In article ,
Pat Flannery wrote:
limits your engine options because there's no *room* for a multi-engine
cluster in such a narrow stage.
Ahem: aerospike or plug cluster. Would fit great.

Ignition altitude is pretty high for that; at the low ambient air
pressure where the second stage will light, you might just as well use a
conventional bell nozzle.

No, an aerospike still has advantages for this one: it's a high-expansion
nozzle that's physically short, so you don't have a big long interstage
ring adding to the length and fragility of this already-overlong rocket.
Of course, it's a bigger leap into the unknown than a new engine with a
conventional nozzle.
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