At least as insidious to diagnose and overcome, if not more so, was the transient behavior of the engine components outside of even the turbopumps (e.g., valves

At least as insidious to diagnose and overcome, if not more so, was the transient behavior of the engine components outside of even the turbopumps (e.g., valves, preburners, thrust chamber) and the high sensitivity to all the time-dependent characteristics. Robert Biggs, one of the fathers of the SSME, wrote a great book on it, most (all) of it posted online at: http://enginehistory.org/Rockets/SSME/ssme.shtml http://enginehistory.org/Rockets/SSME/ssme.shtml