At the end of 2018, during the next correspondence on Twitter, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has mentioned the Russian rocket engine RD-180. He found him “brilliant” and hinted that companies, such as Boeing and Lockheed should be ashamed of its use in the Atlas rocket. He promised that his engine Raptor ahead of Russian development, and he kept his word, it became known that the rocket engine for the space ship Starship ahead of the RD-180 on the pressure level in the combustion chamber.
New achievement for Elon Musk shared on Twitter on February 11. Until now, the record belonged to the Russian RD-180 engine — according to the scientific-production Association “Energomash”, the pressure inside its combustion chamber is of 266.7 bar. Indicator Raptor is not much more, but the record is clearly broken — the value of pressure reached 268,9 bar.
Today Raptor reached 268,9 bar and broke the previous record, set gorgeous Russian RD-180. Great work of a team of engineers, testers SpaceX!
Elon Musk, head of Space X and Tesla
Recall that in early February, the Raptor engine successfully passed the test firing. The test layout has only three engines, but the final version will be included up to 7 engines. They are used in space ship Starship, which will first fly to the moon, and then take a course to Mars.
The Russian RD-180 was created in the mid 1990-ies. It is widely used in the early stages of American rockets Atlas owned by the firm Lockheed Martin.
When do you think the level of pressure in the combustion chambers of rocket engines will be over “impossible” 300 bar? Their suggestions write in the comments or in our Telegram chat!