Elon Musk has yet again taken Twitter by storm by sharing a picture of the beast rocket stage that will launch the massive Starship spacecraft into orbit.
SpaceX’s Starship Super Heavy Booster supports about 29 individual rocket engines so it comes as no surprise when we say that it is one of the biggest rocket boosters of all time. Elon Musk gave his followers an inside look, literally, of the beast machine with the caption “Completing feed system for 29 Raptor rocket engines on Super Heavy Booster.”
The raptor engine is the company’s next-generation engine which runs on liquid methane and liquid oxygen. People were able to count at least 23 different employees working on the maze of pipes which is almost equivalent to the number of engines housed by this booster. Rocket enthusiast Scott Manley couldn’t contain his excitement and made sure to convey it to Musk by replying to his tweet. Musk also pointed out that the image was only showing the primary fuel lines, meaning that there is still a lot of work to be done for the secondary maze plumbing and wiring. The rocket booster is the first step towards the development of Starship, the company’s reusable transportation system that would take people and cargo to the moon, Mars and back. Both of these elements, the rocket stage and Starship would be powered by Raptor engines.
Earlier this month, SpaceX test-fired a prototype of this Super Heavy Booster, the Booster 3 at their testing facilities which ignited three Raptor engines as part of a ‘static fire’ test. “Depending on progress with Booster 4, we might try a 9 engine firing on Booster 3,” Musk said in a tweet as he’s ready to go to the next level.
