4 ms·

They also only run for a few minutes.

• yetihehe 5y ago
  Engines in dragsters are also know to have very high power comparing to engine size, but they also make less than 10k rotations at full power before they fail. That is enough to last one drag race which is several seconds.
  • snypher 5y ago
    The top fuel record is around 3.5 seconds and at 9500rpm is around 600 revolutions for the whole race!
• beerandt 5y ago
  SSMEs are reusable. Designing for thermal cycles and serviceability[0] is at least as difficult a problem as running a hypothetical rocket engine an equal amount of time in one longer, hotter burn. (Such a design isn't needed and wouldn't be practical, but then again multiple aspects of SSMEs being reusable turned out not very practical either, depending on what version of design criterea you evaluate and how the expected vs actual usage changed over the lifetime of the program.) [0]In both the engineering sense, as durability of the various loading cycles (ie lifetime turbine rotations or number of thermal cycles before eol or failure), and as being constructed as able to undergo maintenance and refurbishment between launches.
  • avmich 5y ago
    > SSMEs are reusable. Not as much as RL-10s. SSME you can disassemble - because you should do that, as thermal stresses on turbine blades are too dangerous, so you have to periodically replace the parts which are nearing the fault.