[Verse 1]
Four ways to burn it, listen close, don't blink twice,
Gas generator dumps its exhaust, pays a little efficiency price.
Staged combustion loops it back, preburner feeds the main,
Highest performance, hardest to build, pressure and heat and strain.
Expander cycle sips the cold hydrogen, warms it through the wall,
Pressure-fed skips the pump entirely, simplest engine of all.
Four cycles, four philosophies, pick your poison, pick your gain,
Every choice in rocketry is a trade, not a magic chain.
[Chorus]
Горит, горит — она горит, ракета рвётся ввысь,
Cycle spinning, tell me which one, don't you analyze.
Топливо в крови, kislorod moy drug,
Full send to the Moon, во весь дух, no time to look back, look.
Gas gen, staged, expander, pressure-fed — say it, don't forget,
Четыре цикла, one decision you won't regret.
[Verse 2]
Solid motor's grain is sculpted, star-shaped, end-burn, or a cone,
Geometry decides the thrust curve, carved in propellant stone.
Once it's lit it's lit forever, no throttle, no shutdown switch,
Obdurate and unforgiving — burns till the fuel's in a ditch.
Hybrid splits the difference, solid fuel, liquid oxidizer feed,
Safer, throttleable, but the regression rate's a stubborn creed.
Injector plate's the heartbeat, sprays the mix so it combusts even,
Get the pattern wrong, instability's the silent engine-killer, heaven
help the program when the chamber starts to scream and buck —
combustion instability's the reason careers run out of luck.
[Chorus]
Горит, горит — она горит, ракета рвётся ввысь,
Cycle spinning, tell me which one, don't you analyze.
Топливо в крови, kislorod moy drug,
Full send to the Moon, во весь дух, no time to look back, look.
Gas gen, staged, expander, pressure-fed — say it, don't forget,
Четыре цикла, one decision you won't regret.
[Verse 3]
Nozzle's a megaphone for molecules, expansion ratio's the key,
Over-expanded at sea level, under-expanded at altitude, see —
bell shapes bought for one specific sky, altitude compensation's the dream,
aerospike chasing perfection, flexing with the changing stream.
Turbopump spins thirty thousand RPM, don't let it cavitate,
bubbles collapsing on the blades will chew the metal, seal the fate.
Bearings, shaft seals, razor tolerances keeping cryogens contained,
Regenerative cooling routes the fuel through channels, heat reclaimed,
film cooling layers a curtain, ablative just chars and dies,
radiative glows like a stovetop coil against the vacuum skies.
[Bridge]
LOX and RP-1, kerosene classic, dense and tame,
LOX and hydrogen, lightest partners, highest impulse claim.
LOX and methane, Starship's darling, easy to store on Mars,
Hypergolics touch and ignite — pyrophoric, no spark, just contact, no scars needed, self-starting fire.
Restart for TLI, restart for landing, deep-throttle down to a whisper of thrust,
RCS thrusters stitch your attitude straight when the vacuum turns you to dust.