debris, these teams also actively track it as it falls.
China is currently part-way through a transition away from using hypergolic fuelled rockets, along with working on reusable rockets that can land themselves which will effectively eliminate this problem long-term. This transition cannot take place overnight as production facilities need to be built, hardware needs to be tested, and reliability needs to be proven in-flight.
But why not equip the old boosters with grid-fins? SAST has done this on their legacy Long March rockets, notably the Long March 4C and 2D. However, CALT manufactures the Long March 2C and is not known to do this. CALT's efforts towards reuse are with the Long March 9 and 10.
But why continue to launch these rockets over populated areas? Satellites are part of the vital infrastructure of day-to-day life now, with launches of new ones needed constantly. China has three in-land launch sites that were built during the Cold War. Jiuquan and Taiyuan were built in the north to prevent easy attacks on them by the U.S., Xichang was built to enable launches to geostationary orbits while being hard to attack by the U.S. and Soviet Union. These older sites are still used today due to Wenchang not currently being large enough to support the country's launch needs, along with significant investment in and around the sites for launches.
The launch site at Wenchang is currently seeing new construction efforts as part of the shift away from the old in-land launch sites. Launch Vehicle production facilities are also being built near the Wenchang launch site to meet China's launch needs.
The legacy Long March rockets won't be phased out overnight, but they are effectively at the end of their development. Production of the legacy launch vehicles are also believed to be on the decline in coming years. Launches from the in-land sites will continue as long as they are economically viable, with Wenchang receiving funding to make sure it is the most economically viable launch site in the near future.