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Another very good video report from Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut, this one on the SpaceX Raptor engine. Even an ordinary man in the street like myself was able to learn from this video.SpaceX’s new Raptor engine is a methane fueled full flow staged combustion cycle engine . Such an engine is so hard to develop, no engine like this has ever actually flown before!These were the options on the type of engines SpaceX could have used for the Raptor engine. SpaceX chose to go with full flow staged combustion cycle engine, the engine in the last column. FUEL:How the...

If you've wondered just how Elon Musk, a guy who had no training in rocket engines and his work experience had consisted solely of founding companies like Zip2, PayPal etc which had nothing whatsoever to do with rockets, you can watch this video about SpaceX employee number one, Tom Mueller, a small town boy from a lower middle class, tree logging family from St Maries Idaho. (only 13 minutes)The young Tom Mueller as a logger. He worked as a tree logger for 4 years to save money to pay for his engineering degree at the University of Idaho, then went...

If SpaceX gets lucky the BFR development costs could come in at the $2 billion low-end estimate. Elon Musk had estimated that it would cost $2 billion to 10 billion to develop. A few more critical successes over the next year will enable SpaceX to solidify the finances and funding for the BFR. The needed critical successes are the NASA crewed launch certification in mid-2019 and successful Falcon Heavy launches in 2019. SpaceX has pre-sold a moon orbit tourist flight to a Japanese billionaire. This was likely for $500 to $800 million. The SpaceX Falcon Heavy already has up to...