The SpaceX Raptor engine already enables the SpaceX Super Heavy Starship to have more than double the thrust of the Saturn V. Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography talked about the SpaceX 1337 having critical breakthoughs beyond the SpaceX Raptor.
Elon Musk and SpaceX are looking at extreme ideas like deleting the whole hot fuel gas manifold and merging the fuel pump with the main chamber injector. Elon Musk told his team that We are on a deletion rampage”. All questionable tubes, sensors and manifolds were deleted.
Elon also has looked at removing the entire skirt of the booster.
The performance of the SpaceX Raptor engines is already very good but LEET 1337 will have even higher chamber pressure which will enable more thrust. The SpaceX LEET 1337 engines will be simpler, lighter and cheaper. SpaceX will likely be able to build them at ten times the production volume from the same sized factory that will now make 4000 Raptor engines each year.
Starship has 6 engines now but Elon has said they will add 3 engines to get to 9 engines for the Starship upper stage. Future SpaceX Starship may have an additional 3 Raptor Vacuum engines for increased payload capacity.
If SpaceX Raptor engines currently cost $1 million each. There are nine engines for a Starship and having Starship at double the cost of the engines means a complete Starship costs $18 million.
If future SpaceX Raptor engines cost $500k each. Nine engines for a Starship. Starship at double the cost of the engines means a complete Starship costs $9 million.
If the SpaceX 1337 engine costs $200,000 each then nine engines on a Starship could reduce the price of a complete Starship to $3.6 million.
If the SpaceX 1337 engine costs $100,000 each then nine engines on a Starship could reduce the price of a complete Starship to $1.8 million.
Everyday Astronaut had some comparison of the Raptor 1 and Raptor 2. Credit for the graphic below to Everyday Astronaut.
Early this year, the SpaceX Raptor 3 was recently test fired and reached 18% more thrust than a Raptor 2. The Raptor 2 had 25% more thrust than the Raptor 1 and Raptor 2 was 20% lighter.
Having a lighter engine with the same or more thrust is better. The SpaceX Raptors now have more thrust than the larger and heavier RS-25 engines that were used for the Space Shuttle and are still used for the SLS (Space Launch System).
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I get the math in regards to saving money with less expensive engines but if they have higher thrust couldn’t you reduce the required number of engines as well? You’d save a ton of money there as well.
At first glance, I thought that a manufacturing dalek.
Brian, it’s Falcon 9 that has nine engines. It won’t be getting Raptors. The Super Heavy booster has thirty-three of the larger Raptor engines, and the Starship upper stage has a further six. Really surprised no one else noticed this.
I had seen news that Starship will be going to 9 engines. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1678205301349130240
That’s a possibility, not a plan. In any case talk about Starship cost needs to include the booster. Eventually there may be more upper stages than boosters, but whether that becomes the case will depend on the extent to which SpaceX can manage rapid booster reusability.
Starship will soon have 9 engines, 6 vacuum and 3 sea level raptors. Thrust pucks for these are well in the making.
Am I the only one who saw rows of Daleks on the photo?…
there is more than 9 engines on starship 33 raptors
9 Merlin engines on the falcon 9
Just remind you that, for the time being, superheavy has 33 raptor engines, and starship second stage has 6.
I guess your point still stands.
Starships currently have six raptor engines, but soon that will be increased to nine. However, the booster, which is required for any orbital launch has 33 for a total of 42 per launch. So, you may need to adjust your math if your goal was to estimate the cost for the full stack.
A completed StarvshipHeavy $18 million (reusable).
SLS $ 4 billion ( single use ).
When StarvshipHeavy becomes operational, all other rockets become obsolete.
What does the name LEET and numbers 1337 mean?
LEET is pronouncing 1337 as how the numbers look as letters. I presume LEET is like short for elite.
Yep Leet is short for elite and was very common slang in computer games, mostly counter strike during 2000s
correct, it’s short for elite, the numerical version was coined in the early days of FPS multiplayer gaming when it was cool to type in chat (no VOIP then!) using numbers and symbols to 293ll words in 1337 speak.
715 15 1337 5p34k (This is leet speak) its an internet language thing. Google leet speak.
Although you can’t cut the coat of the ship/booster body and infrastructure much at all the fact remains that engines are probably the single most costly and complex part of the entire build. So making them lighter, less complex and cheaper is probably the best possible way to cut costs on any space vehicle.
Also, people worry about making the engine too simplified and inexpensive to build means reliability. In reality more complexity = more opportunities for failures. We’ve seen time and time again instances in engineering where the simplest and most effective designs prove to be the most reliable so why would rockets be any different?
It would make logical sense that the better we get at something the less complex it becomes.
Well to be more factual (I was a welder who worked on Starships Mark 1-9) the labor cost has dropped dramatically. Space X went from having around 100 welders working on the first batch to dramatically dropping to closer to 20 or so with the majority of welds being robotic now. The company is surprisingly efficient at cutting costs on everything from construction labor down toilet paper usage. True story 😉
Let me ask you something:
Could fuel lines even out flow if laid down in a Fermat spiral—to eliminate fluid hammer—links to new science about tubing here:
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/spacex-general-discussion.13774/page-154#post-614523
For windows
https://news.mit.edu/2023/integrating-humans-ai-structural-design-0302
If all fails…maybe an Elonergia of a simple four Raptor core with Falcon strap-ons…a cheaper SLS with much less plumbing to boost Starlink numbers.
Reducing the cost of the engines would not make the rest of the vehicle any less expensive to make…
SpaceX is reducing all costs of the rocket. The double the engine cost is my estimate of what I believe SpaceX can achieve in cost reduction. Just like reducing the cost of the battery pack in Tesla cars indicates where costs can go.
Considering they factor into the cost…yea it would
Weird. The article says 4000 raptors are made each year now, but I think that’s a typo, since SpaceX has said they’re aiming to build one per day (implying they’re not yet quite there) so the rate they’re building now is probably closer to 300 per year.
the capacity of the factory is 4000 raptors per year. They are ramping towards that level. I am projecting a few years ahead.
First time I’m reading about this new “leet 1337” engine. I’m assuming it’s a nickname for a next gen raptor engine (3 or 4) but SpaceX is doing the classic “best part is no part” routine of the design process, stripping the engine to the bare essentials (?). Just like they removed a bunch of pipes and sensors between raptor 1 and 2 that were there just so they can figure out the inner workings and optimize the engines “as they go”.
Either way, exciting stuff ahead. Raptor 2 is already arguably the most advanced engine out there and capable of fulfilling the set objectives of starship. With SpaceX constantly iterating to push the physical limits we are seriously looking at the future of space exploration.
Nice memes, but SpaceX really would name an engine “LEET 1337”
Engines may get somewhat cheaper but rest of starship won’t drop that much, because at end of day there is still 100tonnes of materials and complex systems to shape and integrate in a relatively low-volume production system with a lot of manual labour input.
I agree; it’s fine to assume a Starship costs double the cost of the engines, but then saying that if the new engines are half the cost, then you cannot make the rest of Starship suddenly be half cost, either. Still, it’s a pretty significant cost saving even if the rest of Starship costs don’t go down.
Yup, exactly right. Something seems wrong with the logic. Everything being equal, if in theory the cost of the 9 engines drops to a total of $1 million, years down the line. Then the cost of a complete Starship will be around $10 million— still an incredible price, but not two million, which is absurd and employs a baseless assumption that the price of the rest of the ship will also go down for some unexplained reason. It may go down, and it may increase, but it is still a huge huge structure, that unlike the engines, will not be made smaller.
Until they replace manual labor with Optimus robots.
Engines are the main expense for SS
To have such trust is great, but reliability is also important. Better to sacrifice a bit of thrust for greater reliability.
Of course they know what they are doing. This engine is the base for first stages of colonization and getting a lot into orbit by spending little for take offs.
If they will get a lot money flowing from Starlink, new advanced engine developments will be easier to do.
Colonize where? A world with an average surface temperature at the equator of minus thirty degrees Celsius?
Explore the Moon, and build solar orbit permanent space stations, there’s a reason we haven’t found abundant life on Mars.
Are you aware that the moon’s surface can hit 120C in the day and -130C at night?
But we’ve got tech to deal with those extremes, let alone a mere 20C to -75C swing on Mars. Space stations will need thermal control also.
[ on raw numbers this would result to a Carnot efficiency of ~63.59% and ideal Carnot cycle ]
Supposedly, the reliability is improved by the simplification. I am very interested in seeing how they can get away with deleting the hot gas manifold though.