Why doesn’t SpaceX sell Raptor engines commercially?

Question

I have never studied rocket science and am just curious about this.

I would assume one Raptor 2 engine could launch a small rocket to space. I heard they are able to make them for less than a million dollars. Wouldn't that be amazing for meteorology and weather prediction? You could launch them vertically and have them land in a desert with drogue chutes. Retrieve and repeat. This should be cheap enough to send up to look at a hurricane or something like that.

Or rocket hobbyists who might sell it after a successful launch.

These markets alone could account another 100 engines a year which could help bring down costs with scale.

Why doesn't this exist?

Answer 1

Wouldn't that be amazing for meteorology and weather prediction. You could launch them vertically...

In addition to GremlinWranger's points, atmospheric science rockets don't need bleeding-edge performance. Going straight up is easy; it's the horizontal speed needed to get into orbit that requires a very efficient engine, and weather science packages tend to be lightweight compared to communications satellites, humans, and other expensive payloads. Sounding rockets, therefore, use cheap but inefficient solid rockets, which are simpler to produce as well as easy to operate at minimally equipped launch sites.

Answer 2

In addition to the points raised by GremlinWranger and Russell Borogove, SpaceX sells launches. Why bolt whole logistics and sales and support and integration teams onto your company so somebody else can put a payload somewhere and make a middleman fee? SpaceX makes its money putting peoples' payloads up. They would prefer to keep that middleman fee for themselves, and if that payload is too small to merit buying a whole Starship ride, there's always rideshare.

Answer 3

There are a number of rocket science reasons why SpaceX has not tried to sell Raptor, but a practical one is simply that, with Super Heavy needing 33 engines each and ambitions to sustain launch rates of 100 per year, they need all the engines themselves.

Selling a mere 100 engines would involve adding sales, support and integration teams for an already busy company for low profit, especially where they can instead sell people a ride on a Falcon and get the money for a whole rocket.

This changes in two ways: If SpaceX is successful in the 2030s and has a factory capable of producing engines in large numbers, but only needing spares for a standing Starship fleet selling off spare capacity (and skilled staff) to third parties starts making sense.

If SpaceX is unsuccessful then there will be a large pile of engines without any rocket, and someone might choose to buy them at scrap price to re-purpose.

Answer 4

In addition to the points brought up by others...

I would assume one Raptor 2 engine could launch a small rocket to space.

No. Given the size of the Raptor 2, even with a relatively high T/W ratio you'd be looking at a suborbital vehicle holding a hundred tons or so of cryogenic methane and oxygen, about the same size class as the booster of a medium orbital launcher. The engine would not be your main cost. Nor is this remotely within reach of hobbyists. Also, parachutes would probably not suffice for recovery...this rocket would have about half the liftoff thrust of the original Falcon 9 booster, which SpaceX attempted to recover this way without success.

Answer 5

In addition to the already present answers, rocket engine development is very "emotional" and seen by many engineers and rocket startups as the "sexy" part of the rocket. There's a lot of ego and prestige involved in making one because it's such an integral part of a launch vehicle--making a functional engine is a huge source of personal and fiscal validation. What better way to prove that you've got the engineering chops to build a rocket than designing the engine?

Further complicating the fact is ITAR. SpaceX is an American company and would not be able to sell their engines outside of the US to countries/companies/groups that might want to go cost-cutting by skipping their own R&D program.

This factor, along with the low demand for them (the launch market is basically running at capacity right now if you include Starlink) means there are hardly any customers and not much incentive find any.

Maybe, in a decade or two when the access to space, and specifically process of building rockets, becomes more commoditized, we might see a change here. This has already happened in other sections of the space industry: hardly anyone who builds a satellite nowadays builds the engine too. There is a healthy and rapidly growing boutique / cottage industry that produces ready-to-use satellite maneuvering systems and thrusters.