15 years of Elon, fully searchable. The production archive uses Supabase as the source of truth, with 94,952 indexed tweets available in development as a full-archive fallback and a curated annotation layer for context, theory, and how major claims aged.
“Over a million combustion engine (it’s right there in the name!) car fires per year & thousands of deaths, but one Tesla car fire with no injuries gets biggest headlines. Why the double standard? This is a real question.”
“@GameSyns @Erdayastronaut Engines seem ok, pending inspection”
“@Erdayastronaut @DiscoverMag Probably no fairing either & just 3 Raptor Vacuum engines. Mass ratio of ~30 (1200 tons full, 40 tons empty) with Isp of 380. Then drop a few dozen modified Starlink satellites from empty engine bays with ~1600 Isp, MR 2. Spread out, see what’s there. Not impossible.”
“@nextspaceflight @Erdayastronaut @DiscoverMag Yes. Sensitive propulsion & avionics remained dry. Great work by SpaceX Dragon engineering team. Major improvement over Dragon 1.”
“@Erdayastronaut @DiscoverMag Massive delta velocity slam from highly elliptical Earth orbit using a fully retanked, but lightened up Starship with no heat shield or fins/legs. Best choice for the impatient. Ion engines are too slow.”
“@Erdayastronaut @flcnhvy @austinbarnard45 You can deep throttle on single shaft system by choking flow of fuel or oxygen between pump & combustion chamber. Problem is more with the tiny rocket engine that powers the pump, called a gas generator. That has to throttle *way* deeper than the main chamber.”
“@Erdayastronaut @flcnhvy @austinbarnard45 Raptor is *very* complex, even for a staged combustion engine. We’re simplifying as much as possible with each iteration. Throttling down to ~50% is hard, but manageable. Going to 25% would be extremely tough, but hopefully not needed.”
“@flcnhvy @austinbarnard45 Hopefully. Always many issues integrating engine & stage. First hops will lift off, but only barely.”
“@austinbarnard45 First (really short) hops with one engine. Suborbital flights with three.”
“Russia has excellent rocket engineering & best engine currently flying. Reusable version of their new Angara rocket would be great. https://t.co/6RLvf5R4ni https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/03/with-dragon-russian-critic-says-roscosmos-acting-left-behind/”
“@katlinegrey @lrocket @Alexis_wwww Rest of SpaceX propulsion still very active, so only ~50 full-time equivalent people right now. That will grow a lot as we enter production. It’s 10X harder (at least) to design engine production system than engine. In automotive, 100X harder.”
“@annerajb @lrocket @Alexis_wwww @katlinegrey Printers are too small. Also, high pressure, high efficiency engines need copper cooling channels with an inco/steel jacket. Can’t print yet.”
“@lrocket @Alexis_wwww @katlinegrey Tom did an awesome job leading Merlin, Kestrel, Draco & other engine developments from start through 2014 that were critical to SpaceX’s success. Great respect & appreciation!”
“@abbygarrettX @DJSnM @Erdayastronaut @sasor098 @AdamHugo @WayCharMar @fan_of_racing @bkent136 @macodiseas @katlinegrey Always liked Kestrel. It was the Robin Hood of engines.”
“@benoitdenayer @navincho @katlinegrey Essentially, yes. Great engineering talent, but should focus on reusable rockets for purpose of a permanent human base on the moon and self-sustaining city on Mars.”
“@Erdayastronaut @sasor098 @AdamHugo @WayCharMar @fan_of_racing @bkent136 @macodiseas @katlinegrey Yeah, that was a bit embarrassing ☺️High engine chamber pressure and ablative don’t get along. Ok for low pressure, expendable upper stage.”
“@fan_of_racing @bkent136 @macodiseas @katlinegrey SpaceX Merlin architecture is simpler than staged combustion (eg SSME or RD), but it has world record for thrust/weight & thrust/cost engine. Raptor has better Isp, but I’m worried it may fall short on those two critical metrics.”
“@engineers_feed That last bit gives a good sense of what orbit is like”
“@FredericLambert @georgezachary I had to focus on solving a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems at Tesla (especially) & SpaceX”
“SpaceX foundry casting Raptor engine manifold out of Inconel https://t.co/zWlqNwGj0R”
“@Erdayastronaut @John_Gardi @w0lfyxD @Robotbeat @SpaceX Yeah, but simpler. Needed for landing burn or engines will suck in a bubble.”
“@alexmd2 @SpaceX Definitely! It’s amazing that the RD-170 & RD-180 engines held the record for so many decades. Excellent engineering.”
“@Erdayastronaut @LytovchenkoSerg @John_Gardi Booster center of mass is much lower & more consistent (no payload mass to consider), so still biases towards engine first entry”
“🔥🖤 SpaceX Engineering 🖤🔥”
“Design requires at least 170 metric tons of force. Engine reached 172 mT & 257 bar chamber pressure with warm propellant, which means 10% to 20% more with deep cryo.”
“@dguisinger @Erdayastronaut @DanielDavisA Engine use methox torch igniters. Green tinge is either camera saturation or a tiny bit of copper from the chamber.”
“First firing of Starship Raptor flight engine! So proud of great work by @SpaceX team!! https://t.co/S6aT7Jih4S”
“At @SpaceX Texas with engineering team getting ready to fire new Raptor rocket engine https://t.co/ACFM8AtY8w”
“@Erdayastronaut @keego73 Cold gas thrusters only. Will use body flaps & main engines for landing orientation, so won’t need high thrust reaction control. Simplifies things considerably.”
“Initially making one 200 metric ton thrust engine common across ship & booster to reach the moon as fast as possible. Next versions will split to vacuum-optimized (380+ sec Isp) & sea-level thrust optimized (~250 ton).”
“Preparing to fire the Starship Raptor engine at @SpaceX Texas https://t.co/8JCOi1BG6z”
“@paperclip9000 @renwis1 @thearkadia_ @Grimezsz Engines currently on Starship hopper are a blend of Raptor development & operational parts. First hopper engine to be fired is almost finished assembly in California. Probably fires next month.”
“Engineering is true magic”
“@Erdayastronaut @NASASpaceflight @_Synders @John_Gardi @martinengwicht @JeromeJaccard @Robotbeat @alan1bernard It’s embarrassing that Boeing/Lockheed need to use a Russian engine on Atlas, but that engine design is brilliant”
“@Erdayastronaut @NASASpaceflight @_Synders @John_Gardi @martinengwicht @JeromeJaccard @Robotbeat @alan1bernard You def don’t want electric pumps on a rocket engine! Raptor turbopumps alone need 100,000 horsepower per engine. That’s not a typo.”
“@annerajb Pretty good. I have confirmation turned off on my engineering build & interventions are rare. Probably ready to enable no confirmation setting next month.”
“Engines stabilized rocket spin just in time, enabling an intact landing in water! Ships en route to rescue Falcon. https://t.co/O3h8eCgGJ7”
“@anandmahindra Engineers, artists & creators of all kinds. There is so much to build.”
“@martinengwicht @DatHandsomeJerk @vincent13031925 @Teslarati @panasonic Yes, Germany has outstanding engineering talent”
“@ID_AA_Carmack Thanks John, really admire you too! I think you’re one of the best engineers ever. Hope you return to working on rockets one day.”
“@CJDaniels77 31 engines, but with room to add 11 more down the road. Kinda have to.”
“@iamacloudguy @Model3Owners Good news on this front. Tesla engineering rallied & this will be part of V9. Going through final testing now.”
“Not having a big gas guzzler engine in front means there’s room for trunks in front & back, plus longer crumple zone for best safety of any midsize car”
“@isco__ They should go where their heart takes them, but some of the boys seem to be interested in physics & engineering”
“@thanr Glad to hear that. Engineering team also getting feedback from the British dive team on how to improve the design for future applications.”
“@Katheri93719178 @dtemkin Yes. Caves are now filled with water again. Difficulty of passage is massively dependent on water level. Little kids can walk/swim in when low, but it can be deadly to pro divers when high. Pump & generator engineering team deserves some credit for the rescue.”
“@blake_kistler @BBCWorld Ironically, the “billionaire” label, when used by media, is almost always meant to devalue & denigrate the subject. I wasn’t called that until my companies got to a certain size, but reality is that I still do the same science & engineering as before. Just the scale has changed.”
“@BBCWorld Moreover, based on extensive cave video review & discussion with several divers who know journey, SpaceX engineering is absolutely certain that mini-sub can do entire journey & demonstrate at any time.”
“@vcastillo630 @adblanche I am an engineer”
“@JamesWorldSpace Inflatable tubes & pods being made out of Kevlar for better abrasion resistance. A SpaceX engineer happens to be in Thailand & is headed there now. Could one of the divers DM me? Need approx contour of most difficult sections for tube fab.”
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