Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test

Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by codeulike on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @06:23PM (#25366932)

I'm wondering if the engine shutoffs on the way up were deliberate, so they could get data on running on 3,2 and then 1 engine.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by smiley1437 on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @08:03PM (#25368084)

If you look at the timer, it's almost certainly planned

Engine 1 cuts off 1m45s after launch

Engine 2 cuts off 1m28s after engine 1

Engine 3 cuts off 1m28s after engine 2 and then SN8 goes into glide testing.

The extra time on all 3 engines is probably to gain sufficient height?

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by qayxc on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:14PM (#25367576)

They looked planned. I think they tested the full array of required operations: shutdown, gimbal, throttling, re-ignition.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by wongarsu on Wednesday December 09, 2020 @07:38PM (#25367840)

Even in normal operation it might have been useful to throttle down the engines in order to ascend a bit slower (less drag). If you have multiple engines, shutting some of them down is a convinient way to throttle.

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Re:Starship – SN8 – High-Altitude Flight Test by seg_lol on Thursday December 10, 2020 @01:46PM (#25376935)

It was a wonderfully designed test. I'd love to hear a presentation on test design, the mission profile and what data they were looking at with each one.

I assume SpaceX has the same video feed with superimposed telemetry. I'd love to know turbo pump pressure and rpm during landing.

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