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The Raptor, SpaceX’s engine used to power the next spacecraft, reached new levels of power during its development.
Monday, CEO Elon Musk ad that the engine reached 330 bars of chamber pressure without exploding. That’s 31 bars more than the engine hit in February 2019, when it beat the former record holder for an operational engine, Russia’s RD-180. Teslarati noted that the engine beat the Soviet Union’s RD-701 engine, which at 300 bar previously held the public record for the highest combustion chamber pressure for an orbital-class rocket.
This is great news for the Starship, who need all the help they can get to carry out their ambitious missions. The ship is designed to send humans to Mars, the Moon and beyond with the capacity to carry up to 150 tons or 100 people at a time into space.
The Raptor engine uses liquid oxygen and methane, unlike the rocket propellant powered Merlin engine that powers the Falcon 9. This, combined with the Starship’s fully reusable design, means humans can travel to Mars, harvest the planet’s resources and use it to fuel the return journey.
The new record gives the Raptor engine more power to achieve these goals.
A new era of engines – A rocket engine, as NASA explains, is essentially a system where fuel is ignited in a combustion chamber. This produces high temperature, high pressure exhaust gas which passes through a nozzle and produces thrust. The system is based on Newton’s third law of aerodynamics, where every action has an equal and opposite reaction. This means that the pressure in the chamber is related to the resulting thrust.
In Musk’s post, the chamber pressure was measured in bars. Under these units, the ambient pressure at sea level is 1.01325 bar. Another measurement sometimes used is the pound per square inch, or psi, where that same measurement would read 14.6959 psi.
The pressure in the chamber of the Raptor engine far exceeds that of the Merlin 1D, which, according to a NASA document, has a pressure of 1410 psi or 97 bar. The new record beats the engine’s previous success in February 2019, when it hit 269 bar. After this success, the Raptor engine had beaten the Russian RD-180 engine, which delivers 258 bar and has flown on the ULA Atlas V rocket since 2000. But the 2020 result, which not only beat all of these, also exceeds the target. by Musk. for the Raptor, which in September 2016 it claimed to reach 300 bars.
Musk also noted that the Raptor can reduce his strength in the same way as the Merlin:
“Max demonstrated that the Raptor’s thrust is around 225 tons and the minute is around 90 tons, so they’re pretty similar. Merlin and Raptor could significantly reduce throttle with increased design complexity. Raptor burner and Merlin gas generator shutdown are the lower limit. “
What does all of this mean for the push? On Monday, Musk claimed the engine would provide half a million pounds of force, or about 225 tons. In May 2020, Musk said the Super heavy booster used to lift the Starship away from Earth was currently using 31 engines, rather than the 37 engines it previously mentioned. SpaceX’s website lists the Super Heavy thruster as ultimately delivering 16 million pounds of thrust.
How does that compare to the Falcon 9, the rocket the Starship could ultimately replace? The current rocket delivers 1.7 million pounds of thrust at sea level. That means, overall, the Starship packs an impressive punch.
the Reverse analysis – The Raptor’s power levels are impressive, and his strength should become clearer during multiple jump tests. The ship looks set to be around 400 feet tall when paired with the Super Heavy booster. As SpaceX aims to hold more “jump tests” beyond the 150-meter mark, the visual of a giant ship hovering in the sky will likely do more to communicate the Raptor’s awesome strength to the general public.
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