[bamboozled]

“There were bowling ball-sized pieces of concrete that came flying out of the launchpad area,” Mr. Balderas said. The blast, he added, had created a crater that he estimated was around 25 feet deep.

"But without a chemical analysis of the dust and debris, he added, it was difficult to say whether or not they were harmful to human health."

From the article...

[RetpolineDrama]

This article is misleading. The way it's written makes you think people's cars were destroyed, or that these massive bowling ball objects flew into town.

In reality the damage was limited to the exclusion zone around the rocket. A destroyed vehicle was intentionally left there as a camera tripod.

The only thing that "left" the exclusion zone was sound and a dust cloud, so I'll give them that, but the article is trying to mislead the reader (and succeeding, based on comments in this post).

[robertlagrant]

It's nyt, though. How objective has their past reporting on Musk-related enterprises been? I know it's a weak spot with some, just as the inverse is also a weak spot with some others.

[moralestapia]

Come on, man. There's plenty of footage of this.

[robertlagrant]

Ah - I wasn't clear. I'm not saying that didn't happen; it's just the "we don't know if it's dangerous" line isn't great.

Reporting potential news is not much different to insinuation, and I wish it would stop in newspapers of record.

[RetpolineDrama]

Yeah, footage of a throwaway car left inside the exclusion zone as a glorified camera tripod getting destroyed, yet they used that as an example to muddy the waters

[freejazz]

You are totally overstating everything yourself, as that wasn't my takeaway from the article at all. If anything, the article makes it seem like not a big deal at all (there's a video of the town where all you see is... a cloud??). Nevertheless, contrary to what you are stating, I see tons of posts here cogently explaining why the SpaceX decisions about the launchpad were probably dumb.