Qualla: Tronador (rocket) https://qualla.com/tronador-rocket en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:57 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/6/9/x/m/tronador-rocket-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Tronador (rocket) https://qualla.com/tronador-rocket Tronador (rocket): Introduction https://qualla.com/tronador-rocket/ Photo credit Gelpgim22 (Sergio Panei Pitrau), CC BY 3.0. Eight seconds. That is how long the VEx-5A burned before its engine starved on the evening of 21 April 2017, hung in the air over the marshes south of Buenos Aires, and fell back onto its own launch pad in a sheet of orange flame. It was Argentina's third attempt to fly a prototype of the Tronador II, and like the others it failed in full view of the cameras. Yet the people watching from the scrubland at Pipinas did not pack up and go home for good. Tronador means "Thunderer" in Spanish, and a country that has named a rocket after thunder does not give up easily on hearing it roar.

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Image: Gelpgim22 (Sergio Panei Pitrau) | CC BY 3.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/9/x/m/tronador-rocket-wp/69xm-tronador-rocket-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Tronador (rocket): The Long Road to Orbit https://qualla.com/tronador-rocket/ Photo credit Juandedeboca, CC BY-SA 2.5 scotland. Only a small club of nations can launch a satellite using a rocket they designed and built themselves. Argentina wants in. Run by CONAE, the country's national space commission, the Tronador program set out to develop a liquid-fueled launcher capable of placing a roughly 500 to 6...

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Image: Juandedeboca | CC BY-SA 2.5 scotland

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/9/x/m/tronador-rocket-wp/69xm-tronador-rocket-the-long-road-to-orbit.mp3 0:06 2 full Tronador (rocket): Learning by Flying https://qualla.com/tronador-rocket/ Photo credit Fracu, CC0. The Tronador story is told in prototypes, each one a small machine sent up to teach the engineers a single hard lesson. The early Tronador I rose on test hops; in 2008 a payload module packed with navigation electronics rode a borrowed booster to the edge of space and parachuted ...

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Image: Fracu | CC0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/9/x/m/tronador-rocket-wp/69xm-tronador-rocket-learning-by-flying.mp3 0:06 3 full Tronador (rocket): The Spaceport in the Marsh https://qualla.com/tronador-rocket/ Photo credit Ana Soumoulou, CC BY-SA 4.0. The launches happen at Pipinas, in Punta Indio district, where the pampas flatten out toward the wide brown mouth of the Río de la Plata. It is an unlikely cathedral of space flight. There are no gantries crowding the sky, no crowds in grandstands, just a launch pad on quiet coas...

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Image: Ana Soumoulou | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/9/x/m/tronador-rocket-wp/69xm-tronador-rocket-the-spaceport-in-the-marsh.mp3 0:06 4 full Tronador (rocket): Still Building the Thunder https://qualla.com/tronador-rocket/ Photo credit BugWarp, CC BY 4.0. The program has been declared dead and then revived more than once. After the 2017 explosion, the experimental VEx flights were halted; in 2021 the effort was publicly reactivated, and by 2022 a new generation of test vehicles, the TII-70 and TII-150, was announced to prove out e...

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Image: BugWarp | CC BY 4.0

]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/9/x/m/tronador-rocket-wp/69xm-tronador-rocket-still-building-the-thunder.mp3 0:06 5 full