--- title: "Elon Musk Shows Off Pic of Monstrous Super Heavy Booster Engine System" description: "A photo shared by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shows SpaceX employees laying out the pipes for a 29 Raptor rocket engine configuration of its Super Heavy booster." date: "2021-07-29" modified: "2021-07-29" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/elon-musk-monstrous-super-heavy-booster-engine" categories: - "Elon Musk" - "Future Society" - "The Industrialists" tags: - "elon musk" - "SpaceX" - "Starship" - "super heavy" - "the digest" --- # Elon Musk Shows Off Pic of Monstrous Super Heavy Booster Engine System ![A photo shared by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shows SpaceX employees laying out the pipes for a 29 Raptor rocket engine configuration of its Super Heavy booster.]() *\Image: SpaceX\* ## Musk's Monster It's no secret that SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy Booster will be an absolute beast. The rocket stage, meant to launch the also-huge Starship spacecraft into orbit, will be sporting an outrageous number of individual rocket engines — 29 to be exact — making it one of the biggest rocket boosters in history. A photo shared by SpaceX CEO Elon Musk today on Twitter shows the sheer scale of the operation — and how far the space company has come in building the first flight- and orbit-worthy prototype. "Completing feed system for 29 Raptor rocket engines on Super Heavy Booster," Musk wrote in the caption. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1420819718701780995 ## Series of Tubes Rocket enthusiast Scott Manley chimed in in response to the image. "Remember, rockets are a transportation system based on a series of tubes," he wrote in a [response on Twitter](). "So many tubes..." Musk [replied](). Musk [also noted]() that the image showed "just the primary fuel lines! The maze of secondary plumbing and wiring is our greatest concern." The image also shows the massive scale at which SpaceX is operating. Twitter users were able to [identify 23 employees]() working in tandem on the maze of pipes. ## Test Fire The news comes after SpaceX [test fired]() an early Super Heavy booster prototype, dubbed Booster 3, for the first time at its testing facilities in South Texas earlier this month. The massive cylinder of stainless steel ignited just three Raptor engines as part of a brief "static fire" test. Now, Musk says he's ready to scale up hot fire testing. "Depending on progress with Booster 4, we might try a 9 engine firing on Booster 3," he wrote in [a tweet]() at the time. **More on Super Heavy:** *[Advisers Reportedly Begged Jeff Bezos Not to Copy Elon Musk So Much]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()