The strongest rocket engine in history Musk said the Raptor 2 had a regular working pressure of 300 bar

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January 5 news, recently, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that the work on Starship's upgrade of the Raptor 2 engine is progressing smoothly, and the normal working pressure of the engine's main combustion chamber can reach 300 bar (1 bar = 100 kPa (KPa)).

In mid-December last year, Musk revealed that it will upgrade the Starship, including an increase in the volume of propellant storage tanks and the addition of 3 Raptor engines, which is expected to increase the maximum thrust of the Starship by 50%, thereby greatly improving payload performance. Recently, SpaceX upgraded the rocket engine carried by Starship to the Raptor 2 engine and adjusted the ship's structural design and assembly process.

According to Musk, as SpaceX continues to ramp up ground testing of the upgraded Raptor 2 engine, "the conventional working pressure in the main combustion chamber of the Raptor 2 engine is 300 bar." ”

On February 10, 2019, the main combustion chamber pressure of SpaceX's first full-size Raptor engine prototype was only briefly close to 269 bar, barely breaking the pressure record set by the Russian RD-270 and RD-180 engines. It then took Musk 18 months to prove clearly that the Raptor engine prototype was able to stabilize the main combustion chamber at high pressure for a minute or more. The same Raptor engine peaked at 330 bar, briefly producing 225 tons of thrust, completely beating the Russian RD-701 engine. In the 18 months since, the Starship with Raptor engines has undergone dozens of static ignitions and seven flight tests.

Previous starships with Raptor 1/1.5 engines have not yet tried orbital testing, but SpaceX has begun to upgrade the Raptor 2 engine for Starship. According to Musk, all of the engine ground tests at the company's R&D campus in McGregor, Texas, are now focused on the Raptor 2 engine.

The plumbing and wiring of the Raptor 2 engine is reported to be more streamlined. The biggest change in the Raptor 2 engine is that the maximum thrust has increased by almost 25% compared to the Raptor 1/1.5 model, from 185 tons to 230 tons. This is mainly achieved by expanding the diameter of the nozzle throat of the Raptor engine, obtaining higher power density by sacrificing a small amount of efficiency. In addition, the technicians have improved the design of the Raptor 2 engine to enable it to operate reliably and continuously at main combustion chamber pressures of up to 300 bar, with a typical operating pressure 10% higher than that of the Raptor 1.5 engine.

Musk previously tweeted, "The Raptor Type 2 has a larger throat diameter, so the thrust at 321 bar pressure is about 245 tons." ”

On October 24, 2021, Musk broadcast live the first static ignition test of the Raptor 2 engine via personal social media, showing that the engine's main combustion chamber reached a peak pressure of 321 bar and briefly generated about 245 tons of thrust before the explosion. Now that more than two months have passed, Musk said the regular working pressure of the Raptor 2 engine has reached 300 bar without major problems, which means they can burn under this pressure for several minutes and then shut down safely. Given that the 300bar is the target pressure of the Raptor 2 engine in the main combustion chamber at maximum thrust, this means that the Raptor 2 engine has now reached SpaceX's target in "regular" operation.

Of course, it could take months for the Raptor 2 engine to adapt to the new Starship and the super heavy booster. However, SpaceX's progress in the first few months of testing the Raptor 2 engine was very rapid.