Note the fragment of the rocket body blown into the air at 0:11. It hits the dirt at 0:26. One difference is that the Qassam rocket would have been launched at an angle, while the rocket in this video was supposed to go straight up. How far would the fragment have traveled if this rocket had been on an angled launch stand?
You gave the distance from the hospital to the launch site as 3.2 miles.
For a rocket to travel 3.2 miles in 15 seconds, it needs to travel at ~768 mph, which is almost exactly the speed of sound in dry air.
Ha'aretz writes:
Article:
The Qassam's speed in the air is 200 meters per second
200 m/s is ~450 mph. These rockets are subsonic. The numbers don't work out.
You gave the distance from the hospital to the launch site as 3.2 miles.
For a rocket to travel 3.2 miles in 15 seconds, it needs to travel at ~768 mph, which is almost exactly the speed of sound in dry air.
Ha'aretz writes:
Article:
The Qassam's speed in the air is 200 meters per second
200 m/s is ~450 mph. These rockets are subsonic. The numbers don't work out.
I think it was more like 36 seconds. Window is from approximately 18:59:19 to 18:59:55
According to the timeline in the Al Jazeera analysis:
Qassam rockets already seen in boost phase: 18:59:20
I'm adding 1 second to the window because the rockets are already above the Camera 1 local horizon. I think that's conservative.
Rocket A is "intercepted" (explodes): 18:59:50
"Five seconds after that interception, an explosion in Gaza can be seen": 18:59:55.
I'm not sure how reliable that 5 seconds thing is. Are they counting from the first sign of the "interception" or from the time Rocket A is seen to fragment?
This timeline also gives us the 5 second window from "interception" to the first ground explosion. Not possible for a fragment to make the journey from high altitude to the ground in that time, if we assume it is falling.
Note the fragment of the rocket body blown into the air at 0:11. It hits the dirt at 0:26. One difference is that the Qassam rocket would have been launched at an angle, while the rocket in this video was supposed to go straight up. How far would the fragment have traveled if this rocket had been on an angled launch stand?
If you're talking about the rocket supposed to have hit the hospital, then those 36s would be much too long to match the CATO failure you're comparing it to.
@Null Do you mean that video was made from Tel Aviv, 65Km (40mi) away from Gaza?
For the blasts, all one can say is that there 3 ones: one in air at time 0 and two on ground at times 5.6sec and 7.28sec (+/-40msec). Whatever's the connection between them, if any, one can't say. The last one, and largest one, is supposed to be al-Ahli Hospital.
For casualties, I think that's an exaggeration. There might have been a panic reaction, of course, leading to an evacuation. Some casualties might happen here, but hard to believe they would be hundreds.
The only possible spot for direct casualties would be the parking lot. But there's absolutely no evidence there were any casualties there. I believe there were some of course. But how could it be there were hundreds of them scattered throughout the parking lot and absolutely no evidence.
All this started by an hospital destroyed by IDF ammunition. At this point, it's a fire in a parking lot at most.
I dunno. There could’ve been some humans in those vehicles sheltering with air conditioning from the heat. I don’t know what the Ambient temps were outdoors.
If you're talking about the rocket supposed to have hit the hospital, then those 36s would be much too long to match the CATO failure you're comparing it to.
To be clear to everyone reading; Mendel's figure of 11 seconds refers to the hang time of a fragment of the rocket body in the second video I posted. The amateur rocket exploding. Not to the Qassam rocket in question.
This is what happened to these particular amateur rockets. They failed instantly. There are only so many videos on YT to choose from.
BTW, I commented on the way the rocket body accelerated after the CATO simply because I was musing about how much velocity it acquired from the CATO alone, with no boost phase at all. The CATO could theoretically add speed to the fragments in addition to that added by an incomplete boost phase. That was a side point.
My main point is that in both videos the rocket body fractured. I could have made that more clear, I admit.
A CATO can happen at any time during boost phase. I previously speculated that the Qassam rocket failed about one second into boost phase... which would send the rocket into a ballistic trajectory. But far shorter than maximum range. The CATO may have fractured the rocket into two pieces, which, because the rocket body was already spinning, both continued on like a spiral punt. Sort of stable.
But there are other scenarios. These things often become unstable. If they tumble, they can then fracture.
The crudely mixed fuel might have burned too fast for a moment and expelled a chunk out the end, which ended the boost phase... then it started tumbling. Then it fractured.
It may have fractured just because it was crude and weak. Some are made of used water pipe. Even brand new water pipes are jury rig quality material for a rocket body.
There's got to be other scenarios.
Any failure that sent these fragments into a ~3 mile ballistic trajectory will do.
I think a 38 second hang time and a 303mph average ground speed fits pretty well with the IDF scenario.
Note: I solved for the second fragment this time, because I realized the first fragment traveled some distance less than the second fragment, and I don't know what the distance for that first fragment actually is. So I entered 38 seconds and 3.2 miles this time.
