Slowed down, a Super Heavy liftoff stops looking like fire and starts looking like choreography. Thirty-three Raptor engines come up to power in a rapid, staggered start sequence while the flight computer decides whether the tallest rocket ever flown is allowed to leave the pad. Each Raptor 3 sea-level engine is rated at 250 tonnes-force (551,000 lbf) and weighs just 1,525 kg, producing roughly 160 times its own weight in thrust. Across 33 engines that is about 8,250 tonnes-force, over 18 million pounds, roughly 2.4 times the liftoff thrust of Saturn V. Raptor is a full-flow staged combustion engine, the first of its kind ever to fly: • A fuel-rich preburner drives the methane turbopump; an oxygen-rich preburner drives the oxygen turbopump • Essentially all propellant flows through a turbine, and none is dumped overboard • Both streams enter the main chamber as hot gas, mixing faster and more completely than liquid injection • Chamber pressure runs around 300 bar, beyond the RD-180 o...