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What is the future of Liquid Rocket Engine Plumbing?

Currently, turbomachinery is the most commonly used system to hydraulically power the plumbing in LREs. As a future college student who will be studying these, I've always wanted to know what others think about the alternatives to the turbine and pump methods. The decreased lifetime of LREs due to these "extra" moving parts provides a challenge to decreasing the costs and increasing the reusability of modern rockets. I figure this is something important to consider before we go further into increasingly complex designs, especially considering the current most advanced systems are using full-flow staged combustion designs, which use two preburners to power the oxide and fuel pumps. There are a few alternatives; however, they all have their own issues, and overall, I am most curious about what innovations would best solve the issues for these other designs that would allow them to be superior.

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Joseph’s Answer

Interesting question. More of a technical question than a careers question - you might be better off looking to a technical-specific engineering or space forum - and/or seeing what you can get out of an LLM chat on the subject - but we can take a stab at it.

As far as my knowledge goes, I've heard of one space company using electrically driven pumps, which reduces the moving parts compared with the turbopump concept, but I don't think it solves all the problems.

If you're looking for a paradigm-changing innovation, you probably have to look for ideas that are a bit more "out-there". For instance, what about magnetohydrodynamic drive? It's had attention in the maritime sector for no-moving-parts pumping, and it's also been considered for space applications around nuclear thermal rockets. I don't think it works with a lot of rocket fuels due to electrical conductivity issues, but perhaps in combination with a suitable exotic fuel or in a fuel doped with conductive particles, there could be something to an idea like that?
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