Earlier today, SpaceX set a new record again. The company has since become the first company in the world to use 14 rocket engines at the same time, and the previous highest of Super Heavy was only Seven engines used.
The company is developing its Starship/Starship next-generation rocket in Boca Chica, Texas, aimed at missions to Mars.
The company conducted a “static ignition” test of the Booster 7 at its Starbase in southern Texas. According to Musk, the Booster 7 test used 14 Raptor engines. The ignition test lasted about 10 seconds, and the scene was spectacular.
Today’s static fire test may represent a big step closer to Starship launch, but there’s still a lot of work to be done to prove that Booster 7 is ready to use up to 33 Raptor engines.
So far, SpaceX has conducted several test flights for the Starship prototype, but none of them have flown to an altitude of more than 6 miles (10 kilometers).
In addition, SpaceX has signed several large customers for Starship, including NASA. NASA selected the spacecraft as the first crewed lander for its Artemis lunar exploration program. If all goes according to plan, astronauts will set foot on the lunar surface again in 2025 or 2026 aboard their starship.
According to reports, if Starship uses 33 Raptor 2 engines to generate up to 16 million pounds of thrust, and 14 engines can generate thrust equivalent to 37 Merlin engines (190,000 pounds each), if each engine can bring 510,000 pounds (230 tons) of thrust, the thrust during this test reached 7.1 million pounds (3220 tons).
For comparison, NASA’s Saturn 5, which put humans on the moon more than 50 years ago, produced 7.6 million pounds of thrust at launch.
This means that the Starship with 14 engines is the fourth most powerful “rocket” in history, stronger than the space shuttles that NASA often used before, but compared to the retired old guys such as the Soviet Energia, N1 and the American Saturn V Still a bit short.
