Bezos: Rotating machines and turbopumps gain efficiency at larger sizes
Jeff Bezos · Lessons from Jeff Bezos · Dec 18, 2023 · at 8:34
Jeff Bezos, founder of Blue Origin, explains why turbopumps and rotating machines operate more efficiently at scale to Lex Fridman.
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“All rotating machines, in fact, get more efficient as they get larger. So really tiny turbo pumps are very challenging to manufacture and any kind of gaps, you know are like between the housing, for example, and the rotating impeller that pressurizes the fuel, there has to be some gap there. You can't have those parts scraping against one another and those gaps Drive inefficiencies. And so, you know, if you have a very large turbopump, those gaps in percentage terms end up being very small.”
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