Short Bytes: Elon Musk wants to send us to Mars. That’s the reason his company SpaceX is working on a new rocket engine that generates an enormous amount of thrust outperforming their existing rocket engines. Musk is scheduled to deliver a talk on multiplanetary life at the IAC 2016.
Elon Musk has tweeted pictures offering a sneak peak into SpaceX’s latest Raptor Engine fire testing. With Raptor Engine, Musk and SpaceX plan to colonize our nearest neighbor in the solar system, Mars.
SpaceX propulsion just achieved first firing of the Raptor interplanetary transport engine pic.twitter.com/vRleyJvBkx
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2016
SpaceX aims to attain a specific impulse of 382 seconds resulting in a thrust of 300 meganewtons (~310 metric tons) at 300 bar. Specific Impulse is a measure of a rocket engine’s efficiency which involves observing the change in momentum of the rocket in relation to the amount of propellant burned.
Musk commented that the chamber pressure in case of the Raptor engine is 3 times higher than the Merlin Engine which powers the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles. Merlin’s specific impulse is 282 seconds (311 seconds in the vacuum).
Mach diamonds pic.twitter.com/TCX7ZGFnN0
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2016
He tweeted another photo featuring “mach diamonds” visible in the exhaust plume. Also known as shock diamonds or thrust diamonds, these are an outcome of the shock waves which created when a jet propulsion system is used in an atmosphere.
At the International Astronautical Congress (IAC 2016) in Mexico, Elon Musk will discuss the roadmap for achieving multiplanetary life. We can expect more updates and information about the Raptor project and how to get on Mars.
You can watch the live stream of the event on SpaceX’s website.
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