No, that’s false. There were no people remotely close to the van. It was just a platform for a bunch of remotely controlled cameras.
I don’t recommend listening to it since it’s pretty tedious, but you can hear from the van owners in this video. They were not under any illusions whatsoever about the possibility of damage, and they emphasize that damage is a risk for any rocket launch. They put cameras close by to get a better shot, and the risks are understood. Broken lenses, chemical damage from solid motors, and other things are all damage that they’ve experienced before.
I believe you. I was under the impression no one could get within x-distance (safe distance) to the launch pad without explicit permission. So, Joe YouTuber can’t just park their car and setup cameras arbitrarily close to the launch site (well…there still seems to be some distance there). I guess they can.
Well, they need permission, but it seems to be granted fairly readily. I don’t know that they’d allow just anyone to park their equipment within the damage radius, but popular YouTubers like NSF and Everyday Astronaut can do it. Of course they wouldn’t let people that close no matter what disclaimers they sign.
People still aren’t being let inside. So the damaged van and other equipment remains. They have one camera on a remote mount that got tipped over but somehow survived, and they’re rotating it around on the ground. Sorta sad, like an animal with a broken leg…
