SpaceX Increasing Raptor Engine Power

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SpaceX is increasing the thrust of the Raptor engines to 300 tons of thrust. 28 Raptor engines will provide 7500 tons of thrust for the Super Heavy Booster.

The 15 million pounds of thrust is five times the 3 million pounds of the SLS booster which was tested recently.

The first stage of the Saturn V had 7,600,000 pounds-force of thrust.

The Space Shuttle generated a peak thrust of 6,800,000 lbf (30,100 kN).

The Soviet Energia had a liftoff thrust of 7,826,000 lbf (34,810 kN).

The Raptors will have over 380 seconds of ISP for the vacuum version.

SOURCES- Twitter, SpaceX, Elon Musk, Wikipedia
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

13 thoughts on “SpaceX Increasing Raptor Engine Power”

  2. I've noticed that, in some of the SpaceX launch videos, you can see motion in the wrap around the engine plumbing, which suggests leaks. Mind, given the mass flow and temperature extremes, really tiny leaks.

  4. Except for the snout (nozzle), there's nothing particularly elegant, is there, about the upper part of the engines.  Well … take away a car's exterior, and the working parts aren't very elegant looking either.  Indeed… its taken nearly 40 years (in my cognition frame) for car makers to gussy up what's under the hood. Used to be a lot of random looking framistats, horsk converters and snorkel belts.  Now, most-every engine has a magnificent cast aluminum top header with excellent fonts and nice colors.  Doing exactly nil, of course.  

    370 to 380 Isp is pretty competent.  The widely repeated differential force equation for rocket engines called Tsiolkovsky's Rocket Equation helps show this:

    ΔV = Isp • G • ln( M₀ / M₁ ) …. where

    G = 9.80665 N/kg, or Earth's surface gravitational constant.
    Isp = 'seconds', shorthand for kg•sec thrust per kg of fuel-oxidizer mass
    ln( ) = natural (base 'e') logarithm
    M₀ = mass before thrusters start
    M₁ = mass after thrusting is done.

    Doesn't look like much, but its simplicity and elegant ΔV term are at the center of rocketry physics. I've unwrapped the equation to its inverse before, and if you did OK in High School math, you can too.  In Isp, see how the kilograms cancel, leaving seconds? LOL!

    Point tho' is, that ΔV really depends critically on the Isp.  

    Good job, methane burners!

    ⋅-⋅-⋅ Just saying, ⋅-⋅-⋅
    ⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅

  7. Since this article didn't even mention Mars or the moon, I'll just point out that serotonin reuptake inhibitors are helpful for obsessive-compulsive disorder.

  8. Then a couple decades later, Gordie says, "Hey, wait, we could just change the universal gravitational constant!"

  12. Those who disagree with Gerard K. O'Neill, which usually means they have not read "The High Frontier", should not feel bad about their disadvantage. Even someone as smart as Musk is right there with you.

  13. For those tuning in, the SH booster will have an outer ring of non-vectorable (and probably non-throttleable) raptors which is why they peak at 300 tons of thrust, while the center engines will both gimbal and throttle (to accommodate landing) which cuts into their thrust a bit.

    Raptor is apparently getting close to chemical limits for oxygen/methane propulsion though.

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