SpaceX Test Fires the Engine That Might Bring Humans to Mars

Jay Bennett
Updated

From Popular Mechanics

Just ahead of Elon Musk's big keynote address tomorrow on colonizing Mars, "Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species," SpaceX test fired the new engine that Musk hopes will lift the first astronauts to the red planet. The Raptor engine is SpaceX's first liquid methane and liquid oxygen fueled engine, unlike the family of Merlin engines that uses Rocket Propellant-1, or RP-1, a highly refined form of kerosene as well as liquid oxygen as a source of fuel.

With a new methane fuel source, the Raptor puts out more than three times the thrust as the Merlin engines that power the Falcon 9 rocket. The engine is going to need the extra thrust to launch the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), formerly called the Mars Colonial Transporter-a launch system that SpaceX is currently developing and hopes will carry the first crewed Dragon spacecraft to Mars.

Elon Musk will reveal more details during his keynote speech tomorrow about how SpaceX plans to meet its highly ambitious goals to send an unmanned spacecraft to Mars by 2018 and put the first person on the red planet just six years later. The recent explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket during launchpad testing certainly throws a wrench into SpaceX's short-term launch schedule, but today's new engine test fire might be an indication that its long-term quest for planetary colonization is proceeding according to schedule.

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