Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, the Everyday
Astronaut. Welcome to Starbase, Texas. Today, we're getting up close and personal
with SpaceX's Raptor 2 engine with Elon Musk. We get into all sorts
of details on this engine, including how exactly it's been upgraded
and simplified compared to Raptor 1. This video has a ton of fun details
on some fairly technical stuff. So be sure and watch my "Why
don't rocket engines melt?" video. So you know what we're talking about
with some of the cooling techniques, as well as my video on engine cycles. So you understand how the Raptor's full
flow stage combustion cycle works and why it's advantageous. My next video will be a deep dive
comparing Raptor 1 and Raptor 2. We'll go over every little detail of the
engine and it'll definitely help make this conversation easier to follow.
It's currently in the works, so be sure and stay tuned. If you
happen to find this video valuable, consider dropping a Super Thanks
as a tip below here on YouTube, or become a channel member or Patreon
supporter for early access and to show your support. Okay, let's dive
into SpaceX's Raptor Engine. So these are all Raptor 2s. These are all Raptor 2s? Yeah. You have this many here already? Sorry? You have this many here already? Yeah. In my head, I just wasn't even thinking.
I mean, yeah, they're lot simpler. Oh, you can see that kind of
octovalve thing on it. Yes. So there's one... the Raptor 1 is the one that looks like
the crazy Christmas tree there <laugh>. Hence the Merry Christmas. Yeah. And it's snowman. So it's not super easy to
see, but you can compare like, how much less there is, like,
if you just look at like, just eyeball the fiddly bits level there
versus the fiddly bits level there, like that thing's just wrapped in tons
of stuff. This is a completed engine. Wow. So a massive amount of things
have been deleted... deleted, combined simplified, on
Raptor 2 versus Raptor 1. It's a little hard to see
cause it's over there, but... Well you can tell a lot. Yeah. Giant difference like this,
the Raptor 2 looks like this, it's not finished. But it actually is. This is a finished
Raptor 2 versus finished Raptor 1. Yeah.
Gigantic difference. And you can tell this one's a lot more
completed with the gimbal mount on top and everything too. Yeah. Well, that's 'cause...
they both have a gimbal mount. I mean, sorry, compared
to like that one that doesn't. Yeah. So the outer booster
engines don't need a gimble. So, the outer, the booster engines
are fixed as are the Raptor vacuum engines. So but this is a
gimbling Raptor 2 versus a gimbling Raptor 1 a gigantic
difference in complexity. And the Raptor 1 was really around sort of 180, 185 tons of thrust and Raptor 2 is 230 tons of thrust. But really, I think we could probably get, over
time, 250 tons of thrust. So it's... Sorry, it's 230 tons at 300 bar.. Wow. And you started... You've been pushing
these things to like over 300 [bar] too, Right? Yeah. So Raptor 1 could maybe do like 250
bar and it also has a smaller throat. So, whereas Raptor 2, a standard
operating pressure is 300 bar, which is kind of- this is
crazy for a rocket engine. Where it has a main
chamber-This is by far a record. Yes. 300 Bar main chamber
operating pressure is... it's the highest pressure,
operational rocket engine ever. So the next best would be like a RD-180. I think they're around 267 bar
they're arounds, thereabouts. The RD-170 is not too bad
itself, but it's yeah. I finally, I finally... Noone's ever done 300 bar. No, especially not sustained. I'm
sure they did it, maybe blew one up, trying to get there or something. Oh, we blew a lot of engines up. Yeah. I've lost count of how many... I think
we might have blown up 30 engines; that's a lot. So at like a high production
rate cures many ills. Yeah. So if you have a low production
rate. I mean, any given technology development is, "How
many iterations do you have? And what's your time and progress
between iterations?" So if you have a high production rate, you
can have a lot of iterations. You can try lots of different things. And it's okay if you blow up an
engine because you've got a, you know, a high production rate, you've got a
bunch of engines coming after that. Yeah. If you have a small number of engines, then you have to be much more conservative
'cause you can't risk blowing them up. So that's why, you know,
one of my catch phrases is, "a high production rate,
solves many ills." And, yeah, so we've blown up, I don't
know, I'm just guessing at least 20, maybe over 30 engines and
we have melted probably 50 chambers, maybe more than
50 chambers we have melted. So when you melt the chamber, are you most of the time able to like
save the power pack on it or do you kind of scrap the whole thing? If you melt the chamber, it's usually a benign shutdown.
So you you've lost the chamber, the sort of chamber nozzle assembly, but the pumps are usually fine
and you can potentially even reuse the main injector. Okay. And basically everything
below main injector is toast. Is it potentially benign because as it
erodes the layer it actually begins to almost cool itself more. Yeah. It does.. It's benign... It's like benign in the
context of rocket engines. 'Til it starves the injector and creates
a hotspot I'm sure and all that kind of Yes. So <laugh> I mean, if you
don't shut the engine down fast, stuff.
you will have an explosion. But you do have an opportunity to shut
the engine down because you can detect a big pressure drop in the... Like the chamber jacket pressure
will suddenly drop. And then you can do a commanded
shutdown of the engine. But you will have issues if you
don't shut it down because the cooling fluid, the fuel that is cooling, is now no longer cooling
the part above it. Oh, Right. So it's cooling where the leak is, but it's now doing less
cooling of whatever's above it. So it's gonna start
melting all the way up. Gotcha. So it'll get ugly fast
if you don't shut down. And so that, you mentioned at the last
Starship event, you were kind of saying, "Yeah, Raptor 2s are melting!" What have
you ended up like, how are, I guess, how do you keep them from melting? What tricks are you continuing
to employ and expand out on, or is just a matter of tuning
the engine back a little bit, even to not be pushing it that hard? Right now, we're optimizing Raptor 2 for
robustness, as opposed to performance. I think broad brushstroke, we're, <laugh>, we're kind of overdoing it on the film cooling front. So we have quite a high percentage
of head end foam cooling and throat foam cooling. So, I mean, we're probably losing
a couple points of efficiency, because of the cooling, but it's better to have not melting
chambers and we can fine tune the performance later. So we're just hitting cooling
with a sledge hammer here. So some pretty significant
improvements for Raptor 2, like to compare Raptor 2 to Raptor 1. For Raptor 1, we have, torch
igniters in the main chamber. So you can see the torch,
those things on the side, there are the torch igniters. I
mean, these guys basically. So torch igniters for the main chamber. But Raptor 2 has no torch
igniters in the main chamber. So you can see it's much
cleaner around the chamber area. How do you... How's it light then? <Laugh> Well, that's secret
sauce <laugh> but I'm just... I can tell you sort of observable
outcomes that anyone with a camera could notice, but I cannot tell
you secret sauce things. Anyone can see what the outside
of the engine looks like, because we have to funnel the engines
down the road. And people have, you know, 12k cameras with telephoto lenses
that are so precise they can read the serial numbers on the wiring. <laugh> So I'm not giving away anything, any state secrets literally, by
describing things on the outside, but I have to be cautious
about saying how we made it work. But it was, it wasn't super easy, but we managed to get rid of the torch
igniters in the main chamber which is a significant complexity
reduction and reduction in failure modes, makes the
engine lighter, lower cost. More reliable on ignition
and things like that too? Yeah, exactly. So it's
better in every way. It was a huge improvement to get
rid of tortch igniters in the main chamber. We still
have torch igniters for the oxygen power head and the fuel power head. But we were able to
simplify those as well. Is that something that would sometimes
cause scrubs even it'd be like a preburner itself won't even light. Yeah, if the preburner doesn't light
or even doesn't light exactly right, then you've got a challenge. So with the Merlin engine, you've got a single shaft that is
driving the oxygen pump and the fuel pump. So they're gonna,
they're naturally, they're mechanically locked. They will always spin at the same RPM
'cause they're literally on the same shaft. So that makes the start sequence for
Merlin much easier and simpler than the start sequence for Raptor. In
the case of Raptor you've got an oxygen power head and a fuel
power head and they're different shafts, obviously, and you've got two turbines
and two preburners. So, and they're cross feeding one another. So the start sequence for Raptor is
insanely complicated compared to the start sequence for Merlin. It has to be perfectly precise
'cause each one relies... Basically you're doing this
delicate dance between the fuel power head and the oxygen power head. And if they get out of sync,
then you can go stoichiometric, in the preurners and melt
or explode the preburners. So starting an engine like this is very complex. Once it's running, it's a much easier situation. But if you get anything wrong
with that start sequence, you're either gonna melt
or explode the engine. Well, I finally understand too, once
it's running and in a steady state, you know, the advantage of full flow, it becomes pretty obvious just looking
at the enthalpy and the, you know, the mass flow through each turbine
and the deltaT. And I mean, it's, I finally, this just
clicked like two weeks ago. I finally actually understood
it as opposed to, you
know, understanding it ish, but it clicks now and
I fully appreciate it. Yes. By the way, you have the wrong ISP for
methane engines in your video. It's way too generous. Which, oh, the theoretical max ISP. . That is not possible. I don't know why I literally... I was just at a friend's house and
they were watching the video. I'm like, I wish we could get ISP like that. That would be a dream. That's way higher ISP than is
actually physically possible. I wish it were possible,
but it is not. But from an architectural standpoint in order
to approach the limit of physics of what is possible with, like maximizing the
efficiency of a rocket engine, a high pressure, full
flow gas, gas engine, that's as that's as good as a gets. As you'd have to figure out new
physics to do better than that. So the Raptor architecture is the
highest efficiency known to physics. Like you said, one time, you said as if God himself admitted the
molecules together, maybe get 1% better. Yes. So we should be able
to get 99% combustion efficiency, 99% of theoretical
combustion efficiency, which is insane basically. Yeah, like literally
with divine intervention, you could do 1% better. And you're doing that really.. I was really saying something. <Laugh> And you're doing that in
such a short thrust chamber too. Like the actual chamber is so small. Yeah. Because... It's, is that because it's gas, gas, and it doesn't need as
much time to fully react? That's part of the reason. But also, we actually have a whole
bunch of injector elements. So when the gas enters
the main chamber, it is already pre-mixed,
it's like 90% pre-mixed so you've got, swell injectors.
Where you've got, again, this is sort of a class of injector
elements as a swell injector. And so you've got oxygen rich
gas going down the center of, there's like a little
stroll basically. Yeah. So down the center of the straw, you've got oxygen-rich gas and then
coming in from the side of the straw with, there are a series of holes
that are coming at an angle. So the fuel rich gas is coming in sort of tangential to the
diameter. So it's coming in. At the opposite direction. Like oxygen is coming down the straw and
then fuel is coming in from the side, from holes that are drilled such
that you're going swell afloat. And so when the, when that enters the main chamber, it is already "roughly 90% mixed." So
the Chamber's only doing the remaining 10% of the mixing. More or less. And so the actuators there are those hydroelectrical or what are those called? No. That's so we're still using,
hydraulic actuators. They're just basically hydraulic pistons. What we want to move to down the road with a Raptor 3, or whatever we end up calling it, would
be, electrical, basically a screw drive, electric motor with a screw drive. A big servo. Yeah. Just, yeah, big server
motor. This is a temp, like what you don't see
here is that there's a whole, hydraulic system
on the vehicle side. That's itself is there's
a battery driving, electric motors driving, hydraulic pumps into a reservoir
that is then feeding the engines, hydraulic fluid. This is, when
you look at total vehicle mass, this is not a good, approach. We just
don't have time to put an electric server drives on the
engine. We'll do that, you know, I don't know, in a few months. Now with, with Merlin, you've got a
source of hydraulic fluid. So with, with Melin, it makes sense
to have hydraulic actuators, because you've got a
source of high pressure, working fluid because you use
kerosene as a working fluid and you so you tap off the fuel pump,
take high pressure kerosene, to drive the, hydraulic
actuators. And then low pressure outlet of the, it
goes back into the fuel tank. So you see basically it's a circulating
system with no losses and it's a super easy move if you've got liquid kerosene. Since we have croygens here, it is technically possible for us
to use methane as a working fluid in the hydraulic actuators,
but very scary. Because the methane will want to gasify. If you get gas bubbles in the hydraulic
system, it's gonna get spongy. And it's not gonna work properly. So I did insist that we at
least look at the comparison, but this was like the, mass difference... There wasn't a huge mass
gain for having a methane hydraulic system. And it was scaring the
hell out of everyone. So me included, so it was like, "Yeah, I just think we should just do it
so that we aren't missing something important." But the smart move's
gonna be, just have a electric servo. It still needs like a lot of torque, 'cause moving this
engine fast is not easy. And it moves so fast. Like when you see,
you know, those, the videos landing, I mean it is, it moves so fast. Yeah. Like a lot of the time it doesn't
actually need to move that fast. But if you have say an
engine out, then you've, you've gotta slew all the engines really
fast to deal with an engine that went out. So like the corner cases
kind of drive the slew rate and the torque needed in the actuators... And the full angle too, right?
The total gimabl degree. Exactly. So if you get
like, it's basically like, unexpected gusts or buffeting, wind shear, and engine out that
drives the slew rate. You could move it a lot slower otherwise. And then you even simplified what
appears to be a ton of valves and things, almost that one box or some
kind of, almost like you did with the, what was it called the octovalve
in Teslas where you unified all the valves into a single component. Is that
kinda like what you did here almost? Yeah. We combined a ton of parts into one. But now it's always better to delete
things rather than optimize them, which sounds obvious. But, possibly the single biggest mistake made
by smart engineers is optimizing a thing that should not exist. That's why, like I've made it really mandatory
to run through the first principles, algorithm of first question, the constraints and requirements
make them less dumb. Then step two, delete
the part or process step. If you're not adding back at least
10% of the things you're deleting, you're not deleting enough. And
then the third thing is, to only the third thing is optimize. And
then the fourth is, you know, as it relates to production,
accelerate rates. And then only the fifth thing is automate. And I've done it backwards many times. That's why I have to like repeat
this mantra to myself as well. <Laugh> You wake up every morning,
it's written in your mirror. <Laugh> Yeah, seriously. And
you need to do it recursively. So <laugh>. What's the one thing like
when you look at this engine, what's the thing causing you stress? Is there a certain part or a certain
thing that you're sitting there going, "I'm not sure how we'll
figure that one out.". Well, I mean the single biggest thing
I'd like to do with, Raptor is sort of to delete, more of
the little fiddly bits, like sort of the small pipes and
wiring and integrate... Basically delete and integrate a little bit more
to get to the point where we do not need shrouds. So if we delete the shrouds, that's a dramatic reduction in
mass and cost and complexity. But if there's any part of the
engine that is susceptible to heat, then we cannot delete the shroud. Now we've made huge progress from
Christmas tree over there. <laugh>, to Raptor 1 Christmas tree like
that obviously needs the shroud. It's got a zillion
things on it. It would be impossible to... To protect
all of that from being melted. On Raptor 2 we've made dramatic progress, but not yet enough progress such
that we don't need a shroud. So the shroud would be for protection
from heat and high aerodynamic force, like high Q. So, but we're not far. With a little more work, we should be able to simplify it enough
to get to the point where no shroud is needed. There will probably still need to be
one on the Booster for reentry since it comes in engines first. No. That's neither Ship nor
Booster should have a shroud. Wow. I I'd like to, I mean, so like there's a lot of bolted interfaces
that would be greats to delete 'cause every bolted interface is, well, you've got basically heavy
flanges, heavy bolts, you've got a seal and you've got very high pressure and you've
got things ranging from cryogenic liquid to like hot gas and
you've got oxygen rich hot gas. So these are things that
are very difficult to seal. So stopping a Raptor from
leaking is very hard. Like it's gonna, like every interface there has
some leak rate that is above zero and it's heavy and complex and everything. So moving to more welded
interfaces would be a big improvement. I'd love to figure
out how, if we can get rid of, throat foam cooling that would get rid
of a manifold and a bunch of interfaces as well. Is that hopeful? Like, is that
actually in the realm possibilities? It's possible. No, if you say like, if you give enough head end foam cooling, you can get rid of throat foam
cooling. The question is, does that... Yeah. Does that cause
a... Is it worth it... What's the trade off.
Do you lose so much in ISP that you're... Is it like no longer worth it
basically. Like it's the penalty, the ISP penalty for head end foam
cooling could be so great that it's dumb basically. You know, what's something I just
realized, like last week, that the, I think the RD-170 and RD-180 does is
they actually almost do like an expander cycle with a boost pump. So they actually take all the regen
channels and use that to spin a boost pump before everything, just to kind of relieve a little
bit of pressure on the head side, or on the inlet side. And I hadn't, I didn't realize that was an option
and it's pretty cool, you know, to almost in a sense combine cycle
types like that a little bit, you know? Yeah. I mean, boost pump
is useful for reducing the ullage pressure or the inlet
pressure to the engine. So, at high thrust
levels we need, you know, fairly high inlet pressure.
As you reduce the thrust, you need less inlet pressure. So sort of a boost pump or like any, anything that's gonna increase, like any kind of pump that's
gonna just increase the pressure, even if you bar going into the main pump inlets is helpful for reducing
how much ullage gas you need. So it's basically a mass
reduction of ullage gas. But you guys don't have to. Your
pump isn't that highly staged, it seems like your inducer and
everything goes... So like, you know, some pumps like the old
SSME or the RS25, you know, a hydrogen pump had like four stages to
it or something. It just kept, you know, increasing pressure, increasing pressure. It seems like your guys' is
so streamlined and simple. I mean, I don't think
of it as simple, but... Oh, it's not <laugh>. So you know, take the oxygen pump up there, you've got, it's a dedicated inducer and the inducer is basically like a real
flat propeller blade. So the liquid flow coming in is cut
at a very shallow angle. So what you're trying to avoid is
cavitation or bubble generation. If you start generating bubbles, the bubbles will, actually
eat away at your blades. Like, it's weird, like bubbles would
chip away metal, but they will. And if you cavitate too much, then you're gonna just be a bubble
generator and you'll lose pressure, starve the engine. So, but even small amounts of
cavitational bubble generation; those bubbles hitting the metal... it's weird that a bubble could
erode metal, but it does. Is that more prevalent in the oxygen
side than it is the fuel side, or is it prevalent in both? It's prevalent. It happens
in both, but... There's like basically the, you've got the inlet pressure
and the inlet temperature. So the colder your propellant is,
and the higher, the inlet pressure, the less likely you
are to have cavitation. And then depending on how your inducer blades are designed, you like, I mean, those
are very rough approximations. But if you have like a
shallow angle inducer, you're gonna generate
less of a wake than if you like in the limit, if, as you, as you increase blade angle
it's as reason just like, if you're churning your
hand through water, you're gonna create a wake. So a shallow inducive blade is less
likely to create a bubbles than, this is a very rough generalization, but it's less likely to create bubbles
or a wake than a shallow angle. So inducer will cut the
flow at a shallow angle. And so we've got an inducer that has a fairly small pressure rise
that then feeds the first impeller and the impeller is where you
really have a huge pressure rise. So we've got an inducer then, two impellers and that's
what gets us to our pressure, to our sort of 7-800 bar on the oxygen side. And we want actually make
that higher over time. But it's a really nutty pressure.
That's a very, very high pressure. So, it's kind of, it is crazy that, that you have such a pressure
rise in such a short length. Yeah, this an incredibly short length. Yeah, but, and this is an inline power head. So, I don't believe there's been any
rocket engine flown that has an inline power head, but I could be mistaken.
But I do not believe there is one. I haven't seen one either. Yeah. That's a first for me where it's, and it allows you to couple
some of the forces too, through the turbine assembly right,
and the chamber and everything. Yeah. We actually take the thrust
load goes through the pump housing. So you dual purpose the
pump housing as the, you know, as the, with it serve as pump housing and
serves to transfer thrust load. Geez. And it's a straight line situation,
so you don't have any tube, you don't have any. Like torques or anything like that. Yeah. You don't have any to... There's
no main, like, for the fuel pump, which is off to the side, you've
got a bunch of transfer tubes. But for the oxygen side,
you've got nothing. It's all internal, it's all the
internal channels and stuff? It's just going straight down. Yep. Okay. Inlets coming through the gimbal to the
inducer through two impeller stages. And then, you know, and there's, it's
feeding that the, the turbine, oxygen side turbine and
the fuel side turbine, I'm like simplifying a lot of things.
And I may have misspoken on a few, so forgive me if I've
misspoken a few things. But this is about as simple as
you, as you do it is have it, but oxygen is coming straight
through. Essentially. Something, interesting that I think it was like
the RD-701 or some obscure or 501 or something. I think it was the 501.
It ran on fluorine or pentobourine. Flourine's insane. Yeah. Nasty stuff. Don't use that. They used some of the oxidizer for
like cooling the chamber assembly and they used the fuel for cooling
the nozzle extension, basically. I've never seen that, it
seems maybe counterintuitive, or I don't know what the implications
would be of trying to use liquid oxygen as a coolant, but I found it unique that they'r daring
enough to use both to actually do your cooling. Yeah. I'm not sure what the point
of using both would be, but, yeah. Other than, have you ever heard of a dual
expander cycle where you heat up both, fuel and oxidizer? To me, the dual
expander cycles are really cool... Would be a really cool cycle type
if you were to do an aerospike, 'cause you can kind of exploit
the additional heat, you know, at the increased surface area of the
throat to be able to do, you know, heat up enough gas to
make the expander cycle, a higher thrust option because I love
that the expander cycle, you know, the expander cycle kind of
has a hard limit on, you know, how much you can heat a gas. You start having surface
volume ratio issues. Yep. But having a dual expander cycle,
especially if you have an aerospike, it seems like to me, that'd be a cool
way to exploit the two, you know, almost use the weakness of one for
a strength of the other, but noone, from what I know, noones ever built one, there was a study on one
in the 90s or something, but no one ever built a dual expander
cycle aerospike and that's still that's my dream <laugh> I just, I
don't know why I just love aerospikes. It just looks so cool. I know. I probably bring it up every time I
ever talk to any engineer. I'm like, "aerospikes!" I just can't help it. Yeah. If you have a two stage rocket, there's really no much point
in an aerospike. 'Cause
you just have a, you know, have a nozzle that's optimized for, more or less optimized for sea level and
have a nozzles that are optimized for vacuum. And you're just,
you're done, you know? Oh, you know what, what fire... So
before Firefly became Firefly Aerospace, when they were Firefly Space Systems,
they were working on an annual aerospike. The reason why I was talking with Tom
Markusic about it was because they're actually trying to be pressure
fed for their booster. So that way they could keep a really
short expansion ratio on the chambers. You know, since they don't have much
tank pressure, they don't have much, chamber pressure. They could do a really short expansion
ratio and gain the rest of it out of a aerospike. That was their purpose for doing an
aerospike on the first stage was just to overcome the limitations of a pumped
system to be able to be orbital. I thought that was pretty
cool. I don't know. I mean, you're gonna have heavy tanks
no matter what, how you cut it. So, I mean, in the entire history of SpaceX, we have only ever wanted to
increase chamber pressure. We have never wanted to decrease it. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. I'm sure there's never been
a trade where you're like, what if we decrease the chamber pressure? We've always wanted to increase chamber
pressure and we've never wanted to decrease it. We've always wanted to increase thrust
and we've never wanted to decrease it. You know, saying I have
too much thrust is like, you're too good looking at something.
I mean, it's just, I mean... Not something you're
getting complained about. <Laugh> We've put a lot of effort into getting the
chamber pressure to the 300 bar. I mean, for those that like really understand rocket engines, the thing that you'd wanna look
at is the chamber pressure plot. That's like the inside baseball thing
that really matters. And then there's like, they'll
often like quote ISP, but actually the thing you
really wanna look at is, area under the forced time curve. So like the point of the...
versus the mass flow. So you have mass flow, like for
a given amount of mass flow, what is the area under
the force time curve? Area and force time curve. The area under the
force versus time curve. So like the point of the
engine is to produce force. When you're calculating ISP, you're making a bunch of
simplifying assumptions. And, the ISP is actually not constant. So the ISP will fluctuate a little
bit depending on, mixture. Well, yeah, depending on what
ambient conditions, what the, mixture ratio is, what the,
what throttle level you're at and, but the thing that actually matters is
the area under the force versus time c urve, the thing you, you know, as opposed to an
ISP approximation, especially
for a vacuum engine, because you're not running
the engines in vacuum. So you're making a lot of assumptions
when you're calculating the ISP of a vacuum engine. But, what you can measure very
objectively is what was the, how much force did you
produce? So you have like time. Yep and then force and
what's the area under the force versus time curve. That's the... 'cause that's what the purpose
of the engine actually is. ISP is an approximation of that. We need a cool, sexy name
for that for, you know, ISP. Integrated force. Awww. What? That's not that fun. We can
just sexier name for it. <laugh> like specific impulses
is pretty catchy so... Yeah. Force be with you. How much force do you, you know,
this is, this is a force generator. Yeah. So. The forcefield plot. Yeah. Should we uhh... Yeah, so anyway, you can see basically a lot of
improvements and more to come, and a big move will be when
we can not have shrouds. Are you hoping to be able
to fire this thing off, do a static fire of Booster pretty soon? I assume all these are
gonna go on Booster 7. Yeah. These are meant for Booster 7. That's gonna be the craziest thing to
see <laugh> when you get 33 of these things roaring, I mean, that's gonna
be, that will be utterly ridiculous. Yeah. We had a slight issue
with the Booster 7 test where we collapsed part
of the LOx transfer tube. So we're gonna go in and repair
the LOx transfer tube that collapsed. So that will
probably take us a week to fix. Yeah. And something new
to the, is it new to B7? <Laugh>. Just hanging out and talking rockets. I was just mentioning the, we had
the LOx transfer tube collapse, which we gotta go in and repair
might take us a week or so. Well, great lesson learned, but we
always get into tests and learn from it. And yeah. That's why Starship is awesome. <Laugh. Rapid iteration. Yeah, so I don't know what we should do. Should we go up and... Hey, we can look to
the High Bay and stuff. Let's do that. Thanks Elon, for being so generous
with your time. And also thank you, Ryan Chylinski from Cosmic Perspective
for helping to capture this awesome conversation. And I owe a huge thank you to my Patreon
supporters for helping make content like this and everything we do here
at Everyday Astronaut possible. If you wanna help me continue to do
what I do head on over to patreon.com/ everydayastronaut. And
while you're online, be sure and check out
our awesome merch shop, where we can find shirts like this
and lots of other really cool stuff. Like our long awaited dress
wear our new tiny human shirts, or our 1:100 scale Falcon
nine model rockets. Well,
when they get back in stock, find it all at everydayastronaut.com/shop.
Thanks everybody. That's gonna do it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut bringing space
down to Earth for everyday people.
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at 40:15 you can see a starlink v2?
Any theories on how they light the main chamber?
Flame comes from the turbopumps?
I dont understand how any sane person can watch Elon discuss rocket engines and think he is somehow an intellectual fraud lol
guys is smart as fuck, period
It's funny when Elon Musk points out Tim's previous video about the theoretical ISP of methane power engine was too generous.
I went over to r/space and watch the discussions there. Usual s-show.
Has Youtube gone crazy with the ad placement or is this Tim? It has become borderline unwatchable if you have to skip regularly. It's like you're getting a 5 sec ad countdown after every single skip.
I'll watch it in full later and I'll happily watch some ads to support Tim, but this has become so incredibly annoying...
This was a ton of useful information for rocket builders. So I'm curious exactly what things are on the ITAR list that can't be shared with the public? I imagine after all these rocket companies and all these journalists and Youtubers, the list is highly specific and refined at this point.
There have been other tours with Tim where something was blurred out or there was a comment that he wasn't allowed to show something.
edit: At 10:39, for example, Musk is guarded talking about igniters. His stated preference is to hold things quiet instead of patenting them, so it's not clear if this is competitive advantage or ITAR.
I wish Tim had asked about the start sequence for the booster. Do they start with the inner ring and work outward, or start with the outer ring, go around that, and work inward?
How long is the start sequence for an individual engine? Milliseconds? Tenths? Seconds?
How long between the start sequences for neighboring engines? Milliseconds? Tenths? Seconds? Do the start sequences overlap?
Inline LOX pump was a great innovation. I can see how it saves a lot of weight, since you do not need heavy curved pipes to move the flow toward the engine, and the pump housing, which has to be heavy to handle the pressure, also handles the thrust forces between the chamber and the gimbals/engine mounts.
Were they just joking about wanting to come up with a name for the area under the force-time curve? It's called "impulse." They sounded like they were serious, but I would have expected at least one of them to be aware that there's already a name for this.