The rocket was undergoing a static fire test of the stage, in which a vehicle is clamped to a test stand while its engines are ignited, when the booster broke free. According to a statement from the company, the rocket was not sufficiently clamped down and blasted off from the test stand “due to a structural failure.”
Video of the accidental ascent showed the rocket rising several hundred meters into the sky before it crashed explosively into a mountain 1.5 km away from the test site.
Cape Canaveral is directly east of Orlando, with a bunch of vacation resort spots hugging the shore. The Florida coastline isn’t exactly lightly developed.
From Apple Maps, it looks like it’s on a mostly undeveloped island, with the nearest town, Cape Canaveral, over ten miles away. I can’t tell how far away Orlando is, but much further.
Compared to this Chinese test site, it looks like population centers are 5x - 10x farther, plus you have an entire ocean to blow stuff up
The Falcon 9 that made an uncontrolled reentry in March of 2021 spread debris from Washington to Oregon.
Chinese Long March rocket failures have dropped parts into Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat.
Ten miles isn’t far for a vehicle moving 17,500 mph during the 12 minutes or so necessary to break Earth’s gravity well.