Flight 5 And 6 Preparations Underway As SpaceX Reveals Raptor 3 - NASASpaceFlight.Com

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SpaceX continues with the Starship pace, with another busy week involving the reveal and first firing of the Raptor 3 engine, a spin prime ⁘ and not a static fire ⁘ for Ship 30, tons more Orbital Launch Pad B work. SpaceX noted it is also working Flight 6 preparations while waiting for Flight 5 regulatory approval, which ups the milestones with a potential catch by the Tower's Mechazilla chopsticks. Preparing for that goal is B14.1, out at Orbital Launch Pad A for more slap testing.

Ship 33 continues to be stacked, as only two sections remain until the first Block 2 ship is fully assembled. Those sections are the bottom Liquid Oxygen Tank section, slated to have four rings, and the aft engine section, which also has four rings. This will bring the number of rings for Block 2 Starships to 21, compared to 20 on Block 1 ships.

This extra ring and the ability to move the tanks allow SpaceX to add around 300 tons of extra propellant to the vehicle.

Production Site with Ship 31 in High Bay and Ship 33 in Mega Bay 2 (Credit: Jack Beyer for NSF/L2)

Raptor 1 was used on the suborbital test flights and vehicles up to Booster 4 and Ship 20. This engine was still very much a prototype engine. It only had 185 metric tons of thrust and weighed a decent amount, with the engine being 2,080 kg and 3,630 kg when all vehicle-side commodities and hardware were added on.