Staged engine ignition is very cool
The booster’s 33 Raptor engines don’t ignite simultaneously and are instead ignited in banks, or clusters. The first set undergoes ignition with the countdown clock at T-6 seconds, followed by the next set of banks until they’re all lit. On Thursday, this made for a unique visual spectacle, in which the blast beneath the rocket grew iteratively until the rocket was finally able to leave the ground.
