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Comment by sfjailbird | Hacker News Reader

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sfjailbird·

This is the first flight of the new engines. They look so much sleeker and simpler than the previous two generations:

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGMtnP...

* And supposedly with a 20% power increase to boot!

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SN1 was a test engine, the flight engines are even cleaner https://fixupx.com/interstellargw/status/2057165036196409820

Oh wow that photo is from years ago but you’re correct, this is the first flight of that design

The stats are pretty out there. Iirc just the fuel pump, which you can probably pick up and put on your desk, generates 100k HP.

Well, it's powered by bleeding exhaust from a very big rocket.

One of my favorite clips to give a sense of scale for rockets is this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70u748VALt4

I show someone and then I tell them, that's not the rocket exhaust. That's the exhaust for the engine that runs the fuel pump for the rocket.

To me the coolest thing about rocket engines from an engineering perspective is the tyranny of efficiency that the physics mandate.

Because weight is so critical, there's no luxury of "another component". If something can be repurposed, it is!

And the power opportunities afforded by continually dumping that much fuel through are mind boggling. Even regenerative cooling with combustive fuel blows my mind.

Nope, Raptor is full flow staged combustion, so both the fuel and oxidizer have dedicated preburners and turbopumps each.

Thanks for that correction!

Booster dry mass savings of around one ton per engine iirc.

Raptor1 looks like the steampunk or mad max version

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