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NASA

SpaceX Is Now Building a Raptor Engine a Day, NASA Says (arstechnica.com) 140

Posted by BeauHD from the progress-update dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A senior NASA official said this week that SpaceX has done "very well" in working toward the development of a vehicle to land humans on the surface of the Moon, taking steps to address two of the space agency's biggest concerns. NASA selected SpaceX and Starship for its Human Landing System in April 2021. In some ways, this was the riskiest choice of NASA's options because Starship is a very large and technically advanced vehicle. However, because of the company's self-investment of billions of dollars into the project, SpaceX submitted the lowest bid, and from its previous work with SpaceX, NASA had confidence that the company would ultimately deliver.

Two of NASA's biggest technological development concerns were the new Raptor rocket engine and the transfer and storage of liquid oxygen and methane propellant in orbit, said Mark Kirasich, NASA's deputy associate administrator who oversees the development of Artemis missions to the Moon. During a subcommittee meeting of NASA's Advisory Council on Monday, however, Kirasich said SpaceX has made substantial progress in both areas. The Raptor rocket engine is crucial to Starship's success. Thirty-three of these Raptor 2 engines power the Super Heavy booster that serves as the vehicle's first stage, and six more are used by the Starship upper stage. For a successful lunar mission, these engines will need to re-light successfully on the surface of the Moon to carry astronauts back to orbit inside Starship. If the engines fail, the astronauts will probably die.

"SpaceX has moved very quickly on development," Kirasich said about Raptor. "We've seen them manufacture what was called Raptor 1.0. They have since upgraded to Raptor 2.0 that first of all increases performance and thrust and secondly reduces the amount of parts, reducing the amount of time to manufacture and test. They build these things very fast. Their goal was seven engines a week, and they hit that about a quarter ago. So they are now building seven engines a week."
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SpaceX Is Now Building a Raptor Engine a Day, NASA Says More

SpaceX Is Now Building a Raptor Engine a Day, NASA Says

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  • They're doing it all wrong (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Optimizer ( 14168 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @10:33PM (#63020917)

    They're supposed to take their time and milk that sweet, sweet cost-plus contract for a decade...

    • The difference between doing it for the money, and accepting the money to do what you want to do anyway.

      • Re: They're doing it all wrong (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ArmoredDragon ( 3450605 ) on Thursday November 03, 2022 @12:06AM (#63021021)

        Exactly. SpaceX has just one mission: Put people on Mars. Everything done, even if seemingly unrelated, is for the advancement of that mission.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by quenda ( 644621 )

          Exactly. SpaceX has just one mission: Put people on Mars.

          The investors might not agree.

          • If they don't agree, then it's weird that they voted with their money for this.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by eth1 ( 94901 )

            The investors might not agree.

            That's exactly why SpaceX hasn't, and probably will never go public.

            • It is obvious that current investors do agree. After all, they are spending billions on it.
              But, why would you think others would not invest into this? In order to get to mars and build a base there, they will need the ability to make money on other systems. After all, mars will be money losing for at least 10 years. As such, they will build a lunar base and will count on starlink, followed by the lunar base, to bring them lots of profits until mars is profitable.
              and yes, both will be extremely profitabl

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by torkus ( 1133985 )

                It is obvious that current investors do agree. After all, they are spending billions on it.

                But, why would you think others would not invest into this? In order to get to mars and build a base there, they will need the ability to make money on other systems. After all, mars will be money losing for at least 10 years. As such, they will build a lunar base and will count on starlink, followed by the lunar base, to bring them lots of profits until mars is profitable.

                and yes, both will be extremely profitable.

                Not only this, but a savvy investor knows 1) musk is mostly insane, but in the endless drive and vision kind of way 2) he generally does succeed, often incredibly and in (positive) disruptive ways 3) because of this he's done the impossible and built a functional and profitable rocket launch company already. Taking all that into account, it's very likely musk will succeed with SS/SH. Forget the moon and forget mars and even forget NASA contracts or sat launch for a moment. He will be the primary gateway

          • Thatâ(TM)s why SpaceX isnâ(TM)t a public company - so that they can make sure investors are onboard with it.

        • If the engines fail, the astronauts will probably die.

          I'd be interested to know under what conditions the astronauts won't die if the engines fail to relight for the lunar landing. The Enterprise appearing at the last minute to beam them to safety?

          • Raptors won't be used for lunar landings. Landing is done with special engines near the top of the vehicle in order to prevent large amounts of dust to be blown up. Also a single Raptor probably is too powerful to allow a landing in lunar gravity.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by suutar ( 1860506 )

            The relight mentioned in TFS is for takeoff from the moon; if it doesn't light, they just don't go anywhere, and they have the opportunity to try to fix things.

    • They're supposed to not do it at all, and just steal the money while having their people loosen and re-tighten the same bolt for 20 years. Like good old Boeing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      You're thinking too small.
      First, we get man in space, then we do space colonies, and then, in those space colonies, you do contractor job for everything, and milk the hell out of it.
      And when the space colony inevitably create space giant robot battles between space nazis and a federation that use the brazil flag for some reason, you sell giant robots to both sides, charging extra to paint em red.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by torkus ( 1133985 )

        At what point to sharks with "lasers" take to space in your plot?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Z80a ( 971949 )

          Somewhere between the windmill shaped gundam and the neo mexico space colony that looks like a sombrero

  • That... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Sitnalta ( 1051230 )

    ...is honestly really impressive. Building a complicated, precision machine like a rocket engine once a day is incredible. Especially since they plane on re-using them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Immerman ( 2627577 )

      Yeah. An engine a day roughly translates to roughly 11 boosters a year, or 60 Starships. And IIRC they are hoping to *start* at dozens of reuses, with the goal being 100s, hopefully thousands of flights per vehicle?

      Gotta hand it to Musk - he dreams big.

      Now we just need to have people figure out how to make money in space so that there's demand for more than a handful of them. In practice, rather than just in theory.

      • Two points. They are not fetting reuse on the first few flights. They will try, but it will take time
        Secondly once starship is flying the F9 is retired. Starlink switches to starship

        • True, but the first few flights are prototypes, not production vehicles. There's a fair chance they won't even carry real payloads. Saying they won't be reused is rather like saying SLS won't fly at all until they're confident it won't have problems. Just the nature of their respective development processes.

          Musk has repeatedly stated that Starship should be heavily reusable as soon as they manage to land them. Unlike Falcon 9 where reusability was the long term goal, Starship and booster were designed f

  • An engine a day .. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nbvb ( 32836 ) on Wednesday November 02, 2022 @10:42PM (#63020927) Journal

    That's pretty incredible. An engine a day is a pretty insane production rate for a human-rated engine.

    Considering NASA ordered 18 additional RS-25 engines - TOTAL - for the Artemis program ... at a cost of $100 million per engine.

    SpaceX is cranking out Raptors for less than $1m/each, with a target of around $250k each.

    $250k vs $100m.

    And one a DAY -- versus a grand total of 18 engines over, what, most of a decade?

    I ... don't understand how NASA can justify anything else.

    • No way are they starting and finishing the same engine in one day of 24 hours.
      I'd bet money they are starting and finishing on different days, but finishing 1 motor each day.
      How many do they have in production at one time? And what is timeline from start to end for a single motor?

      • Well, of course. NASA actually said (per the summary) 7/week. However, a "gate rate" is a valid production metric and while manufacturing time is another valid metric it is not relevant to launch cadence of spaceships.

        • But what if somebody with Prime account orders one and it has to be delivered within 2 days or else?

      • I think most people understand that's the *finish* rate, not the *start to finish* rate. That's fundamentally how assembly lines work, after all.

      • I'd be interested to know how many engines they're building at one time as well. They presumably work a fashion closer to an automobile or aircraft assembly line rather than traditional space manufacturing. That said, some googling gives me cites of when they were at 1 every other week, then 2 a week, now they're up to 7/week. But an actual "start to finish" time for a single engine? I'm not seeing that.

        When you only make 1 of something, you use very different techniques than if you're making a dozen, a

    • Just to make sure we're comparing like to like.

      The RS-25 is the same engine as used on the Space Shuttle. It's on the order of 2 MN of thrust.
      The SpaceX Raptor is also on the order of 2 MN of thrust .

      So yeah, that's so many orders of magnitude price difference it's, well, kind of silly.

      Somebody mentioned needing to find something that delivers a profit in space in order to justify the launch capability SpaceX is building. I'd argue that dropping launch costs by like 3 orders of magnitude is easily somethi

      • Somebody mentioned needing to find something that delivers a profit in space in order to justify the launch capability SpaceX is building.

        Imagine what a pain in the neck North Korea or Iran will be if you can make an ICBM for $1M. Even a poor nation could make them rain down by the dozens on the other side of the planet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's because SpaceX still has not demonstrated that the Raptor engines can work in the super heavy configuration, where the booster needs 33 of them. The Russians tried something similar with their moon programme back in the 60s, but every attempt ended in failure, sometimes catastrophically.

      Last I checked SpaceX has put their Super Heavy booster on the pad but not yet launched it.

      When NASA was putting out contracts for Artemis, big engines were the only proven technology. Still are. It would have been unwi

      • Falcon Heavy has 27 merlin engines, so presumably modern control systems are able to manage the 30 odd required for starship launch. Nothing I've seen has suggested the Raptor engines are anything other than spectacular either.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's not so much the management that is the problem, at least in the Russian's case. It's that one engine fails and takes out the entire rocket.

          So far on every test flight that SpaceX has attempted, even the successful one, at least one engine has failed and caused a fire.

    • Don't put all your eggs in one basket. It would be nice if the other mfrs were more efficient, but all it takes is one fatal flaw in your sole source supplier and you are up shit's creek without a paddle.

  • I want Musk to succeed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Thursday November 03, 2022 @02:41AM (#63021163)
    But I also want him to STFU with the conspiracy shit he's helping to spread.

    Get him a personal Fact Checker, FFS!

  • Elon told Jay Leno last month.

  • Redundancy is an understatement. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dereck1701 ( 1922824 ) on Thursday November 03, 2022 @05:10AM (#63021287)

    "If the engines fail, the astronauts will probably die."

    Why? This isn't the LM, a stripped down mylar foil can. Starship is the size of a small building with insane amounts of redundancy. There are two scenarios of note, an in flight failure and a failure to function on the surface. For the first scenario there are 6 main and dozens of smaller engines on the craft, if one fails there are plenty of others to pick up the slack. And regarding collateral effects if an engine "explodes", SpaceX has already had this happen on at least one Falcon 9 flight with little effect. There is no reason to think that they won't use the same heat/debris blankets/bulkheads on the final versions of starship/booster as they use on Falcon 9 to keep such failures in check. Regarding a failure to function on the surface, even if the failure is unrepairable, they have ample margins to stock months worth of supplies to wait for a rescue mission. The only limiting factor I see would be power during lunar night which could be easily solved by one of the kilowatt nuclear generators they're designing for Mars anyways or simply adding on a generator (fuel cell or even piston driven) that would convert the methane/oxygen in the fuel tanks into power/heat.

  • Gov't contractors are taking 6 months to a year to build one ignitor.

  • "In some ways, this was the riskiest choice of NASA's options because Starship is a very large and technically advanced vehicle. "

    Pardon me, but what the fuck does that statement mean?

    It shouldn't be large? Saturn V wasn't large? It shouldn't be advanced? We should be relying on 1960s tech instead?

    I know NASA has become almost cripplingly paralyzed and sclerotic when it comes to manned space missions but the author of the article shows a sort of weird endorsement.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by myrdos2 ( 989497 )

      It just means that it's harder to make than a small, simple vehicle.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pavon ( 30274 )

      They are saying that it was overkill for the specific mission requirements that were put out for bid. Other proposals were less risky from a technical point of view while still accomplishing the job. That is a non-controversial assessment of the proposals, and something that needs to be taken into consideration when awarding a contract. But it isn't the only thing that needs to be considered, and NASA decided that SpaceX's superior track record of meeting technical challenges balanced that risk.

  • The actual SpaceX engineers designing these engines get no credit. No mentions. Zero.

    SpaceX is a collection of some really smart people and their identities are suppressed to an almost comic degree. All credit is attributed to the company or to Musk. Never to the individuals actually doing all this cool shit.

    That's the biggest problem here, and that's what Musk needs to be held accountable for. His ego won't let anyone else take any credit.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Erioll ( 229536 )

      Let Me Google That For You [letmegooglethat.com] - Oh look! A couple of really great answers! Tom Mueller and Max Vozoff both come up!

      Is Elon the focus? Sure, he's the man in charge. Same as how Gates was the focus for everything Microsoft, or Jobs was at Apple. But like in those cases, it's not difficult for an enthusiast to find the other contributors.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pavon ( 30274 )

      There wasn't a single sentence in that article mentioning Musk, let alone giving him credit for this. It was all attributed to SpaceX in general, as it should be.

      Building a Raptor a day isn't an individual effort. Back when SpaceX was a small startup building Falcon 1 it was not hard to find articles crediting individual engineers for the work they did, like Tom Mueller, who designed the Merlin engine used on Falcon 1, and lead all the improvements made to for the Falcon 9. But when people try to give him c

    • It's not Elon that attributes him. It is his co-workers. According to Steve jurveston, and Tom mueller, Elon was fundamental to falcon 1 and 9, and jumped in on FH. Likewise, he watches over Starship and makes sure that it does not jump the track. For example, it was supposedly his idea to switch to steel, not carbon. But realistically, starship is more shotwells, than musk.

  • "If the engines fail, the astronauts will probably die." Way to kill off enthusiasm for the project. What the hell is it with people these days? It's like most people are experiencing either a low-grade depression or they just can't handle other people's success so they have to tear them down.

  • The US government was stupid to circumvent their own space agency, and safeguards.
  • ... fully support Musk and his followers leaving for mars ASAP.

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