Since the passing of Steve Jobs in 2011, Musk has emerged as the leading virtuoso of technological
innovation. His brilliance, his vision, and the breadth of his ambition make him the one-man
embodiment of the future. Fond Fortune magazine in 2014. Tesla, Musk's electric vehicles company,
delivered a record 343,830 vehicles during the third quarter of 2022, which is one brand new car
every 30 seconds. And that speed is just unbelievable. But not only that, Musk's work in
space could revolutionize how we get online. His own space firm, SpaceX, launched more satellites
than anyone with a total of over 3,500 satellites into orbit, providing fast, affordable internet
for those without access. SpaceX is even planning to build a freeway to Mars, the most Earth-like
planet in the solar system, by a fleet of Starships. The ambitious goal pushes SpaceX
teams to accelerate the production of not only its Mars-bound rockets, but also its new-gen
rocket engine, Raptor. The company announced this month that it also recently finished building
Starship's 200th upgraded Raptor engine, highlighting a new record in SpaceX's string
of engine production speed feats. The development process of SpaceX's Raptor engine itself is
inherently regarded as an engineering miracle within the industry. Its speed and frequent
iterations are beyond the reach of competitors. Before SpaceX shipped its first Raptor 2 prototype,
SpaceX manufactured 100 Raptor 1 engines between the start of full-scale testing in February of
2018 and July 2021. By late 2021 or early 2022, when Raptor 2 took over, the total number of
Raptor 1 engines produced likely reached somewhere between 125 to 150, which is impressive but pales
in comparison to SpaceX's Raptor 2 ambitions. From the start, Raptor 2's purpose was to make
future Raptors easier, faster, and cheaper to manufacture. The ultimate goal is to eventually
reduce the cost of Raptor 2 production to $1,000 per ton of thrust, or $230,000 at Raptor 2's
current target of 230 tons of thrust. As of mid-2019, Musk reported that each early Raptor
1 prototype cost more than $2 million for what would turn out to be 185 tons of thrust. It's not
clear if that ever appreciably changed. But in response, SpaceX strove to make Raptor 2 simpler
wherever possible, removing a large part of the maze of primary, secondary, and tertiary plumbing.
In 2022, CEO Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX had even removed a complex torch igniter system for
Raptor 2's main combustion chamber. All that simplification made Raptor 2 much easier to
build in theory, and SpaceX's production figures have more than confirmed that theory. Despite
those simplifications, SpaceX was also able to boost Raptor 2's thrust by 25% by sacrificing
just 1% of Raptor 1's efficiency. Beginning with its first delivery in February of 2018, SpaceX
produced the first 100 Raptor 1 engines in about 36 months. In the first 11 to 12 months of Raptor
2 production, SpaceX has delivered 200 engines. That translates to at least 6 times the average
throughput. But the true figure is even higher. In June of 2019, Musk stated that SpaceX was aiming
to build a Raptor engine every 12 hours by the end of the year. As is usually the case, that
progress took far longer to realize. But in October of 2022, a senior NASA Artemis program official
revealed that SpaceX recently achieved sustained production of one Raptor 2 engine per day for a
full week. Such a high rate likely makes Raptor 1 of the fastest produced orbital class rocket
engines in history. However, things didn't just stop there. Elon Musk and SpaceX will continue to
improve this already invincible production speed in 2023. Why not quit while they're ahead? Well,
it's simply because SpaceX's next generation Starship rocket needs a huge amount of engines.
The Starship upper stage currently requires 3 sea level optimized Raptors and 3 vacuum optimized
Raptors, and SpaceX has plans to increase that to 9 engines total. Meanwhile, Starship's super
heavy booster is powered by 33 sea level Raptors. Orbital class versions of Starship and Super Heavy
have never flown before, let alone demonstrated successful recovery or reuse, so SpaceX has to
operate under the assumption that every orbital test flight will consume 39 Raptors. Even after
the reuse of Super Heavy boosters or Starships becomes viable, taking significant strain off of
Raptor demand, SpaceX wants to manufacture a fleet of hundreds or even thousands of Starships and
a similarly massive number of boosters. To outfit that massive fleet, SpaceX would have to
mass produce orbital class Raptor engines at a scale that's never been attempted. That will likely
be years if not a decade longer before SpaceX is in a position to even attempt to create that
gigafleet. If the Raptor 2 engines SpaceX is already building are modestly reliable and
reusable and doesn't take more than 5-10 orbital test flights to begin reusing Starships and Super
Heavy boosters, a production rate of 1 engine per day is arguably good enough to support the next
few years of realistic engine demand. But it's clear that Musk's ambitions won't simply let
them tread the waters. SpaceX plan to build the most advanced rocket engine factory in the world
in Central Texas to support the growing needs of Starship and Super Heavy back in July of 2021.
As Musk said, a new cutting-edge SpaceX factory located at the company's expansive McGregor,
Texas rocket development and testing facilities factory will ultimately mass produce between 800
to 1,000 Raptor 2 engines per year. By volume production, I mean 2-4 engines per day.
Which I've gotta say is pretty impressive, don't you think? According to Musk, that's about what's
needed over 10 years to create a fleet to build a self-sustaining city on Mars. The city itself
probably takes roughly 20 years, so hopefully it will be built by around 2050. However, SpaceX's
CEO also noted that it's super high volume for big rocket engines, but low volume by automotive
standards. For example, Elon Musk's electric car company Tesla had the capacity to make around
2,000 cars a day in May. But by the end of 2022, only Tesla Giga Shanghai is expected to be at an
annualized production rate of 5,000 cars per day. Which is too crazy. Regardless, if all goes
according to plan, that facility could also become the highest output rocket factory ever built,
churning out hundreds of Raptor engines each year to outfit a vast interplanetary fleet of starships
and the Earth-bound Super Heavy boosters that will send them on their way to Earth orbit,
the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Thank you so much for watching, and if you enjoy what my team and I are
doing, you can become a patron through our Patreon link in the description below. Otherwise, as always,
this is Kevin with GreatSpaceX, and my team and I will see you next time.
