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Those Raptor 3 engines are a thing of beautiful simplicity compared to their forebears...
by beambot 5mo ago
Those Raptor 3 engines are a thing of beautiful simplicity compared to their forebears...
- eagerpace 5mo agoAnd to think, it wasn’t that long ago competitors we still using old Russian engines for their domestic rockets. Brilliant work to get back to leadership in this domain.
- kobieps 5mo agoThe outcome is guaranteed to be entertaining
- inglor_cz 5mo agoThe engines for New Glenn ain't bad either. Competition does improve products.
- laughing_man 5mo agoNew Glenn's engines are quite a bit less efficient than those at SpaceX. Lower chamber pressures, lower thrust:weight ratio, and they're partial flow staged combustion. I assume BO will increase their performance over time, but for now they company is about a decade behind SpaceX.
- damnitbuilds 5mo agoSpacex's work is out there ( and I am grateful for the excitement that generates ) but BO work in the shadows, surprising us sometimes with major advances. I suspect BO not as far behind as you think.
- hagbard_c 5mo agoThey'll remain behind as long as they keep copying SpaceX's concepts since they need to wait and see before they can copy.
- damnitbuilds 5mo agoI am glad there is competition and BO clearly do enough novel work that calling them copycats is simply incorrect.
- laughing_man 5mo agoThat would surprise me, given how much trouble they had supplying engines for Vulcan.
- hgoel 5mo agoThat doesn't make the BE-4 not impressive. It isn't a full flow staged combustion engine like Raptor, but it's still a highly efficient, high thrust, relightable and deeply throttleable rocket engine. These things don't often come in the same package when it comes to rocket engines.
- philipallstar 5mo agoI agree, but I think SpaceX is doing it for goals rather than competition.
- eagerpace 5mo agoThey’re amazing too. That’s my point. The legacy launch providers were doing zero innovation, limping along shuttle era designs and literally buying the most critical parts from our biggest competitor. The people who hate Elon have no concept how revolutionary the Merlin engine was given this context. It doesn’t matter if SpaceX is successful or not, they revived the entire US space industry. That’s what matters.
- rayiner 5mo agoRaptor is a thing of beauty: https://sxcontent9668.azureedge.us/cms-assets/assets/Raptor_V3_Mc_G_20240802_1w3a8289_daa3a51ef3.jpg https://sxcontent9668.azureedge.us/cms-assets/assets/Raptor_.... Look how polished it is. It looks like a fucking Apple product. The Russians were really good at aerospace. It's a testament to their engineering that it took this long to advance past where they were in the 1970s. I love this video describing the development from the Russian RD270 all the way to Raptor: https://x.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1204179086823825408 https://x.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1204179086823825408.
- IAmBroom 5mo agoIs that why they never made it to the moon, and did their best to hide fatal failures? They beat the US exactly twice, on two very early records - first manmade object and first human in space. Then they fell behind.
- rayiner 5mo agoThe Russians beat us to all but the last milestone: first object in space, first human in space, first probe to land on the moon, and first probe to photograph the far side of the moon. The Russians would have beat us to the moon landing if the head of their space program hadn’t died on the home stretch of the space race.
- bigyabai 5mo agoThat's a non-sequitur, the parent comment simply said they were really good at aerospace.
- robotresearcher 5mo agoDepends on what you care about. For years they were the only vehicle taking humans to and from orbit. Space Shuttle killed more people than Soyuz in fewer launches.
- Taniwha 5mo agoI'm not sure they're all that simpler, the basic plumbing probably hasn't changed much, it's just that modern fabrication tech means you can hide all the complexity inside
- damnitbuilds 5mo agoA single metal piece that contains plumbing inside it is simpler than a metal piece with attached pipes for that plumbing.
- jeltz 5mo agoIn this particular case maybe but in general I would say it is the other way round.
- api 5mo agoSimple is harder than complex.