Can any inference be made from comparing the raptor test's flame color to the BE-4 test's flame color? Because it's pretty striking how much bluer the BE-4's is. I'm aware photographers take their liberties with color curves but it's really pretty big difference. Would a heavily CH4 rich burn be more carbon-y yellow flame compared to stoichiometric flames?Can this be attributed to a FFSC cycle with more complete burn of propellants before exiting the nozzle (doubtful)?
It maybe a throttled down test, and likely not at optimum ratios yet. It's the first firing after all. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the equivalent of a car show when they get an engine to fire with a squirt of gas into the carburetor and not water pump or radiator.Give them some time to get use to the new toy before reading into things.
How do you think this test would sound compared to a normal Merlin test?There were no warnings to locals about "louder than normal" tests prior to this. To be fair, the locals don't generally complain about single engine tests that happen all the time and the fire-y end is pointed away from town.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/7808621074786549768 second test.
Can any inference be made from comparing the raptor test's flame color to the BE-4 test's flame color?
Musk said it was a "full up test," so I assume that it was a test of the full engine. But that would mean that they skipped the intermediate steps that Blue Origin did.
So what was BO testing in Feb? Is this in the same category of a "scale" Raptor engine that SpaceX tested?
Quote from: DOCinCT on 10/02/2016 05:38 pmSo what was BO testing in Feb? Is this in the same category of a "scale" Raptor engine that SpaceX tested?The factsheet that Blue Origin put out at the time described it as "BE-4 subscale testing of an oxygen-rich preburner, staged combustion of the preburner, and the main injector assembly."
Q: The first stage recovered from the JCSat-14 launch, a mission to GTO, has now been put through eight ignition sequences in Texas, with two more to go. Then what happens?A: Then we put that vehicle to rest. That actually is the qual [qualification] vehicle. That vehicle will basically have served its purpose. It just gives us confidence. You know, you can qualify a vehicle with increased margin, or amplitude, or with increased duration. The testing we were doing in Texas was a little bit of both.The thrust we were testing for about half those mission durations was higher than we flew it, and we wanted to get 10 life cycles on that vehicle that we had flown before.