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As a rocket combustion chamber grows larger, so does the chance of a destructive combustion instability. The Russian solution was to split that up into smaller chambers resulting in multiple nozzles. It was a practical solution to a challenging engineering problem.

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Agree. Decision to make engines multi-chambered had to take into account the overall situation existing at the moment.

For example, when in 1954 Energomash was designing RD-107, it had to make a decision which would allow to make engine soon - and they couldn't make single-chamber engine for the thrust required. So they went for multi-chamber design, since they didn't have time to do it differently.

In "Осуществление мечты" an engine professional, who worked in Energomash, mentioned that when Energomash was choosing 4-chamber design for RD-170, there were two groups of specialists defending different approaches. One group - which had experience with RD-107 (multi-chamber engine) and RD-270 (biggest one-chamber Energomash engine) - advocated single-chamber design. Another group - which had experience with RD-253 (single-chamber) and engines for Kosmos launcher - advocated multi-chamber design. The decision was influenced by having the instrumentation necessary to conduct testing of smaller chambers independently.

Thanks! Who knew breaking a large problem into smaller chunks works in rocketry as well ;-)

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