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Does the jacket of tubes used to cool the nozzle and combustion chamber in a rocket engine also give it some structural strength? Does it have any function relating to withstanding the pressure of the byproduct gases, or is it for cooling purposes only?

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  • $\begingroup$ The walls of the combustion chamber are exposed to the pressure inside and should withstand it. $\endgroup$
    – Uwe
    Aug 17, 2017 at 20:20

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Take a look at this question: How are rocket nozzles made? In pictures there, you can see that the cooling jacket IS the nozzle in many cases.

In this picture I took of a flown, but scrapped SSME nozzle, you can see that the inside of the nozzle is constructed solely of the cooling tubes.

enter image description here

Here is a close-up.

enter image description here

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