Elon Musk's Starship is set to become the largest and most powerful spacecraft ever built. Here's what makes it so special

The Raptor is the first methane burning rocket engine to launch and will likely become the 1st to reach orbit.

The Starship will launch with double the thrust of the previous most powerful rocket, which was the Apollo program's Saturn 5 moon rocket.

At the heart of the 69 meter tall Super Heavy booster is a very special rocket engine called the Raptor.

SpaceX accomplishes this by implementing a design that no one before has been brave enough to even attempt.

The design of the Raptor is called a full flow stage combustion cycle.

This is something that has never been brought to production by any other aerospace company, and that's due to the exceptionally complex system design.

The process converts pressure into thrust. The faster we can throw that exhaust gas out the back of the nozzle, the faster the rocket will move forward.

The current Raptor version 2 is creating 230 metric tons of thrust at sea level.

Raptor is much smaller than the RS25 engines that powered the Space shuttle and have also been adapted to the SLS moon rocket.

The work going forward on the Raptor design will be primarily to make the engine more simplified and therefore cheaper and faster to produce.