Over 18 years ago, SpaceX was founded and seen as a company that would go under due

to its unrealistic science fiction-inspired ideas. Now with over 112 successful launches and the

achievement of taking six astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), the company is

seen as an inspiration as well as a catalyst that continues to keep space exploration as a goal for

humanity. Their ability to innovate from the technology used in the now somewhat dated Space

Shuttle program is a major reason for the company's success. With their Falcon 9 rockets

performing with a high success rate of 98.13% (a total of 107 launches, 105 of which were fully

successful), placing a payload in orbit has become more routine than ever. The company's next

goal is to make life multi-planetary. These relatively small Falcon 9 rockets have nothing close to

the amount of power to take people along with the necessary resources to start a colony on

untouched Martian soil. SpaceX has already begun tests on their Starship vehicle as well as their

Super Heavy rocket. This Super Heavy rocket is designed to act like a booster rocket and

transport fueled Starships into space. Both of these rockets will be using a newly designed and

tested engine, the Raptor. The Super Heavies will have 30 of these rockets, while the Starships

will use 6. This will give the Starships enough thrust to launch into both the moon’s and mar’s

orbit with ease.

The Raptor engine is a major step up from the Merlin engines used in the Falcon 9, with

five times the reusability and over twice the thrust these rockets have expectations to perform

extremely well while not causing a dramatic increase in cost. If SpaceX has pioneered anything,

it’s the practice of cutting costs by creating reusable aeronautical technology. That being said,

the Merlin operates on a gas-generator cycle (fig. 1), meaning a gas-generator is used to turn a

turbine that is connected to the turbopump that propels fuel and liquid oxygen (Lox) into the
combustion chamber. It is important to note the

exhaust this design has, which could cause unused fuel

or Lox to be ejected from the system, resulting in a less

efficient engine.

The basic engine requires five major

components, fuel, an oxidizer, turbine(s)/turbopump(s),

pre-burner(s), and a combustion chamber. To have

ignition in the combustion chamber fuel is required as

well as oxygen, both of which must be taken from

storage tanks somewhere in the rocket. Liquid flows

from high to low pressure so early rockets relied on pressure-fed systems, this means that in

order to release the propellant at a given velocity, the container would need to be pressurized

more than the combustion chamber. Scientists quickly realized how terrible this method would

be when trying to scale. As the volume would increase in the tank, the outer material would

need to be strengthened to handle the insanely high-pressure level. However with the addition

of a turbopump the need to have the tanks at a high-pressure drop drastically. The pump is

powerful enough to allow propellant to be released while maintaining a lightweight tank. By

introducing the device, complexity and risk are far greater due to the amount of moving parts

that are involved.[2] This battle against complexity explains why there is only one preburner and

turbine on the gas-generator cycle Merlin engine. In the Merlin’s case, the preburner is a gas

generator, however, on the Raptor SpaceX has designed the engine to have two preburners that

run off of the same Lox and fuel as the main rocket. These two preburners power individual
turbopumps that drive the Lox and fuel into the system. Just like the gas-generator, these

pre-burners have exhaust. Since the exhaust is a mixture of Lox

and fuel, it can be piped into the combustion chamber to meet

the main lines of the fluids. In Tim Dodd’s article, Is SpaceX’s

Raptor engine the king of rocket engines?, he elaborates on how

the recycled exhaust allows for extremely high mixing efficiency

which directly translates into higher combustion efficiency. This

system is known as a closed, full flow, cycle (fig. 2) and it is a

major reason why this engine is so efficient. This might seem

like an obvious way to not waste fuel, but a lot of work was put

into making a system like this possible. For reference, there have

only been three full-flow engines prior to this one. These

engines become difficult when trying to maintain the desired fuel-to-oxidizer ratio. SpaceX has

solved this issue by deliberately making the fuel pump pre burner fuel-rich, while the Lox pump

preburner is oxygen-rich. This allows for the two unbalanced gasses to meet in the main

combustion chamber and reach the correct ratio. Once again this major innovation SpaceX is

responsible for was only possible due to their hard-working metallurgy team. This group of

scientists was able to create a monocrystal nickel alloy, the “SX500 superalloy”, which was

designed to specifically withstand the extreme conditions that come with the containing

12,000psi of scorching hot oxygen-rich gas.[3] Without the alloy, the engine would simply melt

and become a mousse consistency in a matter of minutes.

 It’s important to mention just how much engineering goes

into SpaceX’s projects. This engine is much more

complicated than the image shows, for one there is a whole

other dimension you have to deal with, as well as much

smaller parts including valves, measurement instruments,

heat exchangers, inlets, and injectors. All of these pieces and

more are engineered to the most extreme level. The

injectors on this engine are an excellent example of this.

These injectors are part of a larger, circular array known as an injector flange (fig. 3.) that sends

fuel and liquid oxygen into the combustion and preburner chamber. The specific type of injector

the Raptor engine uses is called a coaxial swirl injector. In Thomas Pedersen’s video, How Rocket

Engine Fuel Injectors Work: Coaxial Swirlers., he

explains how the injectors (fig. 4) use offset inlets in a

cylindrical chamber, causing the liquid oxygen to

spiral through the unit and exit through a hole at the

bottom in a cone shape. There is a similar cylinder on

the exterior of the Lox chamber which shares the

same process but with fuel, both cones of fluid then

cross paths and blend with insanely high efficiency.

Every individual component of this engine has been run through the design process over

and over to increase the system’s reusability, reliability, combustion efficiency, affordability, and

overall thrust to weight ratio. This sets the raptor engine up for great success in the future
where its older siblings would perform nowhere close to as well. As of today, this engine is one

of the most engineered pieces of technology in spaceflight and will be a major part of taking life

to Mars in the coming years.

 Citations

[1] Dodd, T. (2019, May 25). Is SpaceX’s Raptor engine the king of rocket engines? Everyday

Astronaut. https://everydayastronaut.com/raptor-engine/

[2] Ernst, R. R. L. (2014). Liquid Rocket Analysis (LiRA): development of a liquid bi-propellant

rocket engine design, analysis, and optimization tool.

[3] Musk, E. [@elonmusk] (2018, Dec 22). SpaceX metallurgy team developed SX500 superalloy

for 12000 psi, hot oxygen-rich gas. It was hard. Almost any metal turns into a flare in

those conditions. [Tweet] Twitter.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1076684059827302400

[4] Musk, E. [@elonmusk] (2019, May 27). No, Raptor uses a large number of coaxial swirl

Injectors, which (we believe) achieves highest theoretical mixing/combustion efficiency.

[Tweet] Twitter. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1132894389095653376

[5] Pedersen, T. How Rocket Engine Fuel Injectors Work: Coaxial Swirlers. (2019, April 11).

[Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qvbyl7KuNw

[6] Wang, B. (2019, February 18). SpaceX Casting Raptor Engine Parts from Supersteel Alloys.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/02/spacex-casting-raptor-engine-parts-from-supe

rsteel-alloys.html