SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night

Re:SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocke... by Diederich on Monday August 02, 2021 @05:37PM (#28043018)

I LOLd but then had to do the math. Turns out that the dry weight of a SpaceX Merlin engine, in gold, costs almost exactly the same as a production RS-25.

Current spot price of gold is $1800/oz. Merlin dry weight is 1380 pounds. 1380 pounds of gold is right at 40 million dollars.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-25#Space_Shuttle_program :

"A total of 46 reusable RS-25 engines, each costing around US$40 million, were flown during the Space Shuttle program"

Beautiful.

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Re:SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocke... by mlindner on Monday August 02, 2021 @08:13PM (#28044340)

Those numbers are out of date now, they recently restarted production and it turns out each engine is about $150M now for the new production run for the SLS. (Which about the cost of a full expendable Falcon Heavy rocket launch along with all 27 of its Merlin engines.)

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Re:SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocke... by mr_toad on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @02:36AM (#28046277)

That’s what happens when you decide on a product and then ask how much it costs.

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Re:SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocke... by jhgb on Monday August 02, 2021 @05:39PM (#28043041)

They cost much more than $40M these days.

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