The Japanese may have figured out, in theory, what Elon is trying to fix by practice and redundancy: why rockets break down. Apparently the news got out last June but it's only now we got the press release.
Hiroshi Gotoda says the problem is resonance: heat release fluctuations and pressure fluctuations synchronize to each other
. You expect to detonate your chemicals - hydrogen (called "the fuel" here) and oxygen - in one place; the resonance forces a second detonation zone in another place, which place of course wasn't designed for that. Soon you've got the fuel detonating in every place and Elon's lost a Raptor.
I am unsure how this affects longer-lasting detonations but I suggest this as a future avenue of research. Controlling this resonance could turn a curse into a blessing.
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