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Space agencies prefer to launch near the sea or over empty land when given the choice, and China just got a reminder as to why. A booster from a Long March 3B rocket dropped and exploded near the small southwestern town of Xiangdu, roughly 435 miles away from its pad at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. And while these incidents aren't completely unheard of, this is one of the few times the whole incident has been recorded for posterity. As you can see in the clip below, onlookers just a short distance away saw the booster tumble and create a massive fireball. While there were no known casualties or property damage, this doesn't mean it was safe. For one thing, China normally plans booster drop zones carefully and alerts (or in some cases, evacuates) areas to make sure no one gets hurt. This didn't entirely go according to plan. Moreover, the highly toxic rocket fuel and secondary explosions posed risks to curious onlookers. Not that China has much choice in the mat...

Now that LG's Alexa-equipped refrigerator is no longer a novelty, the company is moving on to the next step: appliances that work in harmony. It's introducing a range of smart appliances that thrive on sharing information to help you get things done. The centerpiece is LG's next Alexa-capable fridge, the InstaView ThinQ . While its 29-inch transparent touchscreen, webOS platform and voice control aren't all that new, its integration with your oven is. When you choose a recipe (including those suggested by the fridge, which detects what you have on hand), you can send it to an oven with Alexa support to get spoken cooking instructions. This is ultimately a luxury -- your fridge likely isn't that far from your oven -- but it's good to have your recipes right where you'll use them. The fridge can also add expiration dates to your food (no more expired milk), and handles many of the tasks you'd expect from an Alexa-powered device, such as streaming mu...

Spaceflight just lost one of its better-known icons: NASA astronaut John Young has died at the age of 87. He was best known as the commander of the first Space Shuttle mission, taking Columbia into orbit in 1981. However, that was just one of a series of achievements. He flew on the first manned flight of the Gemini spacecraft in 1965 (and led a flight in 1966), traveled to the Moon twice (including a moonwalk during Apollo 16) and played a key role in the rescue of Apollo 13 by helping to stretch out its resources. On his record-setting sixth and last spaceflight, when he flew the first Spacelab module into orbit aboard the Space Shuttle, he both avoided a mid-flight disaster and landed while an auxiliary power unit was on fire. Young was also one of NASA's longer serving astronauts. He spent 42 years at the agency, retiring in 2004. In other words, he saw dramatic changes to spaceflight throughout his career -- he'd started during the Space Race and finished when the In...