Starship | SN8 | High-Altitude Flight Test

[kluurs]

Looks like that's it for today.

[George K]

"Due to a Raptor engine auto-abort at T-1 second, the SpaceX team is standing down from Tuesday's attempt of a high-altitude suborbital flight test of Starship serial number 8 (SN8) from our site in Cameron County, Texas. We have additional test opportunities available on Wednesday, December 9 and Thursday, December 10. The schedule is dynamic and likely to change, as is the case with all development testing. Stay tuned for more information on the next target test date and time."

[George K]

This post is deleted!

[George K]

Gonna try again in about 45 minutes:

Link to video

[George K]

Cool pic....

[George K]

BTW, I think the plan is for it to go up to 12.5 kilometers, and then rotate into a horizontal position. Then, re-rotate to a vertical attitude and touch down.

[George K]

Everything went PERFECT, until it tried to land...

Oopsie...

[George K]

The "landing" site...

[kluurs]

Maybe next time, Bullwinkle

!

[George K]

It almost looked like the rocket didn't have enough thrust to allow a soft touch-down. Perhaps the descent was too quick.

But, on the positive side, they were able to rotate the craft, and get it aligned with the landing location.

As you said, "Next time!"

[George K]

Elon: "Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!"

[89th]

Fun video to watch!

[Copper]

Nice video

[George K]

Someone commented that SpaceX is making such progress because they're not afraid to fail in their tests. They know exactly what went wrong with the landing, and they'll fix it next time. I have to agree that more than 90% of the mission was a success.

[kluurs]

@George-K said in Starship | SN8 | High-Altitude Flight Test:

Elon: "Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!"

Yeah, I've had a few of those kind of successes. I just didn't share any of them with a worldwide audience.

[Copper]

NASA was famous for blowing up rockets for a long time before they stopped (or at least slowed down) blowing up rockets.