Given the now distinct possibility that Russia will cut-off the RD-180 from the US, will Raptor development complement SpaceX's ability to bid on (and develop) a possible domestic RD-180 equivalent if they had the desire to do so? If Raptor is a full flow staged combustion design as has been indicated, one of the preburners will need to be oxidizer rich - will they have to develop comparable metallurgy tech to what exists in the ORSC russian engines already? Or does the CH4 vs RP choice have large impacts on the oxidizer rich environment such that any learning with CH4 would not translate to RP?
Regrettably, no access is available to me. This is just a forum. If I find how to access that presentation, even if I have to pay, I'll find a way of doing it.
Only ~8 hours left until Jeffs presentation on raptor at ISDC! Do we have any way of following the presentation live; any official/inofficial web casts you've heard of, or live microblogging (SFN?). If I find one, I will immediately share it here.Baldusi; if you pay for a ticket and report live, I'm happy to pitch in some through PayPal or similar. Ticket price seem to be ~100 USD for an on site ticket for saturday; http://isdc.nss.org/2014/register-m.shtmlI have a feeling we are about to get some good info on Raptor, which in turn will help us tremendously in estimating BFR&MCT and the future of spaceflight.
They could cause a s***storm if they announced Raptor would be proven in an EELV core in <5 years
Maybe the last expendable LV from SpaceX. Just swap 2 Raptor engine for the 9 Merlin engine in the F9 and keep all other hardware the same. Maybe about 3 to 4 flights total for the purpose of flight testing the Raptor engine with a discount price for someone willing to take a risk with the payload. Not the most efficient LV, but very little hardware R&D required and uses the current GSE mostly. Of course there will be some ground infra-structure mods to accommodate methane usage. A Falcon 2
I posted previously that you could swapped 2 Raptors for 9 Merlins in a LV with stock F9 tankage to test out the Raptors real quick for a limited number of flights. Would not be reusable or efficient. The point is the hacked together LV will have the Raptor engine flying the soonest at minimal development cost.Or you can use the F9 tooling to make properly proportion tankage for an expandable dual engine core LV with Raptors near the end of their life cycle. Which in theory will also be the possibility of a tri-core heavy version with cross-feeding with 6 Raptors.