Starship's Next-Gen Engines Will Have More Thrust, Says CEO Elon Musk

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk on Tuesday said that the rocket manufacturing company’s next-generation raptor engine for its Starship would be more advanced than the current.

What Happened: Raptor is a reusable methane-oxygen staged-combustion engine designed for the Starship. It already has twice the thrust as compared to a Falcon 9 rocket’s Merlin engine.

“I'm very excited about the next-gen Raptor engine that is robust enough not to require a heat shield,” Musk wrote on X, formerly Twitter. The new generation Raptor engine will have more thrust, amongst several other improvements, he added.

Musk had previously termed the Raptor engine the ‘most advanced engine ever made.’ SpaceX makes one raptor engine a day, Musk told Jay Leno in an interview from Sept. 2022.

Why It Matters: SpaceX’s Starship- the key to Musk’s dreams of landing people on the Moon and the Mars– is powered by a total of 39 raptor engines. The spacecraft will be powered by six engines and the super heavy booster by 33 raptor engines. Each 10-foot-tall engine provides a thrust of 230 tonne-force.

Starship lifted off for the second time on Saturday. The vehicle lifted off and made it successfully through stage separation. The booster exploded soon after, and the spacecraft eventually lost contact with SpaceX after climbing to an altitude of nearly 150 kilometers, ultimately failing to complete the test launch's final aim of a flight to and back from space with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

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