I would think that the smaller engines would have less severe maintenance needs than a single large engine of the same equivalent thrust, due to the different scales of stresses involved and the overall size of the engine. Also, a multi engine solution can be developed to be fault-tolerant - something a single engine solution can never be. Dan also mentioned the throttling issue, which becomes a big issue for tail-landing high fuel-mass ratio rocket designs.
On the other hand, I was of the impression that bigger engines are typically more efficient than smaller engines. For SSTO solutions I think a combination of large and small engines may do the trick. _______________________________________________ ERPS-list mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
