Daniel Profile picture
Aug 6 16 tweets 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
There are many people speculating about today's static fire of Booster 9 so I want to throw in my thoughts too.

The main objectives for this test were the validation of the flame deflector system and the engine systems on Booster 9. (1/11)
The good news is that both B9 and stage zero remain intact and as far as I can tell, there‘s no obvious damage. The engines ignited at T - 0 and the static fire was aborted at T + 2.74 s. A total of 4 Raptor 2 engines shut down prematurely. (2/11) Image
So this is actually the first time all 33 engines were firing simultaneously. But what was the reason for the abort? The static fire was planned to last ~5 s. Elon said in one of his spaces updates that for the first IFT of Starship, abort criteria for liftoff… (3/11) Image
…would be triggered once less than 30 engines are healthy. This leads me to believe that this abort criteria is also used for static fires, including today's test. My guess is that the shutdown of the 4th Raptor engine caused the abort. (4/11) Image
I saw many people worried about the reliability of Raptor 2 after today's test. Let's actually compare the engines of B7 and B9 so we can get a better understanding of the situation. The oldest and newest engines on B7 were R25 and R105. (5/11)
For B9, that's R73 and R186. R79 has been spotted in January of 2022. It usually takes two months from the completion of the engine to the arrival at Starbase, so it's safe to say that Raptors around that serial number (~oldest on B9) have been manufactured in late 2021. (6/11)
Now let's look at the newest engines. Raptor engines around SN 200 have been spotted in January of this year, so every single engine on B9 has been manufactured and tested before IFT-1 and the major static fire tests involving multiple Raptor 2 engines. (7/11)
And don't forget that this is not the operational version of Raptor, most engines feature improvements over the previous ones, being tested to its limits and learning how to improve the performance and reliability of the engine. It is also important to note that SpaceX… (8/11)
…has been very quick with the testing of B9. With merely 2 days between its first engine test (spin prime) and the 33 engine static fire it shattered all previous records. It is very much expected that there are some faulty Raptor engines that cause issues during testing. (9/11)
And that's why they do these tests. Identifying faulty engines before the actual flight is kind of important lol. To sum all this up, I think it's safe to say that today's test was a success, even though SpaceX might repeat the test before the actual IFT-2. (10/11)
I'm sure Raptor reliability will improve significantly in the future, starting with IFT-2. The future is very exciting with the next boosters and ships already completing their cryo proof tests. I thing we will see the launch cadence increase a lot in the near future. (11/11)
@Jeppespip @intrepidpursuit @K9DefenseTech And this is different from IFT-1 because the water cooled steel plate is way more capable than it needs to be and can’t be compared to a single layer of high strength concrete. I suggest you watch @CSI_Starbase episodes explaining what happened during IFT-1
@GreezDritus @Phrankensteyn Although I‘m not sure whether that’s still the case

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