With a production goal of a specific impulse of 382 seconds and thrust of 3MN (~310 metric tones) at 300 bar, Raptor is expected to provide over three times the trust of the current Merlin engines. Musk shared on Twitter that chamber pressure is almost three times as high as Merlin's, so the engine will be about the same size for a given area ratio.
The test firing comes just in time for Elon Musk's highly anticipated talk at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), which is expected to cover in great detail the company's Mars exploration and colonization plans.
SpaceX propulsion just achieved first firing of the Raptor interplanetary transport engine pic.twitter.com/vRleyJvBkx
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 26, 2016
A livestream of the Elon Musk presentation at the IAC will be available over here. His talk will deal with making humans a multiplanetary species, it starts at 14.30 EST and could potentially be the "We choose to go to the Moon" speech of our generation. A lot of people are still very skeptic about private space exploration, but it can't be denied that firms like SpaceX and Blue Origin are changing the space industry in a very disruptive way and I sincerely hope Musk can achieve his dreams.