Comment Re:unattainable tech (Score 1) 50
It is impossible to launch Soyuz/Proton rockets without this service cabin. The launchpad itself is a huge slob of armored concrete with a hole in the center, used to direct hot gases into a gigantic pit, ot takes a few years to dig out that pit and build the multistory tall launchpad. The service cabin is a multistory metal structire that provides access to set up various umbilicals and to set up the chemical matches, lit electrically, that are inserted into the rocket engines (yes, that is how they light up these types of engines, huge, many feet long, matches). The cabin then slides away into the wall and it is supposed to be fixed in place with some pins. They did not do it this time, so the engine exhaust pulled the cabin out of its niche and blew it out through the vent hole into the pit.