Awesome demonstration of an exciting development technique. It's still proof of concept level at 5kN thrust. For comparison, the current Falcon 9 engine (Merlin 1D Vacuum+) has 981 kN thrust.
And just to put those numbers further in perspective: the current design goal of the SpaceX Raptor engine is 3MN (3000kN). Currently they have achieved 2.64MN during ground testing. It is speculated that each of the 33 engines of the superheavy booster during testflight 4 were configured for a thrust of approx 2MN.
Obviously the Raptors are much, much larger than the 3D printed engine from the article.
If they had asked the computer to design them a 981kN thrust engine they might have needed to be a little more cautious about lighting it up on a test stand. 5kN seems plenty for a first proof of concept.
I completely agree, just pointing out that it is at the PoC stage right now. Scaling up will be exciting. I hope the methods work as well for 1000 kN as they do for 5 kN. This will be awesome if it works at scale. I have been looking forward to engineering like this since a Ted talk I saw about "evolving" designs based on user feedback.
Comments
Awesome demonstration of an exciting development technique. It's still proof of concept level at 5kN thrust. For comparison, the current Falcon 9 engine (Merlin 1D Vacuum+) has 981 kN thrust.
And just to put those numbers further in perspective: the current design goal of the SpaceX Raptor engine is 3MN (3000kN). Currently they have achieved 2.64MN during ground testing. It is speculated that each of the 33 engines of the superheavy booster during testflight 4 were configured for a thrust of approx 2MN.
Obviously the Raptors are much, much larger than the 3D printed engine from the article.
If they had asked the computer to design them a 981kN thrust engine they might have needed to be a little more cautious about lighting it up on a test stand. 5kN seems plenty for a first proof of concept.
I completely agree, just pointing out that it is at the PoC stage right now. Scaling up will be exciting. I hope the methods work as well for 1000 kN as they do for 5 kN. This will be awesome if it works at scale. I have been looking forward to engineering like this since a Ted talk I saw about "evolving" designs based on user feedback.