2026-10-22
Meco 0.7: The Injector Head, plumbed benches and medals
"The bench is plumbed. The part that matters is still your problem."
Miku
The Merlin 1D finally has its pintle. 0.7 adds the Injector Head, the last assembly between your propellant lines and the chamber. Coaxial or pintle, built in 3D while you type. Six missions now hand you the plumbing, so you only build the part that matters.
Your saved models and finished missions carry over. If you were partway through Mission 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 or 12, that one restarts at its first objective, because it opens differently now.
If you put Meco down around Mission 4, that's the one to come back for. It picks up the line you built in Mission 2, slams a valve shut on it, and ends on a problem the sim hands you for Mission 5.
The Injector Head
Pick coaxial or pintle, slot your two orifice legs, and set the element pattern. The head drives the leg geometry and builds itself in 3D, and the wells repaint as you type. The readings card shows a velocity band for each leg, so you can see which one is running too fast.
Mission 12 now teaches it on a LOX and liquid-hydrogen engine. You place a coaxial head, then tune each leg until its pressure drop sits between 10 and 30% of chamber pressure. That's a standard rule of thumb: stiff enough that a pressure swing in the chamber barely moves the flow (that's how you avoid chugging), soft enough that you aren't paying pump power for nothing.
And the Merlin 1D in Mission 13 gets the injector it's known for: a pintle.
Missions on a plumbed bench
Missions 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 open on a bench now. The lines and the boundary controls are already there, and each bench that can run opens on a chart of its baseline. You build the part the mission is about: the pump stand, the dyno, the turbopump, the gas generator cycle, the injector head. No more rebuilding Mission 8's plumbing to get to Mission 10's shaft.
Every mission opens on a briefing objective too, and every step names the part and the ports you'll see on screen.
Mission 4 teaches water hammer the classic way now. Slam a valve shut on a moving line, watch the pressure spike and ring, then work out how to stop it.
Your run, on the record
Finish a graded mission and the debrief leads with your engine's headline number, then every graded number against its target. Each result with medal tiers earns bronze, silver or gold, and the debrief tells you what the next tier asks for. Gold tells you nothing. You know what you did. The run is logged against your model, and the Models page shows its tier.
Close the app halfway through an objective and Meco asks what you'll do next time. Your note is waiting when you come back.
When a run is refused, it says why
A refused test, connection or placement now opens one panel that names the component and the field in the words on your screen. Press Show and the canvas centres on the part it means.
Canvas and charts
Ports explain themselves, valid targets light up while you drag, and links can switch line shape from the right-click menu. Every chart axis shows its unit, and you can add a variable straight from a chart's menu. Play is now Run Test, and a Max Speed slider sets how fast a run plays back.
Also in 0.7
- One light or dark theme for the whole app, dark by default
- Fluid lines animate while the sim runs
- Every component in the palette explains itself on hover
- Missions 8, 11 and 13 feed LOX as a true liquid at line pressure, with re-measured targets
One to try first: Mission 12. Gold with a stiffness that isn't sitting right on a band edge is worth posting on the Steam Community Hub.
If you play and have a minute, a Steam review goes a long way for a small project like this.