F1 Engine

Does anyone know how much one single F1 engine (Saturn V) cost? Was it a
relative expensive part of this rocket?
As far as I know only one (of Apollo 13) had a failure or something like
that. Was there an investigation of the cause of this incident?

many thnxxx in advance

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 23:09:42 +0100, "eling037"
wrote:

Does anyone know how much one single F1 engine (Saturn V) cost? Was it a
relative expensive part of this rocket?
As far as I know only one (of Apollo 13) had a failure or something like
that. Was there an investigation of the cause of this incident?

many thnxxx in advance

Apollo 13 had a failure of one thes J-2 engines in it's S-II second
stage. I belive it was caused due to pogo (but could be mistaken
here).

I don't belive that the F-1 ever suffered an in-flight failure.

Kelly McDonald

In article ,
eling037 wrote:
Does anyone know how much one single F1 engine (Saturn V) cost? Was it a
relative expensive part of this rocket?

I don't have numbers, but *probably* not. It was unusually large for a
rocket engine, but otherwise wasn't especially high-tech or hard to make.

As far as I know only one (of Apollo 13) had a failure or something like
that. Was there an investigation of the cause of this incident?

No, there were no in-flight failures of the F-1. Apollo 6 had three
failures of J-2 engines, and Apollo 13 had one, but the F-1s always
behaved themselves.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

In article ,
Kelly McDonald wrote:
Apollo 13 had a failure of one thes J-2 engines in it's S-II second
stage. I belive it was caused due to pogo...

Correct. An extremely violent Pogo oscillation local to the S-II center
engine came close to causing catastrophic failure of the whole stage, but
before that could happen, the engine's average performance fell low enough
to trip a "chamber pressure low" sensor switch, and the computer shut the
engine down. There would have been more fuss made about this, except that
(a) a Pogo suppressor for the center engine was already being incorporated
in subsequent S-IIs, and (b) the engine problem was overshadowed by later
events on the same flight.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

Correct. An extremely violent Pogo oscillation local to the S-II center
engine came close to causing catastrophic failure of the whole stage, but
before that could happen, the engine's average performance fell low enough
to trip a "chamber pressure low" sensor switch, and the computer shut the
engine down. There would have been more fuss made about this, except that
(a) a Pogo suppressor for the center engine was already being incorporated
in subsequent S-IIs, and (b) the engine problem was overshadowed by later
events on the same flight.

Yeah, it kind of bugged me at first... I never knew about that until I
saw the movie. The book Lovell and that other guy wrote (originally
titled _Lost Moon_) never mentions it. Until I did more research, I
thought they just made it up to make the movie more exciting...

Ahh, yes ofcourse, It was of the centerengine 2nd stage. I forgot.

Bust is there any information about the costs. Perhaps in relation to a J2?
As far as I know they were both build by Rocketdyne, so I presume they send
NASA an invoice for each engine.
Or did it nor work like that?


"Kelly McDonald"

Apollo 13 had a failure of one thes J-2 engines in it's S-II second
stage. I belive it was caused due to pogo (but could be mistaken
here).

I don't belive that the F-1 ever suffered an in-flight failure.

Kelly McDonald

Thanks,
I read an article in a magazine which said the problem with rocket engines
was (is) to keep the fuelpumps working. So it may not be "High tech" but
the problem is relaiabillity. :?


"Henry Spencer"
I don't have numbers, but *probably* not. It was unusually large for a
rocket engine, but otherwise wasn't especially high-tech or hard to make.

As far as I know only one (of Apollo 13) had a failure or something like
that. Was there an investigation of the cause of this incident?

No, there were no in-flight failures of the F-1. Apollo 6 had three
failures of J-2 engines, and Apollo 13 had one, but the F-1s always
behaved themselves.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

In article ,
eling037 wrote:
As far as I know they were both build by Rocketdyne, so I presume they send
NASA an invoice for each engine.
Or did it nor work like that?

It might have eventually, but as it was, NASA contracted for development
and production including production batches of specified sizes. Sorting
out the pricetag on the actual production engines is a bit difficult.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

In article ,
eling037 wrote:
I read an article in a magazine which said the problem with rocket engines
was (is) to keep the fuelpumps working.

Sometimes, and sometimes not. None of the Apollo J-2 failures were pump
problems, although poorly-understood pump behavior contributed to the
Apollo 13 one.

(On Apollo 6, two of the three failures were due to vibration fatigue
failure of bellows in an igniter fuel line, which had been prevented by
the damping effects of liquid-air condensation in ground tests. The
third was a wiring error: the computer command to shut down one of the
ailing engines went to its neighbor instead!)

(And on Apollo 13, people knew that the J-2 LOX pump ran very near
cavitation, but did not understand that a cavitating pump could act as a
tremendously powerful amplifier for oscillations in feed pressure. The
Apollo 13 problem started out as quite mild Pogo oscillation, which had
been seen before, and then the pump cavitated, which turned a relatively
small oscillation into something that threatened to tear the engine off.)

So it may not be "High tech" but the problem is relaiabillity. :?

Rocket pumps are plenty high tech, as it happens -- often the hardest
part of an engine to develop.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

eling037 wrote:

Ahh, yes ofcourse, It was of the centerengine 2nd stage. I forgot.

Bust is there any information about the costs. Perhaps in relation to a J2?
As far as I know they were both build by Rocketdyne, so I presume they send
NASA an invoice for each engine.
Or did it nor work like that?

According to "Stages to Saturn", Appendix A (p406) the total cost of all
engines for the Saturn-V (i.e. 5 x F-1s, 6 x J-2s, plus spares) was
$23.1 million. Each Saturn V cost $113.1 million to produce. This price
"...exclude[s] all development, sustaining engineering, transportation,
propellants, storage, etc., required to launch."


David
--
per aspera ad astra