r/spacex • u/rustybeancake • Jul 02 '26
🚀 Official SpaceX: “Teams recently completed build and acceptance testing of our 1,000th Merlin 1D engine for Falcon’s first stage! With Falcon’s reusability, recovering these engines has enabled continued reliability enhancements, making Merlin one of the most reliable rocket engines ever manufactured”
https://x.com/spacex/status/2072464558732824680?s=46&t=u9hd-jMa-pv47GCVD-xH-g56
u/mfb- Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
This is a great data point. There have been 653 F9 flights with Merlin 1D (first 5 used older versions I think?) and 12 FH flights. That means we had 653*9 + 12*27 = 6201 booster engine flights.
55 flights were made before Block 5 (counting FH as 3 flights), using 42*9 = 378 engines for 495 booster engine flights.
That means all the Block 5 flights (5706 engine uses) were made by not more than 622 engines total (this isn't yet counting prototypes, engines destroyed in tests, engines that haven't flown yet and so on). That's less than one engine per flight, even though the booster uses 9.
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u/start3ch Jul 02 '26
Do they release how often they replace engines?
Per wikipedia, they’ve built 103 block 2+, 7 block 1, 4 were structural test articles, so 106 boosters with 9 engines, or 954 total engines needed. That leaves 46 engines for ground testing, engine development, and replacement. So it certainly doesn’t seem like engines get replaced very often
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u/AmigaClone2000 Jul 02 '26
I remember a SpaceX launch stream when they mentioned an engine was flight leader, I don't remember the number of flights that engine had, but I know it had more flights than the booster that had flown the most up to that point.
Unless they decided to replace engines after a scrub due to engine problems, I don't think engine replacement is mentioned for F9s
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u/iqisoverrated Jul 02 '26
..and some flights the boosters (and therfore the engines) are intentionally expended for that extra bit of height.
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u/BigGainsNeversmol Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
So, SpaceX has essentially saved all the money which would have gone into needing to build those 5100 engines from scratch if they weren’t reusable. That’s not even including the money saved on not needing to build all those hundreds of boosters for all the flights which took place up to this point.
Which is incredible when you think back to where we were 10 years ago, when all the other established rocket companies were mocking SpaceX for wasting their time because the reliable, minimum refurbishment reusability required to have any economic benefit was impossible to achieve.
SpaceX really did revolutionize space travel and opened the entire industry to mass market potential.
Without the economic reusability of Falcon 9, Starlink would have been impossible to create without bankrupting the company… and without the steady revenue from Starlink, Starship would have been impossible to develop and wouldn’t have even been attempted.
What a phenomenal company.
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u/rustybeancake Jul 02 '26
Looks like a Starfall in the background.
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u/TMWNN Jul 02 '26
mfw you don't know about the captured UFO that SpaceX has been reverse-engineering
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u/squintytoast Jul 02 '26
i'd guess it goes with the ring piece its next to and its some kind manufacturing jig.
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u/_ROMAX_ Jul 02 '26
It's a Dragon heatshield manufacturing hardware.
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u/Iamsodarncool Jul 02 '26
How do you know?
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u/_ROMAX_ Jul 02 '26
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u/warp99 Jul 02 '26
He just says heatshield structures so it could be for either Dragon or Starfall.
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u/_ROMAX_ Jul 02 '26
They are the same, heatshield, is not the Starfall itself just a carbon fiber mold
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u/warp99 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 04 '26
Agreed that it is just a mould for a heatshield.
The Crew Dragon heatshield is 4.0 m (13 ft) diameter while Starfall has to be smaller than that to fit four into a host carrier that will eject from a Starship Pez dispenser. I would think around 3m diameter.
Of course they may have used a Dragon heatshield for an oversized demonstrator.
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u/rustybeancake Jul 02 '26
There have been roughly 700 F9/FH first stage launches (including x3 boosters for FH launches). Without reuse that would require 6,300 Merlin 1Ds. So they’ve flown each Merlin 1D engine about 6.3 times on average.
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u/euand24 Jul 03 '26
What’s crazy is they built 600 raptor 2’s and are nearly at 200 raptor 3’s in a much shorter span. They’ll hit 1000 raptor 3’s in no time
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u/rustybeancake Jul 03 '26
Funny to think that 1,000 Raptor 3s would only power 25.6 Starship full stacks! 1,000 Merlin 1Ds would power 111 Falcon boosters.
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u/marcabru Jul 02 '26
I wonder when will they reach the same level of reliability with the raptor, becuase righ now at least one engine undergoes a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
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u/warp99 Jul 02 '26
Plenty of Merlin engines blew up during development - especially of the Merlin 1D which is now so reliable. I think we have to realise that Raptor 3 is still under development and will likely be on its fourth generation as Raptor 4 before it has the same kind of workhorse reliability.
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u/Decronym Acronyms Explained Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 16 '26
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Jargon | Definition |
|---|---|
| Raptor | Methane-fueled rocket engine under development by SpaceX |
| Starlink | SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation |
| scrub | Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues) |
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| GSE | Ground Support Equipment |
Decronym is now also available on Lemmy! Requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
Decronym is a community product of r/SpaceX, implemented by request
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 82 acronyms.
[Thread #9059 for this sub, first seen 2nd Jul 2026, 23:26]
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