[00:07] This is the most dangerous rocket on Earth, the SpaceX Starship. A machine so powerful that even a single static fire test can unleash sonic booms strong enough to rattle parked cars, shake nearby buildings, and occasionally
[00:21] remind local windows that life is temporary. And the craziest part, that violence comes from only one section of the rocket. 33 Raptor engines firing together beneath Super Heavy. Enough power to launch your entire
[00:37] neighborhood into low Earth orbit if zoning laws were a little more flexible. But today, we're not even talking about Raptor 3. No, today we are diving into something even more extreme. Something that could make today's engines look
[00:52] that could make today's engines look conservative. I'm talking of Raptor 4, the next generation engine SpaceX is preparing for Starship version 4. An engine that may completely rewrite the limits of rocket propulsion. So, what
[01:06] exactly is Raptor 4? And why are aerospace engineers already quietly losing sleep over it? Let's dive in. But first, a quick favor. For the past 2 months, about 73.7% of viewers watching these videos still have not subscribed.
[01:22] faster than Starship's propellant budget. The goal is to get that number down to 60%. So, if you have been enjoying the channel so far, please show your support by hitting that subscribe
[01:35] button. It genuinely helps us a lot and keeps these episodes coming. Thank you. And now, let's talk about rocket insanity. By now, you probably already know what Elon Musk is ultimately trying to accomplish. And it's not simply
[01:49] reaching orbit. His long-term goal has always been making humanity multi-planetary. Specifically, putting humans on Mars. That vision is exactly why SpaceX refused to stop after the success of Falcon 9 and the Merlin
[02:03] engine family. Back in 2008, SpaceX was dangerously close to collapse. The company nearly ran out of money entirely before Falcon 1 finally succeeded. But instead of slowing down afterward, Musk pushed even harder, eventually leading
[02:19] to Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket system humanity has ever attempted to build. And at the center of that monster sits the Raptor engine. To understand how extraordinary Raptor really is, you need a comparison point.
[02:33] For decades, the king of rocket engines was the legendary F-1 engine used on the Saturn V moon rocket, the same engine that helped to send humans to the moon during the Apollo era. Each F-1 produced roughly 680 metric tons of thrust, and
[02:49] the thing was enormous. You could practically park a small car inside the nozzle bell. For generations, aerospace engineers viewed the F-1 as the benchmark for raw rocket power. Now compare that to Raptor. The current
[03:02] Raptor 3 produces around 280 metric tons of thrust, roughly 40% of an F-1's output. But that's not the absurd part. Raptor is dramatically smaller, only
[03:14] about 3 m tall with a nozzle diameter of 1 and 1/2 m. A tiny fraction of the F-1's size. And that compactness is exactly the point. Because it allows SpaceX to cluster 33 engines together beneath Super Heavy. The closest modern
[03:30] comparison would probably be the RS-25 engine used on the Space Shuttle and NASA's SLS rocket. The engine produces around 190 tons of thrust while being
[03:42] physically much larger than Raptor. More size, less output. Exactly the opposite of what SpaceX wants. So, even today, Raptor 3 already ranks among the most
[03:54] advanced rocket engines ever built, but SpaceX isn't stopping there. Musk has repeatedly confirmed that Starship is moving toward V4, and with it comes Raptor 4. This is not just a routine upgrade, it's an engineering requirement
[04:09] because Starship V4 is expected to become absolutely gigantic. When fully stacked with Super Heavy, the vehicle could stand around 142 m tall, roughly the height of a 35-story building. Fully fueled, the entire stack may weigh
[04:24] approximately 6,350 metric tons at liftoff, and payload capacity could exceed 200 metric tons per mission. That is an astonishing amount of mass. The problem is that Raptor 3 was never really designed to
[04:39] support those margins comfortably. You cannot constantly operate rocket engines at their absolute maximum limits and expect reliable long-term reuse, especially not if your goal is flying hundreds of times. You need performance
[04:53] headroom, and that is where Raptor 4 enters the picture. This leads us to one of the most important numbers in rocketry, the thrust-to-weight ratio, or TWR for short. The rule is simple. If the ratio falls below 1.0, the rocket
[05:11] does not leave the ground, which honestly would make for a very disappointing livestream. For healthy acceleration during ascent, most rockets acceleration during ascent, most rockets aim for something between 1.3 and 1.5.
[05:24] With Raptor 3, a fully fueled Starship V4 stack would generate around 8,877 tons of combined thrust. That creates a TWR of approximately 1.4, which isn't
[05:38] bad, but definitely tight. And that assumes every engine performs perfectly at full output simultaneously, which almost never happens in reality. During launch, SpaceX deliberately throttles engines down to reduce stress on both
[05:53] the rocket and the launch pad. Even small performance losses can quickly eat into those margins. Now, imagine replacing those engines with Raptor 4. At a conservative estimate of 300 tons of thrust per engine, total lift off
[06:08] of thrust per engine, total lift off thrust climbs to roughly 9,900 tons. thrust climbs to roughly 9,900 tons. That pushes TWR to approximately 1.56. And if SpaceX reaches the more aggressive 330-ton target, the TWR jumps
[06:22] to around 1.72. That is no longer just a performance upgrade. That is a massive operational advantage. It means the engines no longer need to operate constantly at the edge of destruction. They finally gain
[06:38] breathing room, which is critical if Starship is expected to fly repeatedly like an aircraft someday. And yes, this gets even crazier when you step back and look at the full picture. 33 Raptor 4 engines together could
[06:51] generate more than three times the thrust of the Saturn 5 moon rocket. At chamber pressures potentially reaching between 350 and 380 bar, that is difficult to even visualize. Imagine compressing the weight of a fully loaded
[07:06] school bus onto an area the size of a postage stamp while somehow convincing the metal not to explode. At that point, it almost stops feeling like engineering. It starts feeling like physics is being held hostage. So, how
[07:20] is SpaceX even attempting this? A huge part of the answer comes from one of Elon Musk's most controversial decisions early in Starship development, abandoning kerosene entirely in favor of liquid methane. Traditional rocket fuel
[07:34] like kerosene leaves behind thick soot deposits inside engines during combustion. Engineers call this coking. For expendable that is not a major issue. The rocket gets thrown away afterward anyway. But
[07:48] for a fully reusable system like Starship, constantly cleaning soot after every flight would become a nightmare. Methane solves that problem beautifully. Its molecular structure burns extremely cleanly, leaving almost no residue
[08:02] behind. However, that clean combustion comes with an enormous engineering price. Because to fully exploit methane's potential, SpaceX adopted one of the most terrifying engine cycles ever attempted: full flow staged
[08:16] combustion. Even NASA has never successfully operated the cycle in routine spaceflight. The first major challenge is pressure. Absolutely insane pressure. To force methane and liquid oxygen into the combustion chamber,
[08:31] Raptor relies on independent turbopumps, compressing propellants under crushing loads. The chamber pressure exceeds 300 atmospheres. For comparison, the pressure of the bottom of the Mariana Trench is tiny by comparison. At these
[08:46] levels, even microscopic flaws can become catastrophic instantly. A tiny become catastrophic instantly. A tiny crack, a split-second timing error, one unstable turbopump, and suddenly the engine becomes a thermobaric bomb
[08:59] sitting beneath the largest rocket ever built. But somehow, that's not even the scariest part. To generate these pressures, Raptor runs both propellants through separate preburners simultaneously. One side for oxygen, one
[09:14] side for methane. Each side partially combusts propellant into ultra-hot gas streams that drive their respective turbines. Both systems feed into each other continuously in what can only be described as controlled violence. No
[09:29] operational rocket engine in history has ever done this successfully with both propellants simultaneously. The Soviet RD-270 came close back in the 1960s, but it never flew. That is the full flow part of full flow stage combustion, and
[09:46] the oxygen side becomes especially horrifying because hot high-pressure oxygen stops behaving like friendly breathable air. It becomes an incredibly aggressive oxidizer capable of igniting metals that normally seem fireproof. In
[10:01] simple terms, Raptor operates in a near-constant state of controlled continuously trying to destroy the desperately tries to survive long enough to reach orbit. To handle this
[10:15] environment, SpaceX reportedly developed proprietary superalloys specifically designed for these brutal oxidizing conditions because ordinary materials simply would not survive. And the complexity extends far beyond the
[10:29] engines themselves. Unlike many traditional rockets, Starship does not use onboard helium pressurization systems in the same way older designs did. That reduces mass and simplifies some systems, but it also transfers
[10:43] enormous startup complexity directly into the launch infrastructure itself. Every single ignition sequence must be perfectly choreographed through the perfectly choreographed through the launch tower systems, all 33 engines, at
[10:55] exactly the correct timing. That is why Starbase's launch infrastructure is Starbase's launch infrastructure is referred to as stage zero because the launchpad itself has effectively become part of the rocket. It handles
[11:07] propellant loading, engine chill-down, turbopump startup, ignition timing, clamp release, and dozens of synchronized operations simultaneously. One mistimed sequence across even a single engine could potentially trigger
[11:19] a rapid unscheduled disassembly within seconds, which is the aerospace industry's very polite way of saying everything exploded. And honestly, knowing all this somehow makes Starship's successful flights feel even
[11:32] more unbelievable, wouldn't you say? Every mission that does not end in a fireball represents another step toward taming one of the most violent machines humans ever created. And here is what makes SpaceX's approach even stranger.
[11:47] They're not solving problems by adding complexity. They're solving them by removing parts. Just look at the evolution of the Raptor program itself. Raptor 1 looked unbelievably complicated. Pipes everywhere, valves
[12:01] stacked on valves, wiring wrapped around the engine like somebody lost a fight with industrial spaghetti. Building a single Raptor 1 reportedly took around single Raptor 1 reportedly took around 11 days, and it produced roughly 185 to
[12:15] 200 tons of thrust at around 250 bar chamber pressure. Impressive at the time, but far too complicated and expensive for large-scale production. Then came Elon Musk's famous philosophy, the best part
[12:29] is no part, and SpaceX applied it aggressively. Raptor 2 simplified huge pipes directly into the structure itself. The engine lost roughly 450 kg
[12:42] of mass while increasing thrust to around 230 tons. Same overall combustion principles, but lighter, cleaner, and more powerful. Then came Raptor 3, the version that genuinely shocked the aerospace industry. When the engine
[12:57] first appeared publicly, Tory Bruno reportedly thought it looked unfinished. Not because it looked bad, because it looked too simple. The external heat shielding was almost entirely gone. Not because SpaceX stopped caring about
[13:11] heat, but because the regenerative cooling systems had become so efficient engine walls was enough to keep the metal from melting. No extra shielding required. With that design, Raptor 3 achieved roughly 280 tons of thrust at
[13:27] around 350 bar chamber pressure, breaking nearly every internal record SpaceX had previously established. And if you compare early Super Heavy Boosters equipped with Raptor 2 against newer
[13:40] vehicles using Raptor 3, the visual difference is dramatic. The engines generally look cleaner, tighter, and more refined. Like the technology is evolving faster than the human eye can comfortably process. And now, SpaceX
[13:55] appears ready to repeat the cycle again with Raptor 4. If history repeats itself, Raptor 4 will not just become more powerful, it'll become simpler, too. And in the world of rocket engines, achieving greater performance through
[14:09] simplification is basically the holy grail of engineering. Right now, no other company on Earth appears to be moving at this pace. And honestly, that moving at this pace. And honestly, that may be the most terrifying part of all.
[14:22] After Starship flight 12, Starbase is no longer the gateway to Mars because apparently the new Super Heavy decided the real mission was urban renewal. Seriously, this thing generated so much force that it completely obliterated the
[14:36] famous gateway to Mars banner sitting more than 100 m away from launch pad 2. Not damaged, not bent, absolutely shredded. At this point, the sign doesn't even say gateway anymore. It says gateway, which honestly sounds less
[14:51] like an inspirational slogan and more like a budget internet provider. And that immediately raised one gigantic question. If a banner sitting that far away got vaporized by sheer acoustic violence, what happened to the actual
[15:05] launch pad? What happened to stage zero and the launch tower, the flame trench, the tank farm? First of all, hats off to SpaceX. After more than 7 months of waiting, the company finally launched another Starship flight. And somehow,
[15:21] despite all the pressure, they delivered one of the most cinematic rocket launches ever captured. Flight 12 felt less like a test mission and more like the finale of a Christopher Nolan movie. The visuals were absurd, the scale was
[15:35] ridiculous, and the ending, pure chaos. Especially S39's final moments. After surviving reentry, the ship descended slowly and gracefully toward the Indian
[15:47] Ocean. For a brief second, it looked peaceful, controlled, elegant, even. Then, it tipped over and exploded into a gigantic fireball floating on the surface of the water, which somehow made the crowd even more excited. Because
[16:00] unlike a traditional rocket company, SpaceX fans have developed a fascinating relationship with explosions. At this point, half the audience sees a massive fireball and reacts like they just watched their favorite football team
[16:13] score a touchdown. But, here's the important thing. That explosion was intentional. SpaceX never planned to recover ship 39. The splashdown and destruction were part of the mission profile from the beginning. B9, however,
[16:27] is a very different story. Following stage separation, Super Heavy began its return sequence and attempted to perform a boost back burn. The goal was to steer itself back toward the designated splash zone. Unfortunately, things didn't go
[16:41] exactly according to plan. Or to put it another way, the booster arrived at the ocean slightly earlier than SpaceX would have preferred. According to the company's official statement, Super Heavy attempted to reignite its engines
[16:54] a hard splashdown in the Gulf of splashdown is one of the funniest phrases in the aerospace terminology because it sounds so polite. Like the booster gently tripped over itself while
[17:08] carrying groceries. In reality, the thing appears to have slammed into the multiple engines during the landing sequence. The flight termination system was intentionally not activated, which means SpaceX deliberately allowed the
[17:22] booster to continue instead of blowing it up midair. And honestly, that decision makes sense. The system is still extremely experimental. SpaceX needs real-world data more than perfect outcomes right now. Every failed landing
[17:35] still teaches them something valuable, even if the lesson occasionally arrives in the form of an enormous explosion visible from orbit. But while viewers focused on the rocket itself, aerospace engineers everywhere were staring at
[17:47] something else entirely, the launch pad. Because pad two is arguably just as important as the rocket now. This isn't the original Starbase launch site anymore. This is a completely redesigned orbital launch complex. New flame
[18:00] trench, new deluge system, new tank farm, new launch mount, new tower. farm, new launch mount, new tower. Basically, stage zero 2.0. And Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized something important. Losing a vehicle is
[18:12] survivable. Losing the launch pad is not. Especially right now, because currently pad two is the only active orbital launch pad at Starbase. OLP-1 has been offline since flight 11 back in October of 2025 and is still undergoing
[18:26] upgrades to match the new configuration, which means if pad two had suffered catastrophic damage during flight 12, the consequences would have been massive. We wouldn't be talking about flight 13 launching in June or July
[18:38] anymore. We'd probably be talking about 2027, and nobody wants that. Not SpaceX, not NASA, and definitely not Starship fans who already survived a 7-month
[18:50] wait. Another delay that long and people would start aging visibly during live stream countdowns. So naturally, everyone wanted to know, did pad two survive? The answer is honestly kind of incredible. Yes, and not just barely,
[19:05] the thing survived astonishingly well. First, let's appreciate what this launch pad actually endured. Superheavy ignited 33 Raptor engines while carrying approximately 5,200 tons of liquid methane and liquid
[19:20] oxygen. The rocket generated around 18 million pounds of thrust. That's enough force to make your local Home Depot leaf blower look emotionally inadequate. The resulting shockwaves were so intense that cameras positioned far away from
[19:34] the launch site shook violently during liftoff. And then there was the exhaust plume. A gigantic superheated column stretching nearly 200 m long. Essentially, a horizontal tornado made entirely of fire and bad intentions. The
[19:50] plume blasted directly through the flame trench while sweeping across the launch mount and launch tower with terrifying force. looked dramatic. Pieces of shredded metal were scattered around Starbase.
[20:04] Social media immediately went into detective mode. People started posting photos with captions like pad damage confirmed, stage zero failure, Raptors melted reality. But then came the hilarious twist. Every single chunk of
[20:18] debris turned out to be from the gateway to Mars banner. That's it. The launchpad itself almost untouched, which is honestly insane. Because the sign was positioned behind shielding and facing away from the pad. And it still got
[20:33] annihilated. Meanwhile, the actual orbital launch mount survived with barely any visible damage. That alone tells you just how effective the new system really is. According to post-flight observations, the launch
[20:46] mount remained in excellent condition. The only notable damage appeared to be some peeling paint on the BQD hood. That's it. No major structural failures, That's it. No major structural failures, no catastrophic erosion, no giant crater
[20:59] under the pad like flight one, just missing paint. At this point, SpaceX engineers are probably staring at the launch mount like parents whose toddler somehow survived 5 minutes alone in a silent room. And honestly, this
[21:11] engineering victories in Starship's entire development history. Because to understand why this matters, you need to remember where SpaceX started. On Starship's very first integrated test flight, things were rough. And by rough,
[21:27] I mean the launch pad basically experienced a geological event. Back then, there was no flame trench, no proper water deluge, no meaningful protection against 33 Raptor engines firing simultaneously. The result was
[21:41] catastrophic. A giant crater formed beneath the launch mount. Concrete chunks were launched hundreds of meters away. Nearby infrastructure was damaged. Tank systems took impacts and Starbase briefly looked less like a spaceport and
[21:55] more like an active volcano site. Repairs took months and those delays significantly slowed the entire Starship program. Even after improvements during flights two through nine, certain components continued struggling,
[22:08] especially the BQD. The booster quick disconnect became infamous for visibly for visible scorching and structural wear. Observers noticed melting, damaged edges, burn marks, and repeated signs of thermal stress. Many analysts believed
[22:24] the plume interaction around the BQD remained one of the most difficult engineering challenges on the entire launch system. But now, on pad two, the same launch forces barely managed to remove some paint. That is a gigantic
[22:38] achievement. It demonstrates that SpaceX is learning rapidly. And more importantly, it suggests this launch infrastructure may finally support the kind of high launch cadence SpaceX has always wanted. Because rapid reusability
[22:52] doesn't just apply to rockets. The launch pad has to survive repeated launches, too. And for the first time, pad two genuinely looks capable of that. The biggest upgrade is the flame trench. Unlike the original flat pad design, Pad
[23:08] 2 uses a fully bidirectional trench that redirects exhaust in two directions once. At the center sits the flame bucket, a massive system built from 132
[23:20] heat resistant steel pipes mounted on rubber pads to absorb vibration and thermal stress. Thousands of tiny holes inject water continuously during launch creating a protective barrier between the exhaust plume and the steel
[23:33] structure. Basically, the launch pad fights fire with industrial scale rage sprinklers. At the center of the trench sits the ridge cap, one of the most stressed components in the entire system. To protect it, SpaceX redesigned
[23:47] both the cooling system and even the engine layout itself, rotating the center engine cluster by 18° to reduce direct plume interaction. Above it all sits the upgraded orbital launch mount, an absolute tank. The structure uses
[24:02] four enormous support legs capable of supporting roughly 10,000 tons combined, while the launch deck itself contains layered water-cooled steel channels that flood during ignition to absorb heat and acoustic energy. At this point, the
[24:17] weaponized plumbing, and somehow the craziest part is still the deluge system. Instead of traditional pressure tanks, SpaceX uses nine methane and oxygen gas generators nicknamed baby Raptors to vaporize liquid nitrogen and
[24:32] drive the system. The result is enough pressure to deliver roughly 800,000 gallons of water per minute, which means during launch the pad briefly transforms into the world's angriest fountain. And based on flight 12, it worked extremely
[24:47] well. The pad survived, the infrastructure survived, and SpaceX now appears dramatically closer to true rapid launch operations. But while SpaceX celebrated, the FAA was watching carefully, and that matters enormously.
[25:02] Because without a formal mishap investigation, SpaceX could move toward flight 13 far faster than many expected. Interestingly, the FAA said nothing about S39. Why? Because technically, ship succeeded. It reached space,
[25:16] deployed payloads, survived re-entry, and completed a controlled splashdown. From a regulatory standpoint, that counts as mission success.