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How? Isn't the Raptor already in testing? How is the BE-4 ahead of it?


Blue Origin has more press releases about BE-4 than SpaceX has about Raptor. /sarc

EDIT: In all seriousness, Blue Origin has had a reputation for secrecy, but in the last year or two, they've shed that partly because they're now a major contractor for ULA in a competition to provide the main engines for their new rocket (Vulcan). They are facing a politically-well-connected opponent (Aerojet-Rocketdyne). If they keep silent, they could very well lose out. I think that explains why Blue Origin has been very vocal even though it hasn't even been test-fired, yet. (I think Blue Origin's engine is way better than AJR's, BTW.)

SpaceX, on the other hand, had a reputation for loudly proclaiming any progress. Early on they would roll out half-finished prototypes as evidence of progress even though they still had a lot of work to do. Yet in the last few years, they've started being more secretive. Other than a few miniscule mentions in NASA PR releases from Stennis mentioning a little bit about the component testing, they've only publicly released evidence of all the work they've been doing after they did a test firing in Texas with Musk's big Interplanetary Transport System unveiling. SpaceX doesn't have as much reason to be show-boating progress, partly because they HAVE been making a lot of progress.

So since their secrecy is relatively recent, people assume that just because SpaceX hasn't loudly proclaimed something, that therefore they haven't made any progress, while Blue Origin is the opposite. But if you look at who has test-fired and who hasn't, then SpaceX is ahead for Raptor vs BE-4. If you look at actual orbital-scale reuse, SpaceX is far ahead. If you look at level of technology in the engine and things like Isp, density, and thrust to weight ratio, then Raptor is much higher than BE-4. If you look at thrust to weight ratio period, then Merlin 1D is ahead of everything in existence, with a thrust to mass ratio of somewhere between 150 to 200, depending on which version and thrust level. The nearest competitor is NK-33 with T/W of 137.


The Raptor that was test fired was a scaled version.


That's the poorly-sourced hearsay. It was lower thrust, but that doesn't mean it was physically smaller. Most likely, it was operated at a lower chamber pressure, since the most difficult thing about Raptor is the crazy high chamber pressure. Also, Raptor needs to be able to throttle down a lot anyway.




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