Elon Musk just revealed next-gen Raptor engine “More thrust, No heat shield...”

the SpaceX Raptor engine is the Undisputed champion of Rocket engines even though both stages of the Starship vehicle exploded after separating SpaceX still celebrated the test flight as a milestone all 33 Raptor engines on the super heavy boosters started up successfully and for the first time completed a full duration burn during Ascent SpaceX said in a reason Mission update the Raptor engine is a Marvel of engineering using methane as fuel and a full flow staged combustion cycle that is extremely difficult to master no other engine like this has ever flown before but that's not enough for Elon Musk the Visionary CEO of SpaceX he just unveiled the next gen Raptor engine more power more efficiency but no heat shield what does this mean for the future of Starship and SpaceX find out in today's episode of great SpaceX Elon musk's tweet about the SpaceX rptor engine reveals how far the company has come in developing the most advanced engine ever made he wrote could make them faster but engine production is not the limiting factor I'm very excited about the next gen Raptor engine that is robust enough not to require a heat shield we'll also have more thrust higher ISP and many other improvements this is astonishing it implies that SpaceX can produce more than one Raptor engine per day a remarkable achievement considering that two years ago musk was frustrated with the slow progress of the Raptor development he sent a companywide email the day after Thanksgiving warning of a serious crisis mind you this was last year the Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago musk wrote We face genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year musk added later but SpaceX has managed to overcome the challenge and deliver not only on quality but also on quantity the performance of the Raptor was evident on the flight last weekend the next Raptor challenge will be more powerful and simple as musk said the company wants to stop using heat shields for their next gen Raptor first off if you're wondering about the Raptor heat shield when SpaceX installs the engines they have to put sheet metal cladding around the power unit to keep things from getting too hot leaving only the nozzles of the engine Expos osed basically it's protecting more delicate things like wiring Plumbing Etc from the heat of the exhaust coming out of the engines superhe engines shielding is quite an impressive system and musk has been talking a lot about this with booster 9 the covers are unsurprisingly made of stainless steel and many areas beneath the vehicle are covered in Black material which could be related to the extra heating in that area these 13 circular pieces surrounding the centor engine mounts get added to the a section C in the tents before stacking SpaceX is always working towards reducing the number of tasks to be completed after final stacking moving to the outer ring of 20 engines these panels that go between each engine get installed they have a dividing wall mounted perpendicular to the interior face protecting each engine from the engine next to it in case of a high energy event most of it is installed after the engines are already installed and removed before engines are taken out so you'll almost never see a free standing Engine with shields and never one with complete Shields now the big advantage of removing the shields will be surfice ability besides that this will also lose a huge amount of weight on the rocket if they can get rid of all this extra sheet metal they're not only saving weight but also time not having to remove and replace it every time they need to work on an engine we can see this Improvement in the Raptor 3 version in May musk announced Raptor V3 just achieved 350 bar chamber pressure or 269 tons of thrust Starship super heavy booster has 33 Raptors so total thrust of 8,877 tons or 19.5 million pounds thereabouts musk also declared that if we can delete and integrate enough secondary structure or small fiddly bits then we can locally protect the rest and delete engine heat shields he wrote deleting some components would decrease the engine's Mass that make the engine more Compact and faster to manufacture at scale compared to the previous versions in short the SpaceX team's efforts are amazing they are constantly learning upgrading and breaking records aside from SpaceX other efforts are also receiving attention remember this ship that's trying to break its curse it's the Boeing Starliner NASA says the first crout launch of Boeing's CST 100 Starliner vehicle remains on schedule for the middle of April as as the company completes work to resolve the latest technical problems with the vehicle speaking at a November 20th meeting of the NASA advisory council's human exploration and operations committee Phil mallister director of the agency's commercial space division said preparations for crew flight test mission were on schedule for a launch as soon as April 14th we are on track for that launch he said we've still got a lot of things to do obviously he said NASA and Boeing had closed out all the work on all the issues from orbital flight test or of2 the second uncrewed test flight of the spacecraft in May of 2022 they've also completed 98% of the assert products or certification paperwork needed for CFT the mission which will fly NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Sunni Williams to the International Space Station for a stay of at least stay of at least 8 Days had been scheduled to take place this year after the completion of of2 however NASA and Boeing said in August they were were delaying the mission to no earlier than March of 2024 to resolve two problems found during preparations for CFT which involve removing tape and wire harnesses in the capsule that is flammable and redesigning soft Links at the spacecraft parachutes to increase their safety margin mallister also said that he believed that the tape remediation work was complete Bowen confirmed that the company had removed more than 1300 M of the tape from the Starliner capsule the company also wrapped the flammable tape tape in some areas with a nonflammable tape or covered it with a nonflammable multi-layer fabric sleeve we went Zone by Zone and identified all the tape and what would be the risk to removing the tape Dave mccan Boeing's chief engineer for the Starliner program said in a statement the Boeing and NASA teams work together to balance those risks and create the safest vehicle possible as for the parachutes McAllister said that one drop test is scheduled for January to test the performance of the redesigned soft link that will be a really important test to get behind us he said if that goes smoothly we are definitely on track for an April 14th launch the key was getting CFT successfully flown so that it can begin long duration ISS crew rotation missions alternating with spacex's crew Dragon we will be very very pleased to get that off and get Starliner into the fleet flying regular missions to the ISS finally Chinese launch startup landspace another company trying to catch up the SpaceX has also unveiled plans to develop a reusable stainless steel rocket the zuu 3 or Vermilion Bird 3 will use will use stainless steel propellant tanks and clusters of tanu methane liquid oxygen propellant rocket engines according to a presentation by landspace CEO xang Chang Wu at the mingu lake Aerospace information industry International ecosystem event in Chongqing China November 21st the two-stage launcher will have a payload capacity of 20 metric tons to low earth orbit when Expendable recovery of the first stage down range will allow 16 1 12 tons to Leo while a landing back at the launch site will offer a capacity of 11 tons to Leo a render of the rocket shows git fins and Deployable Landing legs on the first stage the announcement came just days after SpaceX performed its second Starship super heavy launch test details such as a tentative test launch date and the dimensions of the rocket were not stated suggesting the plan is at a very early stage developing the rocket will pose numerous challenges related to the weight and properties of steel including manufacturing and fabricating complexities the launcher once operational will also face competition domestically fellow startup space Pioneer is planning to launch its Tong long 3 rocket next year that rocket will be capable of lifting 17 tons to Leo or 14 tons to a 500 km Sun synchronous orbit landspace is one of China's first commercial launch companies it was established in 2015 after the Chinese government opened up parts of the space sector to private capital in late 2014 the development is seen to be a reaction to developments in the US landspace is currently preparing to launch its third ju 2 methane liquid oxygen rocket on December 4th Easter its first ju Choy 2 launch failed in December of 2022 before a second attempt successfully reached orbit in July that launch made the firm the first to reach orbit with a methalox launcher it is also the second Chinese commercial firm to reach orbit with a liquid propellant launcher this followed space Pioneers kolck Tong long 2 in April landspace is not the only Chinese launch firm interested in stainless steel Rockets another much newer Chinese startup space Epoch performed hot fire tests earlier this year as part of development of a planned reusable stainless steel launcher China's main space contractor the state owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation or CC has also stated its plans for the super heavy lift Long March 9 which will'll eventually see it become fully reusable and that's about all folks thank you so much for tuning in and if you want to support our Channel even further you can hop on over to our patreon through the link in the description below sign up today and become a patron to gain access to exclusive content sounds exciting right in any case we still appreciate your generosity and your passion for space exploration as always this is Kevin from great SpaceX and until next time keep looking up