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Reliable_Redundancy t1_j828dmh wrote

There could be strain gauges on the pad, but I would imagine it's hard to calibrate them in situ.

More likely, they have lots of sensors on each engine including pressure transducers. They know from single engine tests that pressures in an engine are correlated to the amount of thrust it is producing. A little bit of math later they get the total thrust of the rocket

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amitym t1_j83vdkt wrote

Tbf you don't need to calibrate them very carefully to get an imprecise (though presumably accurate) figure like "7.9 million."

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