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SpaceX said its rocket factory and headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., Had completed assembly of the 100th Starship and Super Heavy Raptor engine.
SpaceX began developing Raptor behind the scenes as early as 2012 and 2013, when a small team successfully tested a full-scale Raptor pre-burner – a small but important subcomponent – at the Stennis Space Center (SSC) facility. from NASA. Three years later, in September 2016, CEO Elon Musk revealed the first integrated static shot of a Raptor prototype – although it later became clear that this prototype was a small-scale engine of roughly the same. size than the Merlin 1D from Falcon 9.
After two and a half years of small-scale testing that helped SpaceX refine the start-up and shutdown sequences and general operation of what quickly became the world’s most tested full-flow staged combustion engine, SpaceX is passed to large-scale testing. Designed to produce roughly double the thrust (~ 200 tonnes / 440,000 lbf) of its small-scale predecessors, the first full-scale Raptor engine was shipped to SpaceX’s test facilities in McGregor, Texas, and was finished its first static fire a few days later, on February 3, 2019.
Notably, the very first full-scale Raptor prototype (SN1) not only survived its first test, but lived long enough to complete several more, eventually hitting SpaceX’s minimum thrust target four days after its first static fire. . A vibration issue would soon require several months of troubleshooting and iterative build-test-fail cycles, but Raptor was finally ready to take over its first brief Starhopper jump tests in July and August.
About 15 months after Raptor’s first flight, the SN8 prototype spacecraft successfully took off with three engines, one of which performed a nearly flawless four-minute combustion until climax. Finally, six months after SN8’s successful ascent but failed landing, the Starship SN15 successfully landed, demonstrating Raptor’s ability to reignite in mid-flight. Since SN15’s success in May 2021, SpaceX appears to have completed between 20 and 35+ new Raptors as part of a dramatic production ramp-up to meet the needs of at least two looming Starship orbital test flights – which both will need about 35 motors each. .
For more information on the placement of the Booster 3 motor. Refer to this diagram below!
Many thanks to @StarshipGazer for providing very high resolution and detailed images that allowed me to understand these positions. pic.twitter.com/j1s5qHoGJ2
-Artzius (@artzius) July 21, 2021
According to its label, RB16 – now better known as the 100th Raptor engine in total – is the 16th Raptor Boost engine built by SpaceX. “Boost” refers to the particular variant – in this case a specially designed Raptor engine for an outer ring of 20 engines on each Super Heavy booster. Unlike Raptor Center (RC) engines, the outer ring of Raptor Boost engines is secured against the rocket skirt and is not designed to vector their thrust (i.e. nacelle). According to Musk, all Raptor engines optimized for sea level will ultimately produce around 230 tonnes (~ 510,000 lbf) of thrust.
Compared to almost any other large-scale engine development program in the past half-century, Raptor’s 29-month 100 Engines milestone is an extraordinary achievement. The closest comparable engine is Blue Origin’s BE-4, which is expected to produce up to ~ 240 tonnes (~ 540,000 lbf) of thrust, uses an efficient (albeit slightly less) combustion cycle, and relies on the same propellant. of methane and oxygen. . Full-scale BE-4 testing began 16 months before Raptor in October 2017 and Blue Origin apparently only built and tested new prototypes over the next almost four years. According to Musk, as of May 2021, SpaceX was now building more than a dozen Raptors – including prototypes and flight engines – monthly.
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