Thoughtful question. I asked my source for confirmation. Rumor of a broken church window was true, but not due to engine test per minister. Second hand hearsay for what its worth.
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So something is coming to replace Raptor as SpaceX's engine for interplanetary travel.
I still think it is more of a production and manufacturing problem over a design flaw of some sort. Elon wants thousands of these engines. If they are too complex and difficult to produce/manufacture or are too costly then they are a failure as far as Elon is concerned. Raptor 2 will address a lot of the issues but it still might be too complex for everywhere except for Earth. He mentions "interplanetary" engine. Raptor is important for getting out of our gravity well but not as necessary to tooling around the solar system and landing on other planets. Maybe go with a much simpler gas generator cycle methalox engine for that?
In less than one year SpaceX has built 200 Raptor 2 engines. That is mind boggling!
Zoinks!
That's like adding on 2.5 extra 250 ton-force RS25s if actually running all 33 at 269. Or, nearly an entire shuttle compliment of RS25s.
And it's all net force, so around 0.12 additional TWR, 20% higher acceleration vs gravity.
NSF video about the V3 and the recent record breaking test. At the end of the video is the full duration test fire; crank up the volume and with good headphones you can really hear the crackling.
The most interesting bit for me was seeing the exhaust plume comparison of V2 and V3. It really communicates how much more power V3 is generating - and serves as a reminder that the more efficient a rocket engine is, the better is works as a weapon. I wonder if the new cooled plate would work with 33 V3 engines firing at it at full power.
McGregor runs tests of different lengths. This was not planned to be full *mission* duration.
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