NASA tests 'Ferrari of rocket engines' set to launch astronauts to Mars

The RS-25, for a trip to Mars, has been tested by NASA. According to reports, the engine was more powerful than the top technology we currently use in automobile and jet industries.

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - CNET.com reported that the RS-25 engine is going to power the Orion spacecraft when pursuing the generation's biggest outer space travel that would be in counterpart of the moon landing of the 1960's.

The developmental test firing of the rocket's engines on August 13 was the sixth out of the seven tests for the main engine of the rocket held at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. The engine was dubbed as the "Ferrari of rocket engines," surpassing the power and capacity of everything our current technology has developed prior to this conception.

"It is the most complicated rocket engine out there on the market, but that's because it's the Ferrari of rocket engines. When you're looking at designing a rocket engine, there are several different ways you can optimize it,"  said RS-25 propulsion engineer Kathryn Crowe. "You can optimize it through increasing its thrust, increasing the weight to thrust ratio, or increasing its overall efficiency and how it consumes your propellant. With this engine, they maximized all three."

Consequently, the resulting RS-25 engine makes those of the modern race cars and jet engines look like wind-up toys, said Martin Burkey of the SLS strategic communications team. He explained, through NASA's Rocketology blog, that the RS-25 engine produces eight times more thrust than the F-15 jet fighter engines, while being twice of its size.

The SLS 70-metric-ton rocket configuration will be powered by four of the RS-25 and two solid rocket boosters of five segments into the deep space for the trip to Mars.

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