Why rockets dozens of smaller thrusters instead of one giant one?
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You need to get the fuel into the combustion chamber, mix it really well, combust it and push the gas out the nozzle. As a rocket gets bigger, the mixing gets harder and combustion instability gets worse. The biggest single rocket engine is still the F-1 engine from the Saturn V. It’s probably about as big as you can get and have efficient stable combustion. And it is pretty big, the turbo pump alone was making 55,000 horse power just to pump the fuel and oxidizer.
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