SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine is so advanced the CEO of ULA doesn’t understand it
Click for original image.
When Elon Musk on August 2, 2024 proudly tweeted a picture of SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine, the third iteration of the engine it uses on this Starship/Superheavy rocket, Tori Bruno, the CEO of ULA, looked at the image (to the right) and complained that Musk and SpaceX were touting pictures of a “partially assembled engine.” As Bruno tweeted:
They have done an excellent job making the assembly simpler and more producible. So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.
It turns out that this engine is so advanced that Bruno — the CEO of SpaceX’s best competitor — didn’t understand it. Both Musk and SpaceX’s CEO Gywnne Shotwell immediately responded with images of this same engine operating during hot fire tests. As Shotwell tweeted, “Works pretty good for a ‘partially assembled’ engine :).”
Musk in one of his first tweets describing the engine’s specifications was also right when he described it as “Truly, a work of art.” Look at it. For what is the most powerful rocket engine ever built it looks as streamlined and a simple as the slant-6 car engine I had in my 1969 Plymouth Valient, built long before environmental regulations caused car engines to become incredibly overbuilt and complicated.
This little anecdote illustrates quite starkly how advanced SpaceX is over its competitors. It is now building rocket engines with technology beyond the immediate understanding of the CEO of the United States’ second largest rocket company.
Almost a decade after SpaceX successfully reused a Falcon 9 first stage, and now does it routinely, no other rocket company as yet to do the same, and only one company, Rocket Lab, is doing flight tests in an attempt to eventually do so.
SpaceX has no competition because too many of its competitors are simply not trying to compete. It is both sad and shameful.
Hat tip to reader Rex Ridenoure.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Click for original image.
When Elon Musk on August 2, 2024 proudly tweeted a picture of SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine, the third iteration of the engine it uses on this Starship/Superheavy rocket, Tori Bruno, the CEO of ULA, looked at the image (to the right) and complained that Musk and SpaceX were touting pictures of a “partially assembled engine.” As Bruno tweeted:
They have done an excellent job making the assembly simpler and more producible. So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.
It turns out that this engine is so advanced that Bruno — the CEO of SpaceX’s best competitor — didn’t understand it. Both Musk and SpaceX’s CEO Gywnne Shotwell immediately responded with images of this same engine operating during hot fire tests. As Shotwell tweeted, “Works pretty good for a ‘partially assembled’ engine :).”
Musk in one of his first tweets describing the engine’s specifications was also right when he described it as “Truly, a work of art.” Look at it. For what is the most powerful rocket engine ever built it looks as streamlined and a simple as the slant-6 car engine I had in my 1969 Plymouth Valient, built long before environmental regulations caused car engines to become incredibly overbuilt and complicated.
This little anecdote illustrates quite starkly how advanced SpaceX is over its competitors. It is now building rocket engines with technology beyond the immediate understanding of the CEO of the United States’ second largest rocket company.
Almost a decade after SpaceX successfully reused a Falcon 9 first stage, and now does it routinely, no other rocket company as yet to do the same, and only one company, Rocket Lab, is doing flight tests in an attempt to eventually do so.
SpaceX has no competition because too many of its competitors are simply not trying to compete. It is both sad and shameful.
Hat tip to reader Rex Ridenoure.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Flip it over and you have The Holy Grail of rocketry!
”Almost a decade after SpaceX successfully reused a Falcon 9 first stage, and now does it routinely, no other rocket company as yet to do the same…”
As I keep saying, no one in the Western world other than SpaceX flies enough to make reusability pay. For everyone else reusability costs money. It doesn’t save it. That’s why they don’t do it.
“”””mkent
August 9, 2024 at 2:25 pm
”Almost a decade after SpaceX successfully reused a Falcon 9 first stage, and now does it routinely, no other rocket company as yet to do the same…”
As I keep saying, no one in the Western world other than SpaceX flies enough to make reusability pay. For everyone else reusability costs money. It doesn’t save it. That’s why they don’t do it.””””
It doesn’t take that much extra business to make it pay. Flying one airframe three times a year can easily be less expensive than building three new airframes every year. Not to mention the extra responsiveness to your customers generating more business.
To Patrick
No Holy Grail…clearly this thing has a djinni trapped inside it…
One thing I have heard about the design is that some of the items that would be on the outside and now inside welded areas. Musk even said that they would need to cut it open to do any repairs.
I suspect from what I have read, you could open up a Tesla drive train get pretty much the same reaction from most traditional car makers.
In fairness to Bruno, he did tweet congratulations in reply to Shotwell’s photo of the Raptor 3 being tested.
I had a 1974 Plymouth Duster with that same slant 6 engine. The frame would rust out long before the slant 6 would give up the ghost. An apt analogy although to my eyes the Raptor-3 seems far more elegant. And honestly as dependable as the Slant 6 was it was no winner in power/weight ratio whereas, I think the Raptor-3 excels in that field. SpaceX’s combination of stepwise refinement and getting scale advantages on production is a winning combination that will be hard indeed to beat.
”Flying one airframe three times a year can easily be less expensive than building three new airframes every year.”
Not even close. SpaceX spent a billion dollars making the existing Falcon 9 reusable. Three flights a year wouldn’t even pay the interest on that investment. Seriously, guys, there’s a reason no one else is doing it.
mkent: We could argue the pros and cons, but when you claim “no one else is doing it” you’re are incorrect. Others haven’t succeeded in doing it, but almost all the new rocket startups are designing their rockets with this in mind (even the pseudo-companies in China). Of those startups, Rocket Lab has been the only one with an operational rocket to fly tests, and it is doing so, having already reflown an engine. And if Blue Origin ever flies, it has always planned reuseability from the start.
The only companies not trying this are the old established big space companies like ULA and Northrop Grumman, and even ULA says it plans to reuse parts of Vulcan eventually.
That said, it seems your claim that it doesn’t pay to do reuseablity is also wrong. Otherwise you would not see all this effort.
My point however was different. I was just noting how far everyone else is behind SpaceX. Had Blue Origin and ULA and Arianespace tried to compete, they would have had the capablity to match SpaceX. They instead chose to put their heads in the sand. In ten years Arianespace will be gone, and ULA will be likely as well. As for Blue Origin, it might compete and survive, if it can finally get its act together.
“As I keep saying, no one in the Western world other than SpaceX flies enough to make reusability pay. For everyone else reusability costs money. It doesn’t save it. That’s why they don’t do it.”
Which is why Blue Origin, Relativity Space, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Firefly, CASC, iSpace, Landspace, Galactic Energy, Deep Blue Aerospace, and Perigee Aerospace are all developing partially or fully reusable launch vehicles – and even old Tory himself keeps committing publicly to SMART reuse of the Vulcan engine pod?
One of the main reasons SpaceX has been launching so much is to get its 5,000+ Starlink satellites up into orbit. Aren’t there competitors to Starlink that will need numerous launches so that reusability would pay for itself with the launch company?
“As Shotwell tweeted, “Works pretty good for a ‘partially assembled’ engine :).””
Oooh. That’s gonna leave a 620k lbs/thrust mark.
And would it so much to ask an educated person use the King’s English? ‘Well’ flows much better, without the hard stop of a ‘g’.
I’d rather launch myself or my payload on a flight proven rocket rather than one which was having its first ever flight.
There is a reason Boeing and Airbus don’t take a new airliner off the production line and launch on a 6000 nm flight with a full load of paying passengers for the first flight.
@mkent “Not even close. SpaceX spent a billion dollars making the existing Falcon 9 reusable” .
An investment in the future and learned one heck of a lot which will pay off with Starship. I doubt it was a billion to make it reusable. More like that was what it cost to develop the whole system.
All of which is why SpaceX is eating all the lunches of oldspace companies.
My first car was a 1964 Dodge Dart that had the famous “Leaning Tower of Power”. Body was so rusted out, you could put both feet on the ground while sitting in back seat. Even after being T-boned by a drunk one night that caved in passenger side and sitting for six months behind the house through the winter, the car started without a jump. I =drove= it to the local junkyard and sold it for scrap. Got 40 dollars…
I can so relate to Musk’s reliability and simplicity comments.
Having seen Blue Origin’s landing legs I’d say nobody there paid any attention to “the best part is no part”
One of the main reasons SpaceX has been launching so much is to get its 5,000+ Starlink satellites up into orbit. Aren’t there competitors to Starlink that will need numerous launches so that reusability would pay for itself with the launch company?
Narrator: In fact, there are.
I saw this post about 3am EDT not fully awake I thought it was Bob posting a picture of a statue of a woman presenting a baby held with her right hand.
By the way; about reuse; it makes investment in improvements pay off and is a huge barrier and scare factor for competitors.
“slant 6”
Once upon a time, you could open the hood of a car and see the ground, on all sides of the engine. Now, aside from the fact that they put panels on the underside of the car for aerodynamics, in my hybrid, there isn’t even anything recognizable. The spark plugs are hidden. There are no belts, because there isn’t anything that needs to be belt-driven. OK, there’s a 12-volt battery in there, but it’s connected to the high-voltage battery, so DON’T TOUCH IT!
When Musk started talking about his “flight-proven rockets,” all I could think of was an ad for “Honest Elon’s Used Rockets.” Now, people ask, was there a launch today? Probably, if it’s a day that ends in “y”.
If Musk’s efforts were directed at generating electricity on Earth and fresh water, humanity would benefit. The rocket games are sexy but don’t save one underprivileged human life.
Nobody here wants to admit that.
M. Murcek wrote, ” The rocket games are sexy but don’t save one. Nobody here wants to admit that.”
You are so wrong you owe every commenter here an apology.
1. The Brownsville area was poor, depressed, and dying before SpaceX arrived. His company and the operations at Boca Chica has brought billions of dollars of investment to the region and tens of thousands of new jobs. The once underprivileged in this region now have a chance to become “privileged”, a right that all Americans have always enjoyed, until recent decades.
In other words, Musk’s company has done more for Brownsville in less than a decade than the billions and trillions of dollars Washington has confisicated from taxpayers (making them poorer) and then wasted for the past seven decades.
2. Your quote above is rude and unnecessary. You can’t possible know what the commenters here think or have written in the past. All it serves to do is to allow you to virtue signal (“I care about the under-privileged!”) while implying we do not. Quite shameful and very childish.
Wow, you are worked up. I’m sure every poor person outside the greater Brownsville area is feeling the love.
I’m a hard core capitalist. I totally back Musk’s right to use his capital as he will. But let’s not sugar coat it. OK?
The human race is not going to the stars on chemical rockets. Let’s all be clear on that. Under those circumstances, calling all efforts to keep Earth habitable are sort of sinister.
Calling all efforts to keep Earth habitable “childish” are sort of sinister.
In the space age, comments will be editable.
If Musk’s efforts were directed at generating electricity on Earth
This is a curious claim. Tesla has literally set up over 700 MWh of power packs and other energy storage systems (BESS) in Australia alone, and installed solar arrays and Powerwalls on up to 50,000 homes in South Australia alone.
The human race is not going to the stars on chemical rockets. Let’s all be clear on that.
Indeed not. But you can certainly get to some nearby planets on them, if you do it right. (I mean, we kinda proved that already, admittedly on a very small and limited scale, in 1969-72.)
But you can certainly get to some nearby planets on them, if you do it right.
This disproves “not going to the stars” how?
You probably shouldn’t be allowed to fire off class 2 fireworks.
All the lithium batteries Mudk has sold (he didn’t “give any away”) will be dead in 3-4 years.
Elons Satellite network Starlink, which is paying for all these rockets, to the tune of a billion a year.
Starlink of offering cheap to, in some cases, free high speed internet to every place on the planet.
The only places that its not available are places like Russia, China and other totalitarian regimes who do not want their citizens to have open access to the outside world.
The peace Corp was started by JFK 60 years ago explicitly to help the poor of the world. It brought water wells to the rural communities of Africa. And all that happened after that was war lords came in and took half the crops and males for their own war effort.
Unicef was started about the same time to bring food to those very same poor people around the world.
And all that happened was warlords came in and took half of the food and a lot of the males for their own war effort.
Those very nice organization now actually have people whose whole job is to make deals with those warlords so the rest of the group keeps working. Its quietly financing those warlords so it can virtue signal their good deeds to the rest of the world.
That “saved” a few million children just to watch then get chewed up in pointless wars.
Its now coming out that a LOT of UN workers have been backing Hamas and Hezbollah to wage war against Israel.
Supplies going into Gaza were first bargained for with Hamas before they got to the people. We fed the solders first.
For the readers who think I’m anti space travel, read Jack McDevitt. I’m all in on going to SkyDeck and taking a trip on a superluminal.
We don’t get there by lightning candles.
M. Murcek; Another response is that if Musk were innovating in that space of do gooding directly then he would face even more opposition from the vested interests who claim ownership over the people and politics in that space. And by space I do not mean of course anything to do with space.
Better transportation infrastructure would help poor in the inner city escape the food deserts they are trapped in. But Musk faced gnarly opposition in that space.
Even though Starlink is a great way to implement some low cost Internet look how his efforts got the shank from the regulators.
Going to Mars? M. Murcek you do a very good job of giving the same complaint that proponents of the Great Society used to shut down Apollo. I can’t refute that other than by looking back to see that Daniel Patrick Moynihan was right.
M. Murcek
If you really want to help a few million people close by then go to Cuba and fix that thriving communist system.
I no longer give to world wide charities because of their policy of paying of gangsters.
Conflate what I say to other stuff you disagree with in the most nebulous way. So persuasive.
Why are you complaining that he should do what you want him to do with his own money?
That doesn’t sound very capitalistic.
StarLink sats and gummint payloads. You are telling me this is the stairway to the stars?
Well we sure aren’t going to the stars by not doing the first steps.
Earth is perfectly habitable if we stop listening to the greenies and the environmental destruction they cause. Bird killing wind “turbines”, vast solar panel arrays that take out good farmland, opposition to farming itself, opposition to building dams that can provide fresh water and electrical power, hysteria over the Great Barrier Reef (it is doing just fine) and the associated waste of hundreds of millions of dollars.
This lady has some more tales of the evil they do: https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/
As for the underprivileged, most are so because of the governments/criminal gangs (same thing) that have infested their countries.
M. Murcek:
This disproves “not going to the stars” how?
Did I say it would?
But Elon hasn’t been talking up colonizing Tau Ceti for the last 20 years, has he? He’s all about Mars, and Mars is certainly reachable with Starship v.3 rockets in the plausible near-term (20 years) future, at least – even if not, perhaps, on the timeline he’d prefer, or perhaps as easily or cheaply as he might like. I mean, if you are going to judge him, judge him on what he’s actually trying to do. If you think Mars colonization is a bad idea, then say so – but if so, that’s a different conversation than the one you initiated!
All the lithium batteries Musk has sold (he didn’t “give any away”) will be dead in 3-4 years.
I don’t know what their operational lifespans are. But I assume they’d be replaced at intervals. (Likewise, the solar arrays.) The point is, you suggested he’s done nothing to provide electricity for anyone, and that’s an easily disprovable fact, either as charity or as a business. Now, whether it is in the scope, way and manner *you* would prefer – that might be another story.
(And yes, he did give away *some* to low-income Australians: https://www.globalcitizen.org/de/content/tesla-virtual-power-plant-south-australia/ )
Elon is a ruthless business competitor and hard-driving executive, but I think there’s ample evidence that there *is* a strong idealistic humanitarian impulse behind what he’s doing with Tesla and SpaceX. What rankles some of us here is your critique that he is failing to act on the idealistic humanitarian impulse *you* would insist upon, and in the precise manner *you* would advocate. Why should your vision be privileged over his?
The deep state Uniparty, the UN, the NGO’s are all about keeping the people controlled and poor. Funny that the Russians and Chinese threw out the UN and the NGO’s. Maybe they know something that Mr. Pzatchok doesn’t (or forgot)?
If Musk’s efforts were directed at generating electricity on Earth and fresh water, humanity would benefit. The rocket games are sexy but don’t save one underprivileged human life.
Nobody here wants to admit that.
———-
Plenty of fresh water on Earth. Anyplace that is green has fresh water, any place white with snow has fresh water.
Regarding electricity, there are plenty of companies dedicated to producing electricity (and other forms of energy).
Shallow Minded Reader
The NGO’s and UN do want to control the people sort of. China and Russia just do not want other people controlling their people.
African Warlords do not have the resources to not need those NGOs to keep going to war.
The one thing I might have done differently than Musk would be to have auto mechanics design a car that can be easily serviced taking the best of all previous designs.
No aerodynamics…square headlights—full frame.
I wonder what a winged shuttle using Merlins would look like.
All LOX ET, kerosene in the orbiter….
Strap-on agnostic.
Reach for the stars, one step at a time.
Even if no large asteroid/comet hits the Earth in the future, eventually the Sun will expand, and nothing on Earth will survive. If we do not move out into the Solar System, humanity will end. Mars is just the first small (but huge) step. Occupying large asteroids and moons of other planets are other steps. Large ships and space stations are other steps. Elon Musk discusses the spread of consciousness. If something large impacts the Earth before humans have established a place elsewhere, that consciousness will die out. Elon Musk reminds me of many Robert Heinlein characters. Push the envelope, try and try again. We cannot wait for everything on Earth to be perfect before we explore more.
Tom Keener asked: “One of the main reasons SpaceX has been launching so much is to get its 5,000+ Starlink satellites up into orbit. Aren’t there competitors to Starlink that will need numerous launches so that reusability would pay for itself with the launch company?”
Yes. Even without Starlink, we can see that worldwide demand for launches has increased greatly over the past ten years. The other satellite constellations will only add to that demand. Reusability makes it possible for so many launches, and it reduces the price tag on each launch.
A reusable rocket does not have to be that much more expensive to develop from clean-sheet design; look at Rocket Lab’s Neutron. Reusability cost SpaceX quite a bit because they were retrofitting their old rocket, essentially designing a different rocket (four major iterations to get to the final reusable one that could also be used for Falcon Heavy). SpaceX’s competitor, ULA, thought it was different enough to warrant new certification for USAF launches.
__________________
mkent wrote: “SpaceX spent a billion dollars making the existing Falcon 9 reusable.”
SpaceX credits half of that (half a billion dollars) to the development of Falcon Heavy. Essentially, SpaceX ended up with two major rockets (a medium-lift launch vehicle and a heavy-lift launch vehicle) for less than the price most companies spend developing one.
Musk didn’t have much money to develop Falcon 1, and not much left over to turn it into Falcon 9 (bypassing Falcon 5, because it wouldn’t have enough customers to keep SpaceX in business). Falcon 9 was flying within ten years of the founding of SpaceX. Rapid development was key to saving money and staying in business long enough to get launch contracts.
I won’t take long.
Engines used in Russian rocket ships are certified for multiple launches.
The question is effective system of returning those home.
It was only used on Buran shuttle two launches. The engines were reused for both flights, since shuttle by itself is a ship that flies home.
And now, USA shuttles could not reuse engines and had to refit new ones per each flight.
So, it is not correct, Musk is not first to reuse engines.
And given recent developments the merit of reuse is not completely settled.
Finally, regarding efficiency of Raptor engines. Methane is pretty good fuel, however, hydrogen used by Russian 1st stage engines are still winning competition by use 1/2 as dense and at least 2 times better heat producing fuel, which means, what wins Elon Mask has achieved on Raptor v3 will still be plastered against the floor by better fuel efficiency of hydrogen engines. Although his approach to solving challenges by compound effect is, probably, very much applicable to conquering this, remaining obstacle, to creating a true marvel of a rocket engine engineering. So far Raptor is ahead of the game in some area of engineering, but yet to approach average in the other. Only makes road ahead so much more exciting.
All the good to everyone.