# @stem_antics on Instagram

- **Type:** Video
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DdIchAgAOSH
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/70280830-stem-antics-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/da54962887.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-09-11T03:34:05.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Stem Antics (@stem_antics) — https://gondola.cc/stem_antics

## Caption

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 or any engine flown before Raptor

Methane burns with far less soot than kerosene, keeping turbines and injectors clean enough for rapid reuse.

The cluster is divided by role:
• The 13 inner engines gimbal on electric actuators to steer the vehicle
• The 20 outer engines are fixed; on Raptor 2 boosters they were started by ground equipment on the launch mount and could not relight, whereas Raptor 3 outer engines can
• The booster is only released once every engine is verified healthy; on 16 July 2026 the computer aborted at T-0 when several failed to reach flight conditions

The last rocket to attempt this many engines, the Soviet N1 with 30 NK-15s, failed all four of its launches between 1969 and 1972.

Lighting thirty-three engines is the easy part; making them behave as one is the engineering.

#stemantics #starship #spacex #rocketengineering #aerospaceengineering

## Stats

- **Views:** 8,584
- **Likes:** 276
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- **Comments:** 7

## Tags

rocketengineering, starship, spacex, aerospaceengineering, stemantics

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