SpaceX Raptor LRE Proposed Successor: Project LEET-1337 LRE

[Sarigolepas]

We can all agree that the LEET engine is a methalox engine, so why does it need a new name?

My guess is that since the goal for raptor 3 and 4 is to reduce the number of parts and integrate as much as possible, meaning that the fuel-rich turbopump and injector will be one piece with no manifold then the LEET engine could add regenerative and film cooling to the preburner since the combustion chamber and preburner could be a single part.

So the new name would be because of a change in philosophy, they are making raptor easier to produce and for LEET they will take advantage of that to try new things that would make the current design too complicated?

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/09/beyond-the-spacex-raptor-engine-is-the-breakthrough-spacex-leet-1337-engine.html

Also, do you trust this article?

Moderator edit of thread title to provide clarity.

[RedLineTrain]

The source for that article is Isaacson's biography of Musk.  The 1337 engine section is great in that it illuminates a portion that we are very interested in, but don't normally hear about publicly.  That said, there are a few details in the biography that are clearly wrong, so you have to be a bit careful to not read it literally.

Here is my summary of this in the Raptor thread...

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2023/09/beyond-the-spacex-raptor-engine-is-the-breakthrough-spacex-leet-1337-engine.html

Forgive my posting if this has been posted (I’m working on a phone). 

This all sounds fantastical and maybe reaching beyond the possible.

It looks like his source is the Musk biography. Has anyone got a copy of that yet?

I just listened to that part yesterday.  Raptor wasn't hitting its cost and manufacturability targets.  It was hard to manufacture and cost $2 million per.  They were only building one every three days or so.  Musk ordered a surge on Raptor to get it to $200k per, but Musk felt the effort was stale.  So he began a clean sheet design called 1337, or LEET. No material, requirement, or method was sacred on 1337.  Eventually, they paused 1337 development to go back to Raptor.  As of late last year, they were able to produce more than one Raptor a day, so obviously they made some good progress.

It was left to the reader's imagination whether the 1337 effort was Musk's way to kickstart the development team's creativity on Raptor or whether eventually the team's attention will be turned back to 1337 after the successful ramp of Raptor.

My guess is that 1337 development was only paused (not canceled) and it will be or already has been restarted.  It's also possible that the reinvigorated Raptor development is showing better than hoped progress, making 1337 development moot.

[Sarigolepas]

Here is the thrust density versus efficiency chart I made a while ago, updated with the numbers from Brian Wang's article:

[Barley]

We can all agree that the LEET engine is a methalox engine, so why does it need a new name?

V1.0, V1.1, Full Thrust, Block 5

What is the next term in this sequence?

[whitelancer64]

We can all agree that the LEET engine is a methalox engine, so why does it need a new name?

V1.0, V1.1, Full Thrust, Block 5

What is the next term in this sequence?

You forgot V1.14159, More Fullerer Thrust and Full Thrust: the Return of the Thrustening.

Block 5 has also had significant improvements for reliability and reusability but SpaceX is still calling it Block 5.

The Merlin 1D really should be like Merlin 1H.

[steveleach]

There's no evidence that I've seen suggesting that 133T is still under development or will be picked up again. As far as I can tell it was an idea from back in the Raptor v1 times when Musk was getting very frustrated with the Raptor team's management (before he got rid of them).

Once the newly-unshackled Raptor team got back into their stride, I'm guessing they picked the best (most workable) ideas from it and incorporated them into Raptor v2 and then v3.

Giving it a different name was likely just part of the internal politics of the time; a way for Musk to clearly distinguish between the initiative he felt was failing, and the one he felt was the way forwards. Once he sorted out the underlying problem there was no need for 2 different engine design tracks, so no need for 2 different names.

[InterestedEngineer]

This is my first encounter with Brian Wang.  If this is the type of extrapolation he does then I am extremely not impressed.   If it's a troll (it's that silly) I'm slightly less not impressed.

f SpaceX Raptor engines currently cost $1 million each. There are nine engines for a Starship and having Starship at double the cost of the engines means a complete Starship costs $18 million.
If future SpaceX Raptor engines cost $500k each. Nine engines for a Starship. Starship at double the cost of the engines means a complete Starship costs $9 million.
If the SpaceX 1337 engine costs $200,000 each then nine engines on a Starship could reduce the price of a complete Starship to $3.6 million.
If the SpaceX 1337 engine costs $100,000 each then nine engines on a Starship could reduce the price of a complete Starship to $1.8 million.

The assumption that if you halve the cost of an engine you halve the cost of a rest of the Starship is so silly I wonder if Mr. Wang has ever run a spreadsheet before.

Based on that, I wouldn't take his assertions about 1337 with a grain of salt.  I'd need a salt mine.

[steveleach]

This is my first encounter with Brian Wang.  If this is the type of extrapolation he does then I am extremely not impressed.   If it's a troll (it's that silly) I'm slightly less not impressed.

f SpaceX Raptor engines currently cost $1 million each. There are nine engines for a Starship and having Starship at double the cost of the engines means a complete Starship costs $18 million.
If future SpaceX Raptor engines cost $500k each. Nine engines for a Starship. Starship at double the cost of the engines means a complete Starship costs $9 million.
If the SpaceX 1337 engine costs $200,000 each then nine engines on a Starship could reduce the price of a complete Starship to $3.6 million.
If the SpaceX 1337 engine costs $100,000 each then nine engines on a Starship could reduce the price of a complete Starship to $1.8 million.

The assumption that if you halve the cost of an engine you halve the cost of a rest of the Starship is so silly I wonder if Mr. Wang has every run a spreadsheet before.

Based on that, I wouldn't take his assertions about 1337 with a grain of salt.  I'd need a salt mine.

Though to give him his due, he has demonstrated his ability to do really simple maths.

[InterestedEngineer]

Though to give him his due, he has demonstrated his ability to do really simple maths.

He can divide a number by two, but he can't figure out what happens when you divide one element of a sum of elements by two.

That requires abstract thinking.  Or pattern recognition combined with playing with spreadsheets.

[ChrisC]

FYI here's the regular Raptor thread where this was already being discussed a little.  https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=53555.2540

[Slothman]

We can all agree that the LEET engine is a methalox engine, so why does it need a new name?

Because ol' musky is still a boy and names his children in unspeakable ways and in general has a weird way of naming things the way that a teenager in 1998 would name their AOL online account while playing Counterstrike v1.6.. but I don%t think that the "name" of the engine should be in focus, rather than its statistics.

[InterestedEngineer]

but I don%t think that the "name" of the engine should be in focus, rather than its statistics.

It weighs 100kg, gets 390 ISP, and 500t of thrust.  It'll single stage to the moon, and solve world hunger when it brings back some cheese.

What, not believable?  I didn't show any work?

Neither did Brian Wang, and only slightly crazier.

[Robotbeat]

BTW, like many things in the biography, we've already heard about this for a while.

[matthewkantar]

Is LEET an acronym?

[AnalogMan]

Is LEET an acronym?

Probably not (its derived from the word "elite"):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet

[sferrin]

There's no evidence that I've seen suggesting that 133T is still under development or will be picked up again. As far as I can tell it was an idea from back in the Raptor v1 times when Musk was getting very frustrated with the Raptor team's management (before he got rid of them).

Once the newly-unshackled Raptor team got back into their stride, I'm guessing they picked the best (most workable) ideas from it and incorporated them into Raptor v2 and then v3.

Giving it a different name was likely just part of the internal politics of the time; a way for Musk to clearly distinguish between the initiative he felt was failing, and the one he felt was the way forwards. Once he sorted out the underlying problem there was no need for 2 different engine design tracks, so no need for 2 different names.

Elon did make a statement a week or so ago about the Starship/Super heavy having the thrust of "three Saturn Vs".  Maybe he meant with this engine?  Even the proposed Raptor 3 thrust doesn't get you to three Saturn Vs.  Granted, maybe he didn't mean literally/exactly but it's still interesting he went from two at one point to three.

[russianhalo117]

There's no evidence that I've seen suggesting that 133T is still under development or will be picked up again. As far as I can tell it was an idea from back in the Raptor v1 times when Musk was getting very frustrated with the Raptor team's management (before he got rid of them).

Once the newly-unshackled Raptor team got back into their stride, I'm guessing they picked the best (most workable) ideas from it and incorporated them into Raptor v2 and then v3.

Giving it a different name was likely just part of the internal politics of the time; a way for Musk to clearly distinguish between the initiative he felt was failing, and the one he felt was the way forwards. Once he sorted out the underlying problem there was no need for 2 different engine design tracks, so no need for 2 different names.

Elon did make a statement a week or so ago about the Starship/Super heavy having the thrust of "three Saturn Vs".  Maybe he meant with this engine?  Even the proposed Raptor 3 thrust doesn't get you to three Saturn Vs.  Granted, maybe he didn't mean literally/exactly but it's still interesting he went from two at one point to three.

There are Raptor developments beyond v3.0 but are not publicly assigned a version number yet. The LEET LRE is a long term research and development proposed to on ramp in time for the Mars and other applications programmes. LEET is supposed to combine multiple cycles currently being researched and developed i.e. rotating detonating detonation  cycle, Etal with FFSC and hybrid heat exchanger closed expander into a combined adaptive engine cycle to leverage their combined efficiency. Lessons learned from Raptor will be fed into Project LEET.

[RedLineTrain]

BTW, like many things in the biography, we've already heard about this for a while.

Where did we already hear about this?  Is my reading of L2 deficient?

[Alberto-Girardi]

There's no evidence that I've seen suggesting that 133T is still under development or will be picked up again. As far as I can tell it was an idea from back in the Raptor v1 times when Musk was getting very frustrated with the Raptor team's management (before he got rid of them).

Once the newly-unshackled Raptor team got back into their stride, I'm guessing they picked the best (most workable) ideas from it and incorporated them into Raptor v2 and then v3.

Giving it a different name was likely just part of the internal politics of the time; a way for Musk to clearly distinguish between the initiative he felt was failing, and the one he felt was the way forwards. Once he sorted out the underlying problem there was no need for 2 different engine design tracks, so no need for 2 different names.

Elon did make a statement a week or so ago about the Starship/Super heavy having the thrust of "three Saturn Vs".  Maybe he meant with this engine?  Even the proposed Raptor 3 thrust doesn't get you to three Saturn Vs.  Granted, maybe he didn't mean literally/exactly but it's still interesting he went from two at one point to three.

There are Raptor developments beyond v3.0 but are not publicly assigned a version number yet. The LEET LRE is a long term research and development proposed to on ramp in time for the Mars and other applications programmes. LEET is supposed to combine multiple cycles currently being researched and developed i.e. rotating detonating detonation  cycle, Etal with FFSC and hybrid heat exchanger closed expander into a combined adaptive engine cycle to leverage their combined efficiency. Lessons learned from Raptor will be fed into Project LEET.

Extremely interesting, but is there any public statement about this research effort on rotating detonation cycle by SpaceX?

[Robotbeat]

BTW, like many things in the biography, we've already heard about this for a while.

Where did we already hear about this?  Is my reading of L2 deficient?

He tweeted about it.