SpaceX Raptor 3 is an improved and more powerful rocket enigine. It has reached 350 bar of pressure and 269 tons of thrust.
Raptor 2 engines were achieving 230 tf (510,000 lbf) of thrust consistently by February 2022, although SpaceX expects to be able to tune engine parameters and design over time to achieve at least 250 tf (550,000 lbf). Moreover, Musk indicated that the engine production cost was approximately half that of the Raptor 1 version SpaceX had been using in 2018–2021. In June 2022, Musk tweeted that 250 tons was achievable.
Raptor V3 just achieved 350 bar chamber pressure (269 tons of thrust). Congrats to @SpaceX propulsion team!
Starship Super Heavy Booster has 33 Raptors, so total thrust of 8877 tons or 19.5 million pounds. pic.twitter.com/ZlskpCXUmu
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2023
The Saturn V rocket generated 34.5 million newtons (7.6 million pounds) of thrust.
The Starship Super Heavy Booster with Raptor 3 engines would have 2.56 times the thrust of the Saturn V.
SpaceX is making a water spraying metal plate for the launch pad.
Yeah. To be frank, we did not expect the engine to survive a full duration run at that pressure. It is uncharted territory.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2023
Can Raptor 3 can be a drop-in replacement for Raptor 2, or will the vehicles require changes to cater for Raptor 3 engines?
Here's the full firing from the raw pull out of https://t.co/Eh5oaibOBY pic.twitter.com/u3GP4O2pvh
— Chris Bergin – NSF (@NASASpaceflight) May 13, 2023
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Comparing an old design and the capabilities of the day to a new design, which is built and improved on through all previous learned knowledge that came before it, is like from a consumer standpoint , comparing the performance and capabilities of a 1960s clunker to a modern automobile. Of course there would be an advancement.
RS-25 burns for 700 seconds easy.
Here is what could have followed F-1
https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=22068.msg1471218#msg1471218
This gives them a lot of room to derate the engine for greater reliability, and still get great performance.
Pressures are higher than with Merlin engine. Stress on engine components is higher. Raptor is full flow staged combustion. The difficulties and their problems with that engine can be attributed to these things.
Merlin has nuts thrust:weight ratio about 194 far above others. Gives a lot considering the weight. ISP(efficiency) is also very good. Raptor has even better ISP because full flow staged combustion.
17 percent increase not 10
Somehow that reminds me of BE-4, which was supposed to be a peer to Raptor. Any news of it recently?
134 bar chamber pressure. I think that’s all the news you need, really!