What's Up with SpaceX's Short Nozzle?

My guy manifests from the aether to talk about something small

Thank you so much Charlie for covering this with a way more detailed explanation!!! When I was watching the mission stream I had so many questions about the new nozzle but we only got surface level info from SpaceX. So I did some googling but the info I found was just a little more in-depth than what SpaceX said on the stream and pretty much stayed in the realm of "it didn't need the performance of the standard, full nozzle" etc, which was rather disappointing. These are exactly the extra details I wanted to know. Again, thank you so much for the nitty-gritty rundown from an actual aerospace propulsion engineer. It's always nice to get it straight from the horses mouth! 😆

The guy who trimmed the nozzle became the world's first rocket surgeon.

Excellent video. Both in-depth & concise. I would also add that the M-vac nozzle also uses film cooling similar to the F-1. Where the cooler fuel rich gas generator exhaust—and this is why I shouldn’t comment until I finished the video😂

I learned from this single video more than from 4 years of playing KSP! Amazing!

Great explanation. You won a subscriber! I was watching SpaceX's 28th Cargo Launch on YT and wanted to know more about that nozzle, did a search and landed here! Fits in with Ignition by John Clark that I am reading now... Keep up the good work.

Awesome! I'm loving this breakdown.

Cool video!

I’ve just watched the CRS-28 mission which also had a short nozzle on the second stage. I googled to look for the reason and this video came up. This is another data point which seems to suggest that the short nozzle is for cost saving reasons. I did note that stage 1 reached apogee at around 145 Km so it really did fling the second stage. It’s interesting to see SpaceX continuing to tweak things after so many launches.

Thanks for the explanation! Here we are November 11, 2023 and they did it again on Transporter 9. Jesse, the engineer narrating the launch, casually mentions the shorter nozzle twice without any explanation and it was driving me nuts.

Thank you! They didn't explain that during the launch feed. Great explanation! Now let's talk about the elephant in the room......WHAT is that monitor on your desk!!??

Loved this! Thank you very much

Heck yeah we found this interesting!

Hey, nice video. Super interesting and nice to hear something unique being covered. Tough to do when there is so much SpaceX coverage.

Super interesting breakdown, great video!

Great Charlie! I saw the nozzle different and I thougt tha they changed the camera angle! 😊 I thought the material of the nozzle was inconel! Thanks for share this video!

Looks like they just did it again. Thanks for the explainer.

thank you for this.

Excellent thank you was bugging me

If the people developing the shorter nozzles are all salaried workers this is an even better financial decision.