Meco

Meco 0.7: the Merlin 1D in Mission 13 finally has its pintle. Also: • The Injector Head: coaxial or pintle, built in 3D while you type • Six missions skip the plumbing chores • Medals. Miss gold and the debrief tells you why. Hit gold and it shuts up.

In a space game, the engine is a part you pick. In Meco, you design it, with real physics. Wire pumps, injectors and nozzles on a node graph, press Run Test, and the live graphs answer. Design. Test. Fail. Learn.

Here it is, on my machine: the head in 3D, built from the numbers in its fields. Not in the game yet.

Four numbers. Four hundred cooling channels you never had to draw. Go ahead, spin the camera. Then every valve on a schedule, staged in time. Get the sequence right and the engine runs nominal. Meco. Design. Test. Fail. Learn.

Heads-up if you have a saved engine from Meco 0.5: in 0.6, pumps make roughly 9 to 13% less head and torque than they did. An engine that used to close may need a retune. If it suddenly runs lean, the pumps are where to look first.

Meco 0.6 is out. Four numbers. A real engine bell. And you can see it now. The chamber, the cooling, the flow field. Live in 3D. Load the Merlin 1D template. Make it yours.

Miku, your mentor at Mecodyne, leaves a note: do not press Run Test. You press Run Test. A real engine spins up, the graphs start moving, and that is your first day on the job.

Meco 0.5 ships with a new first day on the job. Miku leaves a note: don't press Run Test, I'm in a meeting. You press Run Test anyway. A real Vulcain engine spins up on your screen. So much for the note.