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The engines combust fuel to run their turbopumps, the exhaust will be the flames coming from the side of the rocket body. You can see it on the ascent as well.
by simonh 2y ago
The engines combust fuel to run their turbopumps, the exhaust will be the flames coming from the side of the rocket body. You can see it on the ascent as well. On Falcon 9 too.
- _Microft 2y agoRaptor is a full flow staged combustion engine [0], that means that the preburner exhaust is fed into the main combustion chamber. This is more efficient than dumping it separately like it happens on the Falcon 9 engines [1]. The black, sooty smoke on the first image of the Wikipedia article [1] is the (kerosene) fuel-rich preburner exhaust of the Merlin engine. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Raptor [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Merlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Merlin