Elon Musk's Playful Designs For SpaceX's Starship Engines Include Surprised Pikachu And The Hulk

As SpaceX‘s Starship closes in on its second test flight, CEO Elon Musk offered interesting trivia about the raptor engines powering it.

“Many funny details on Raptor,” Musk said on X, formerly Twitter. As the special metal alloy for the rocket nozzles turn green, SpaceX painted a Hulk on the first, he said. Hulk refers to the superhero from Marvel Comics with superhuman strength.

The CEO was responding to a user who shared a short 10-second video of Musk introducing the Raptor engines at SpaceX’s Starbase. “If some fool wants to copy this design, go for it. We have funny things on it. We have Pikachu over there,” Musk says in the clip while showing an engine with the popular ‘surprised Pikachu’ meme on it. The meme was created using a screenshot from the anime Pokemon of the character Pikachu with its mouth wide open as though surprised at something.

The short clip is from the longer videos posted by space enthusiast Tim Dodd on his YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut in August 2021 of his tour of Starbase with Musk.

About Raptor: The Raptor engine has twice the thrust of Merlin engines that power SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It powers the Starship system that includes the Starship spacecraft and the super heavy booster. While the spacecraft will be powered by six engines, super heavy will be powered by 33. These methane-oxygen staged-combustion engines are also reusable.

On Tuesday, Musk said that Starship— key to his dreams of making life ‘multi-planetary’ by enabling trips to Mars— is ready to launch and is now merely awaiting FAA license approval for its second flight test.

SpaceX attempted the first flight test of Starship on April 20 and the rocket exploded in less than four minutes after takeoff. 

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