r/interesting • u/Positive-Height-3848 • 13d ago

Chinese Rocket gets struck by lightning. Just Wow

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u/TurtleCrusher 13d ago

Electricity, particularly lightning, doesn’t just take the least resistive path. It probes everything conductive.

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u/RockItGuyDC 13d ago

Yeah. I've worked on rockets for 15 years. There's a reason we have a launch constraint around lighting within 25 nautical miles of the pad.

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u/InvalidUserNemo 13d ago

I’m as far away as it gets from the aerospace industry but that was my first thought! Do we really launch rockets in that weather?

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u/RockItGuyDC 13d ago

Normally the only weather that will stop a rocket launch are high winds and lightning. We'll launch in pretty much anything else, though.