What Are Rocket Engine Cycles?

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"Without all the pretty pictures. So what are rocket engine cycles?" "You have a really good video called that, I mean, a lot of your videos that are technical are just exceptionally well done," he says. In an open cycle engine, you basically have like a separate small rocket engine in a sense,. it's a gas generator, they call it. And that will be used to create some, we'll say 10% of your the propellant flowing to the engine. That would be considered like open cycle, closed cycle, full flowStage combustion cycles are ways to tap into the propellant and get heat and pressure into an engine.

Tim Dodd is host of the Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel, where he teaches about rocket engines and all things space travel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(06:18) – SpaceX rockets
(26:56) – Falcon 9
(31:08) – Starship
(35:27) – SpaceX rocket engines
(43:05) – Elon Musk
(58:41) – Twitter
(1:04:46) – How rocket engines work
(1:09:37) – Rocket fuel
(1:13:03) – Rocket engine cycles
(1:25:27) – Rocket cooling
(1:40:24) – Multistage rockets
(1:43:57) – Single-stage-to-orbit
(1:49:33) – Aerospike engine
(1:57:18) – Greatest car engine of all time
(2:02:27) – Starship
(2:05:19) – Wet dress rehearsal
(2:11:29) – Landing
(2:25:47) – Seeing starship in person
(2:34:54) – Starship orbital test
(2:41:32) – Gwynne Shotwell
(2:46:43) – dearMoon project
(3:05:46) – Fear of death
(3:14:12) – Everyday Astronaut origin story
(3:40:04) – Soviet Rocket Engine History
(3:58:51) – Russia, China, USA
(4:13:20) – Starlink
(4:21:06) – First human on Mars
(4:24:04) – Moon landing
(4:30:11) – Nuclear propulsion
(4:37:51) – Bob Lazar
(4:44:54) – Aliens
(4:48:42) – Sci-fi books
(4:52:00) – Long-term space travel
(4:58:47) – SpaceX competitors
(5:10:07) – Kerbal Space Program
(5:16:33) – Advice for young people