Research progress in high thrust liquid oxygen methane rocket engine technology

Liquid oxygen and methane, with its many advantages such as having rich sources and low temperature of combustion, exhibiting good cooling performance, and being hard to coke with little carbon accumulation, has broad application prospects in reusable engines, making high-performance and high thrust liquid oxygen methane rocket engines a hot research direction for major aerospace tasks such as deep space exploration in the future. The performance parameters of liquid oxygen methane, liquid oxygen kerosene, and liquid oxygen liquid hydrogen propellants are calculated and compared, and results show that high thrust liquid oxygen methane rocket engines are superior in reusable primary propulsion engines. This paper summarizes the development process of high thrust liquid oxygen methane rocket engines at home and abroad, and introduces the six key technologies involved in the development of high thrust liquid oxygen methane rocket engines and the development progress of various technologies in China. Correspondingly, the main problems that urgently need to be solved in the development of high thrust liquid oxygen methane rocket engines in China are identified. The future engineering applications of reusable high thrust liquid oxygen methane rocket engines in China are discussed.