Elon Musk reveals first photos of SpaceX’s powerful new Raptor engine

SpaceX founder Elon Musk continued to drop tidbits about his "Interplanetary Transport System" on Twitter early Monday morning, sharing two photos of SpaceX's Raptor engine during a test fire at the company's facility in MacGregor, Texas. "SpaceX propulsion just achieved first firing of the Raptor interplanetary transport engine," he tweeted.

Musk released the photos on the eve of a much-anticipated speech Tuesday at the International Astronautical Congress, in Guadalajara, Mexico. During his speech, Musk will lay out the elements of his vision for humanity to colonize other worlds. As Ars has reported, Musk will likely offer an inclusive message, reaching out to potential partners. This is because SpaceX cannot self-fund colonization and will need help from the government and industry.

In subsequent tweets early on Monday, Musk provided a few details about the Raptor engine, which he said has a thrust of about 3 million Newtons in the upper atmosphere. This is about three times more powerful than the company's existing engine, the Merlin 1-D, nine of which power SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Additionally, with these specs, the Raptor would be slightly more powerful than a space shuttle main engine and in the same class as Blue Origin's BE-4 rocket engine, which has not yet undergone a full-scale test.

An undetermined number of the Raptor engines will power SpaceX's next-generation rocket, the BFR. Musk is expected to provide additional technical details about the engine, this larger, powerful rocket, and the Interplanetary Transport System spacecraft on Tuesday. Such elements provide the bedrock architecture for how SpaceX intends to send hundreds of colonists to Mars in the 2020s.

The big question has been how much of this is drawing board hardware and how much has actually been built. When SpaceX shipped the Raptor engine to Texas earlier this summer it marked a significant moment for the company because an engine is the most important part of a rocket and typically takes the longest time to develop and test. If the Raptor engine can undergo full-scale test firings, then SpaceX is beginning to deliver hardware needed to make interplanetary flight a reality. Now it just needs some financial help to bring this vision into reality.

Listing image by SpaceX