4 ms·

Does anyone know if the engines cutting out one by one was planned? Or was something going wrong with the engines?

• tortarga 6y ago
  Seems to be planned. Elon tweeted in response to Tim Dodd that the engines were "working great" on ascent.
• chiph 6y ago
  (not a rocket scientist) They didn't need the thrust once they lightened the rocket by burning most of the fuel.
• arentyouspecial 6y ago
  Planned. They wanted to test restarting the engines as if it was reentering the atmosphere.
  • ansible 6y ago
    Definitely planned. If you look closely at the SpaceX stream, the first two engines that were shut down were the ones restarted during the landing flip maneuver. Too bad about the loss of fuel pressure from the header tank. SN8 wasn't quite on the landing pad, but it was close. We also didn't see the landing legs deploy, not sure why that didn't happen.
    • virgilp 6y ago
      My understanding is that the speed didn't get low enough for landing legs to deploy.