[frederikvs]

I'd say it's pretty impressive. Building and igniting a rocket engine is hard. For more detail, I can recommend watching "Why starting a rocket engine is so hard" by Tim Dodd [0].

It's not "never been done before" impressive, they're a few years behind e.g. SpaceX's Raptor engine, which uses the same propellants, and is also reusable. But still, a new rocket engine is no small feat - the engine is probably the hardest part of a rocket. This is quite literally rocket science.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAUVCn_jw5I

[chroma]

They're more than a few years behind SpaceX. SpaceX reached a similar milestone back in 2016, when they test fired a subscale Raptor engine[1] that produced 1 meganewton (~100Tf) of thrust.[2]

By 2019, they'd tested their full size Raptor at 1.5 meganewtons (172Tf) of thrust.[3] The current production version of Raptor produces 2 meganewtons (225Tf)[4]. SpaceX has successfully tested a newer version of Raptor that produced 2.4MN (269Tf) for 45 seconds.[5]

1. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/780275236922994688

2. "With a thrust of 1MN (225klbf) at sea level, this was to be the first methane full flow engine to ever reach a test stand." https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2016/10/its-propulsion-evolu...

3. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1093424663269523456

4. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1295498964205068289

5. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657249739925258240

[panick21_]

This European engine is comparable to Merlin, not Raptor.