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I think they will practice until they get the landing right all the time. The engines with vacuum optimized nozzles are not suited for landing. They can not be
by _Microft 6y ago
I think they will practice until they get the landing right all the time.
The engines with vacuum optimized nozzles are not suited for landing. They can not be gimbaled and are very over-expanded as well. I would not be surprised if the engines with vacuum nozzles destroyed themselves if they were fired at sea-level.
- rbanffy 6y agoThe engines were tested at sea level with the vacuum nozzle. Not being gimballed is bad, but they are throttleable, at least. All these crazy failure modes will have to be tested before Starship is human rated.
- _Microft 6y agoYou are correct. There is even footage from a test on Youtube. Thanks for pointing this out.
- rbanffy 6y agoYou don't want them running for long on full power, but it's probably OK to use them for slowing down an emergency landing if the sea-level engines become otherwise unavailable. The alternative, as we (and SN10) saw with SN8 and SN9 is not great.