Full-Flow Staged Combustion Engine Cycle (2D)

Next-generation methane/LOX launch vehicles owe much of their performance not to the propellant itself but to how the engine feeds it. This 2D companion simulator renders the same real turbomachinery plumbing as a flat, pannable and zoomable schematic — twin tanks, twin turbopumps, a fuel-rich and an oxidizer-rich preburner, and a main chamber — driven by the identical power-balance physics as the 3D version. Tune the propellant mixture ratio, total mass flow and the preburner turbine's temperature limit and watch chamber pressure, effective specific impulse and thrust respond in real time. A one-click toggle swaps in the older gas-generator cycle, where a small slice of propellant is burned and dumped overboard unused — instantly visible as a wasted side exhaust plume and a lower achievable chamber pressure, the mechanical reason full-flow staging became the architecture of choice for reusable, high-cadence launch vehicles.