With jet engines, it’s relatively easy to light it up and throttle. I know you can’t shut them down mid-flight and then turn them back on while still in the air, but you can easily throttle them. Now with rocket engines, you can only light most engines 1-3 times, and their throttle ability is minimal. Why is this so?
Thanks in advance.
In: Engineering
Liquid fuel engines can be throttled some. The engines on the space shuttle could be throttled from 67% to 109% of rated power. The problem with lower power levels is that at some point the gas coming out of the throat of the combustion chamber can’t fill the nozzle fully and tends to stick to one wall. This makes the thrust very asymmetric and is a very bad thing. There are deeply throttleable liquid fuel engines that have been developed, but they aren’t very high thrust.
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