Going WAY off topic, but to clarify: The SpaceX Raptor I and Raptor II engines use a fuel combustion method called: Full-Flow Stage Combustion. Prior to the Raptor series of engines, the only successful engines designed with this method were originally built during the Soviet Union between 1960-1970. The full-flow staged combustion Russian engine was called the RD-270. Word in the rocket community is the Raptor built by SpaceX to power their new rocket, Starship, is based on the RD-270.The US has fallen that far behind?
It wasn't too many years ago that the US seemed to basically be the number one designer and manufacturer of rockets in the world, and was at the leading edge of new developments. Perhaps this was never actually true, but was actually an artifact of an apparently successful Cold War-era propaganda campaign designed to fool the USSR into believing we were more advanced than we are? I don't think so, but who knows?
Word is that several years ago, Musk purchased a couple surplus RD-270's to back-engineer. That was before the whole Ukraine thing, so there would have been no prohibition on buying surplus hardware from Russia.I mean, this was probably part of a partnership established years ago when Russia-US relations were somewhat better, but still....
Oh, well.