Launch Mishaps - Early Rocket Failures at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

What I find absolutely amazing, is that after an explosion that shatters the rocket into thousands of pieces, engineers are able to piece together what went wrong.

Press conference, just after Allan Shepard's first spaceflight. Reporter: "What was on your mind in the last minutes before launch?" Shepard: "The fact that every part of the ship was made by the lowest bidder."

"Sir. Launch pad 9C will need to be replaced." "What part?" "All of it sir."

Amazing to think that just a few years after most of these failures something as majestic and reliable as Saturn 5 was built and flown, what an astonishing achievement!

My dad was a flight test engineer for Convair, mostly wiring the instrumentation for and flying on their commercial airplane test flights. But he also worked on wiring the telemetry for the Atlas test launches. His brother, also an electrical engineer for Convair brought back from the cape in 1962 a film reel of all the early Atlas test launches. My cousins & I sat on the floor watching the spectacular work of the Range Safety Officer.

I wish there was better footage of the Soviet N-1 launch failures. The loss of one test flight was believed to be one of the largest conventional (non-nuclear) explosions ever caused by man and resulted in the loss of the vehicle, launch pad, damage to an adjoining pad and the deaths of dozens, including important scientists and personnel. Pieces of these wrecks can still be found laying about in the steppes around Baikonur.

"If at first you don't succeed... keep blowing shit up until you get it right." - traditional proverb

It's worthwhile to note that a rocket is essentially a controlled explosion, until it's not controlled. I remember my parents waking us up (west coast) to watch rocket launches on TV when I was very young. I ended up watching every launch I could.

Grew up in the 80s and 90s on the space coast. I vividly remember watching the Delta and Titan explosions in 97 and 98, my step mother worked at the Cape at the time and i got to witness a lot of great launches growing up

LOL "Snark-infested waters." I cracked the hell up in the first minute. Gonna finish the rest after I catch my breath.

7:38 Oh wow, you can actually see the mangled tower flying out of the fireball to the right.

The first astronauts saw ALL this... and STILL got on for their ride! Talk about huevos!!!

lol, my godfather's car was totaled by the delta II explosion, I had forgotten that

Interesting fact, on the Atlas ABLE 9c explosion the block house staff used the underground escape tunnel to get out due to all the debris. When they got to the end there were snakes resting in the cool shadows of a hot Florida day. Some of the staff went back and got fire extinguishers to "freeze" them so they could get past to the outside.

@AmericanSpaceMuseum I am impressed with every aspect of this history-catching document. My father was an RAF officer and chief engineer at Scophony who came here from England after WWII. He had top secret INSMAT clearance. Dad designed camera systems for the TIROS-1 weather satellite and 360º projection systems for LOLAS, the Lunar Orbiting and Landing Approach Simulator that trained Aldrin and Armstrong to land on the moon among other projects. Our family went to Cape Canaveral with him when he went there for work in 1961; it was a trip I'll never forget. Since then, I've been a serious follower of spaceflight technology and NASA endeavors. I love the well timed music score to these spectacular trials and fails as well as the straightforward facts about the particular rocket's class. I've seen many launches, but never a compendium of well orchestrated failures that you've produced. BRAVO! Rocket science is hard and dangerous to explore.

My Father worked for Nasa then as Security and we would sit on the beach and watch the test launches of which many blew to smithereens . We lived right on the beach not to far from the cape . We had a dune buggy we would cruise the vacant beaches with and sometimes find chunks of rocket washed up on shore. My Father would gather them up and return them . The night launches and explosions were the best . Thanks for the share . :O)

I had a saying that I developed after commissioning numerous gas turbine power stations: Run it. Break it. Find it. Fix it. Repeat as necessary. It also applies to space, even now.

Amazing to think that less than a decade after most of these disasters , they were able to build the SATURN 5 rocket with millions of pounds of thrust and able to send men to the moon. Thank you.

Vanguard Test Vehicle no. 1, on the 6th December 1957. The press came up with several nicknames for this launch failure, including Flopnik and Kaputnik. My favourite, however, was Stayputnik.

Growing up in Merritt island, fl in the 80s and 90s I remember the challenger disaster and dozens of other launch failures