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NASA's Space Balloon Smashes Car In Australia

Posted by samzenpus on from the wrong-turn dept.

Humunculus writes "Of more worldly issues, NASA's latest multimillion-dollar stratosphere-bound balloon launch has gone horribly wrong and crashed into a car, turning it over and narrowly missing two elderly people who were observing the launch. The payload fared worse, reportedly being smashed into a 'thousand pieces.'"

3 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. Is it OK to laugh? by Slash.Poop · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I know we lost, what I assume is, millions. (Probably $150 per screw) Someone's car got smashed. We almost killed people. We probably set the program back X amount of time. X amount of time is going to cost, what I assume is, millions. But still...

    We laugh at Fail Blog so...can't we laugh at this a little? Or maybe at least chuckle?

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    1. Re:Is it OK to laugh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The better question is why were there people standing in the path of destruction to begin with? 1 measly second into the video, it's clear that the wind is blowing towards the exact direction these people are casually hanging out on the road. If something was going to go wrong, it is 100% obvious that the equipment would have been dragged in that direction. Forgot incompetence or mistakes of the physical launch itself... why the hell were casual observers allowed to be so close? Utter stupidity if you ask me.

  2. Is this piece of junk costing NASA millions? by V!NCENT · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is this piece of junk costing NASA millions?

    Or is the R&D costing millions and does this thing itself cost a lot less to reproduce?

    Just a minor question, of course...

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