SpaceX Tests Its Raptor Engine For Future Mars Flights (techcrunch.com)

Thelasko writes: Elon Musk is preparing to unveil his plans to colonize Mars at the 67th annual International Astronautical Congress tomorrow. As a tease to his lecture, he has released some details about the Raptor engine on Twitter, including pictures. Mr. Musk states that, "Production Raptor coal is specific impulse of 382 seconds and thrust of 3 MN (~310 metric tons) at 300 bar." He goes on to note that the specific impulse spec is at Mars ambient pressure. The Raptor interplanetary engine is designed for use with Space X's Mars Colonial Transporter craft. Musk notes that the "chamber pressure runs three times what's present in the Merlin engine currently used to power Falcon 9," according to TechCrunch. "Merlin has specific impulse of 282 seconds (311 seconds in the vacuum of space), and a relatively paltry 654 kilonewton (0.6 MN) at sea level, or 716 kN (0.7 MN) in a vacuum. You can view a picture of the "Mach diamonds" here, which are visible in the engine's exhaust.

Comments

Re:Haha no.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Even if you didn't go for Mars, this would still be a major item on the list of things you need to do in order to hurl big stuff into Earth's orbit more affordably. There are long waiting lists of customers for such capability.

Re:Human missions = funding

[Rei]

How much excitement did that ever generate? The mars rovers landed in 2004 and NASA's budget (in constant dollars) has only gone down since.

Yes, nothing since to Mars since 2004! Excepting of course MRO, Curiosity, MAVEN, InSight, and the upcoming Mars 2020 Rover. Some of those being much more expensive than the MERs.

. There's no reason for the government to throw money at Musk that they wouldn't throw at NASA

Nor is there any expectation nor plan of such. SpaceX and NASA have a no-cost arrangement, where NASA provides free consultancy, access to the DSN, and sterilization assistance, while SpaceX will provide any data they collect.

and Musk certainly can't afford to do this on his own.

The opinions of experts interviewed on the subject are almost in universal disagreement with you on this, at least concerning Red Dragon. SpaceX already shoots things up to GEO; the energy required to get to a Mars Transfer Orbit is not much more. SpaceX already decelerates capsules with an aeroshell facing an entry load similar to that needed for aerocapture at Mars. And Dragon is already designed for automated vertical powered landing. Red Dragon is not some super-ambitious mission, it is quite doable without any radical advancements.

Actual colonization, boots on the ground, is of course a much bigger challenge. This will be many years in development. But SpaceX was specifically founded for this purpose. Just like how Tesla was founded when Musk found that he couldn't pay anyone to build him a clone of the tzero, SpaceX was founded when Musk found that nobody could launch him payloads to Mars for an affordable price. Ultimately getting humans to Mars is a founding principle of SpaceX. All of its investors are aware of this. SpaceX will continue to work towards this so long as they are an operating entity. And unlike NASA, they're not burdened with massive mandated costs and constantly changing mandated missions, both of which have utterly crippled it over the past decades.