Elon Musk fires the Mars Starship Raptor engine for the first time

Elon Musk has set tongues ablaze with some cheeky tweets that hopefully will pave way for human passage to Mars. That’s right mars. Elon and his mates at SpaceX lit a rocket on fire and the space geekery world literally came in their collective pants together.

Remember when you were young and you’d grind sparkler dust into tin foil and set off little sparkler bombs? Well this is like that, but a bit bigger. Similar concept but a whole lot f*#king bigger.

Preparing to fire the Starship Raptor engine at @SpaceX Texas pic.twitter.com/8JCOi1BG6z

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2019

The Raptor Rocket is reusable rocket tech dreamed up and developed by the team of smart blokes and sheilas at SpaceX. Passing previous rocket tech iterations of Falcon Heavy, Falcon 9 and Dragon. We can all agree the Raptor is a way cooler name. And by the looks of things, is a cooler rocket as well.

pic.twitter.com/ChEGbjTGKZ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2019

Old mate Elon announced the success via Twitter, which is classic Elon by the way. He showed the world the successful first firing of the Starship Raptor Engine. I mean I’m sure they did a press release and some official banter as well, but most news outlets seem to going straight to the big man Elon as the source.

First firing of Starship Raptor flight engine! So proud of great work by @SpaceX team!! pic.twitter.com/S6aT7Jih4S

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2019

Who needs bloody Iron Man to save the Avengers in End Game, get Elon onto it. At this rate Elon could be actually the one that saves Tony Stark from space (pardon the spoiler). Tony would then have to battle with Elon as to who is BFFs with Bruce Banner. That is a movie I would watch by the way. Marvel make it happen!

Credit: Space X

As always with this secret space business though there had to be a bit of sneakiness and intrigue. B.J. Jordan, a local bloke who lives near the SpaceX testing site in Mcgregor, Texas, thought he caught something on camera. He heard a big bang and clipped something on the horizon. But what was it? Was it SpaceX? Elon? Or something else?

https://t.co/kZgkd7oT1P Here’s a YouTube link to my video from last night’s @SpaceX Raptor static fire test. Although @elonmusk’s video might be just a tad better…anyone is welcome to use the footage. @Erdayastronaut @DJSnM @SpaceflightNow

— B.J. Jordan (@WJordanIV) February 4, 2019

BJ didn’t have to wait long until Elon confirmed everyone’s assumptions. It was SpaceX, it was the Raptor Rocket test, and it was a booming success.

Final Thought: Anything involving starships and I’m on board. F*&k yes Elon, f*@k yes! First step the moon, next step f*@king Mars. Lets just take Matt Damon when we go in case we get stuck.

At @SpaceX Texas with engineering team getting ready to fire new Raptor rocket engine pic.twitter.com/ACFM8AtY8w

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2019

H/T: CCN