Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rbanffy 1969 days ago
The 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.
1 comments
_Microft 1969 days ago
You are correct. There is even footage from a test on Youtube. Thanks for pointing this out.
link
rbanffy 1969 days ago
You 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.
link