Both propellants would enter the combustion chamber in the gas phase. The Raptor was a bipropellant liquid rocket engine in a full flow staged combustion cycle, with liquid methane fuel and liquid oxygen oxidizer. Both stages were to be powered by Raptors. The first stage was to be a launch booster, while the second stages would be either an "Interplanetary Spaceship" for crewed transport or an "ITS tanker" for orbital refueling. The ITS stack was composed of two stages. In July 2017, Musk indicated that the architecture had evolved since 2016 in order to support commercial transport via Earth-orbit and cislunar launches. A pressure test at approximately 2/3 of the design burst pressure was completed in November 2016. In October 2016, Musk indicated that the initial prepreg carbon-fiber tank test article, built with no sealing liner, had performed well in cryogenic fluid testing. The first firing of a Raptor engine occurred on a test stand in September 2016. That year he unveiled details of the space mission architecture, launch vehicle, spacecraft, and Raptor engines. In 2016, Musk abandoned the Mars Colonial Transporter name, as the system would be able to "go well beyond Mars", in favor of Interplanetary Transport System (ITS). Interplanetary Transport System Interplanetary Transport System It was expected to have up to three cores totaling at least 27 engines. The rocket would be at least 10 meters (33 ft) in diameter - nearly three times the diameter and over seven times the cross-sectional area of the Falcon 9 booster cores. According to SpaceX engine development head Tom Mueller, SpaceX could use nine Raptor engines on a single rocket, just as the Falcon 9 booster used nine Merlin engines. In February 2014, the principal payload for the MCT was announced to be a large interplanetary spacecraft, capable of carrying up to 100 tonnes (220,000 lb) of passengers and cargo. In June 2013, Musk stated that he intended to defer SpaceX's IPO until after the "Mars Colonial Transporter is flying regularly." The MCT vehicle was to be "an evolution of SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster. SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell mentioned that the payload could reach 150–200 tons to low Earth orbit. The idea included reusable rocket engines, launch vehicles and space capsules to transport humans to Mars and return them to Earth. The launch vehicle was described as part of the company's Mars system architecture, then known as Mars Colonial Transporter (MCT). In October 2012, Musk first publicly articulated a plan to build a fully reusable rocket system with substantially greater capabilities than the Falcon 9. From 2011 to 2014, Musk made various statements expressing his hope that SpaceX would send humans to Mars in the 2020s to 2030s. SpaceX began development of the Raptor rocket engine (the engine used in Starship) before 2014.
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