Elon Musk shows off first SpaceX Raptor engine test fire, built to launch the Starship rocket to Mars.
SpaceX has just completed its first test fire of a full-scale Raptor engine, which will be used to power the company’s next generation rocket. The news was announced by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who posted a pair of videos on Twitter of the engine being test fired at the company’s test sight in McGregor, Texas.
Founder and CEO of SpaceX, Elon Musk, showed off a photo and videos of the company test firing its new Raptor rocket engine in a series of tweets late on Sunday.
"First firing of Starship Raptor flight engine! So proud of great work by @SpaceX team!!" Musk said via Twitter.
The Starship rocket, which is designed to be a fully-reusable launch system. Which Musk's company plans to use to one day transport up to 100 people and cargo to Mars. Starship will launch atop a giant rocket SpaceX calls Super Heavy.
Both of these vehicles will be reusable and Raptor-powered. The final version of Starship will have seven Raptor engines on board, while the "Super Heavy" booster that launched it will have 31 Raptor engines.
The Raptor engine is being built at SpaceX's the company's headquarters in Hawthorne, California and testing them at the company's facilities in McGregor, Texas.
SpaceX is currently building a prototype of the Starship rocket at its facility near Brownsville, Texas. The prototype Starship will use three Raptor engines for "hop" test flights. Musk has said the prototype Starship will be ready for short test flights as early as this year – although the company is facing a development setback after the top half of the rocket blew over in January. Musk said at the time that the damage will take "a few weeks to repair."
The recent test wasn't the first firing of any kind of Raptor. SpaceX first tested a development version of the Raptor in September 2016, also at the McGregor site.
The Raptor engine is quite a bit different than the Merlin, which powers SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Merlins use kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX) propellants, for example, whereas Raptors use liquid methane and LOX. And the flight Raptor will boast about twice the thrust of the Merlin version that powers the Falcon 9.
Eventually, Musk has said that that he hopes that the new rocket could perform an uncrewed mission to Mars as early as 2022, with a crewed flight to follow in 2024. However, considering the CEO’s history of optimistic deadlines it’s best to view these plans as an aspiration
The development of Raptor and Starship is an "absolutely insane" project, Musk said during Tesla's quarter investor call last week. Musk attributed recent SpaceX layoffs – which saw the company layoff more than 600 employees – to the company's need to be "incredibly spartan with expenditures" until its developing programs reach fruition.
The Falcon 9 rocket has some big milestones of its own coming up. It will loft SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule on its first orbital mission as soon as Feb. 23. This uncrewed test flight will send Crew Dragon to the International Space Station. If all goes well, Crew Dragon will carry NASA astronauts to the orbiting lab for the first time this summer.