F-1B engine

"Anonymous" wrote in message
.. .

"Brian Thorn" wrote in message
news
I contest that it will be cheaper and easier to produce. Mark my words,
it will be at least as expensive as the original, probably vastly more
expensive.


Labor alone should be greatly reduced. As I recall the original engine
bells were all hand-brazed.

The new design eliminates that.

costing hundreds of millions (if not billions) of $
with very little to show for it.

If the engine's price is cut in half, that could be worthwhile.
Especially if the engine finds other applications, such as flyback
boosters for EELV's successor.


There's no way the price will be cut in half. In fact, I'll wager you
that it will be twice as expensive as the original. The low-production
rate will probably be cited as the reason.


That's a wager I'd be willing to take I think.

Keep in mind the F-1 was built at a low-production rate.


The same thing happened with the J-2 where they just couldn't leave well
enough alone. The 'small changes' they proposed for the J-2X took more
than a decade to implement. Longer than the original
engine took to develop!

See above. Many of those changes were mandatory due to 21st Century
manufacturing and materials being very different than in the 1960s.


What manufacturing and materials are you referring to? I refuse to
believe that we can't simply put '60's designs back into production.


We could. The question is worth it.


I often wondered since they're putting both the J2 and F1 back into
service why they didn't opt to revive the entire Saturn V rocket?!

Saturn V was built in an era of "waste anything but time." Cost was
not a factor. Today, it is. Also, Saturn V's third stage was a kludge,
chosen for expediency (it could fly on Saturn IB, too) rather than
operational suitability. A better design (had they not been facing a
tight deadline) would have been a third stage the same diameter as the
first and second. S-IVB was a bit of a waste of space.

And Saturn V never did totally cure that pogo problem.


The 'cost is no object' mantra actually resulted in Apollo being much
cheaper than most people think.

Really? Define "cheaper than most people think."

ISS and Shuttle have cost much more over
their lifetimes since too many corners were cut to
save a few pennies here and there. In addition Shuttle killed 14 people
because it was based on a flawed principle, namely the
'airliner-ization' of space.

And the Apollo program killed 3 astronauts in a ground test because of the
schedule.

And almost killed another 3 on the way to the Moon.
It came close to killing 3 more after ASTP.


IIRC the pogo problem stemmed from engine thrust variations. Maybe it
can be solved with modern avionics, but it wasn't a showstopper in any
case.


No, that's not what caused the pogo problem. And it nearly ripped apart
Apollo 6 and caused problems on several flights.

It would be much cheaper than spending $30+ billion on that
monstrosity called SLS (a rehashed Space Shuttle), which will end up
using most of the parts of the Saturn V anyway. Sigh.


If they can build SLS then it would be equally doable for them to build
a new Saturn V. Yes, it will most likely cost the same amount of time,
but at least you don't have to test fly the hardware
like they're doing with SLS. And who knows what that will bring up.


Not really. Just building the tooling alone to build the 1st stage would be
a huge change.

And your certainly DO have to flight test it. Regardless of how much you
think it's like the original, there are enough changes, you'll flight test
it.

Hell, the 747-800 is an incremental update of the venerable 747 and has
undergone 100s of not 1000s of hours of flight testing.

I believe that the whole idea that we were wrong and are best off moving
back to Saturn V abhors some people within NASA. They don't want to
admit that they wasted half a century (!) on Shuttle
and squandered the U.S. lead in space. So instead of doing the logical
thing they dash forward with some stupid new design which is supposed to
be more modern, but really isn't and endangers the
lives of yet more astronauts.

BTW is the SSME still in production or is there a sufficient stock for
use with SLS in the foreseeable future? The engines will not be
recovered so they too may have to be replaced by some other
engine after the stock runs out. Sigh...



Not in production. Why would it be?





--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

"Matt Wiser" wrote in message ...


"Nun Giver" wrote in message
...
On Monday, April 15, 2013 5:11:19 PM UTC-7, Anonymous wrote:
"Jeff Findley" wrote in message

...

Essentially, the F-1B is an F-1A (extensively ground tested, but never

flown) that has been re-worked to be easier to manufacture. The other

notable difference is that the fuel rich exhaust of the gas generator
is

dumped "overboard" on the F-1B (the F-1A injected this fuel rich
exhaust

into the nozzle to help with cooling).





Links originally posted on ARocket email list:



How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 "moon rocket" engine back to life
The

story of young engineers who resurrected an engine nearly twice their

age.



http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...e-monstrous-f-

1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/





For God's sake! Why do they keep wanting to change things?! Just keep

the F1-A as it is and simply put it back into production unmodified. All

the changes they propose will cost at least a

decade to develop, costing hundreds of millions (if not billions) of $

with very little to show for it.



The same thing happened with the J-2 where they just couldn't leave well

enough alone. The 'small changes' they proposed for the J-2X took more

than a decade to implement. Longer than the original

engine took to develop!



I have serious reservations about the capabilities of the current

generation of aerospace engineers. It seems to me they know a lot about

computers but little else.



I often wondered since they're putting both the J2 and F1 back into

service why they didn't opt to revive the entire Saturn V rocket?! It

would be much cheaper than spending $30+ billion on that

monstrosity called SLS (a rehashed Space Shuttle), which will end up

using most of the parts of the Saturn V anyway. Sigh.

Its a training project for a current generation of engineers and yes a
new re-engineered Saturn would be better than a system with solid rocket
boosters.

the generation is dead and gone.......................Trig


The other problem: LBJ ordered the Saturn V tooling destroyed before he
left office. That, IMHO, was just as criminal as one Robert Strange
MacNamara ordering the SR-71 tooling destroyed, or Mr. Peanut issuing the
same order Minuteman.

As opposed to wasting money on tooling that was never expected to be used
again.

(and I believe it was under Nixon that finally ended all hope of the Saturn
V.)

And considering that we've still got Minutemen sitting (thankfully) in
silos, I'm not sure that was a bad decision.





--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:28:54 -0700, "Matt Wiser"
wrote:


The other problem: LBJ ordered the Saturn V tooling destroyed before he left
office.

He may have ordered it, but it didn't happen. Saturn V tooling
survived into the early 1970s. S-1C was still a prospect for Shuttle's
booster as late as 1971.

Brian

In article ,
Brian Thorn wrote:

On Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:28:54 -0700, "Matt Wiser"
wrote:


The other problem: LBJ ordered the Saturn V tooling destroyed before he left
office.

He may have ordered it, but it didn't happen. Saturn V tooling
survived into the early 1970s. S-1C was still a prospect for Shuttle's
booster as late as 1971.

Brian

Resurrecting the Saturn V in its original design would probably be a
mistake, as newer, lighter composites are now available, along with
CAD/CAM and virtual reality design software.

1. No need for the fins, since gimballed engines and digital flight
controls are all that is needed.

2. The Instrument Unit does not need the heavy, power-hungry stuff
designed in 1965. New computers don't need much space, power or weight
requirements.

3. The engines, as stated earlier, don't need the regeneratively-cooled,
hand-brazed nozzles. They can use more modern materials now.

4. The whole vehicle would require an effort similar to the old one to
man-rate it.

Orval Fairbairn writes:

I don't think that the Russians ever solved the problems that they had
with their moon rocket. IIRC, one blew up on the pad, wiping out a
number of their technical staff; another blew up in flight.

I am not up on current liquid-fuel designs, but, IIRC, design of the
shower head is more of an art than science, and the wrong design can
result in detonation, rather than combustion.

The larger the motor, the greater the risk of detonation.

The design of the N1 was botched, the engines were fine. There were only
very few launchers that failed because of detonating engines anyway and
a wrong design here usally shows up way before a launch.

Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

On 4/23/2013 11:04 AM, Orval Fairbairn wrote:
I don't think that the Russians ever solved the problems that they had
with their moon rocket. I

Perhaps, but the old Russian NK-33 engines from that program sure seemed
to run pretty smoothly last Sunday on the Orbital launch from Wallops
Island. I believe Orbital plans to manufacture more when their stock of
old engines runs out?

Vaughn writes:

On 4/23/2013 11:04 AM, Orval Fairbairn wrote:
I don't think that the Russians ever solved the problems that they had
with their moon rocket. I

Perhaps, but the old Russian NK-33 engines from that program sure seemed
to run pretty smoothly last Sunday on the Orbital launch from Wallops
Island. I believe Orbital plans to manufacture more when their stock of
old engines runs out?

I think they have 30-35 of them and making new ones will be in no way
trivial. Probably easier than starting from scratch, but re-engineering
decades old russian engines isn't exactly a piece of cake. Think of
recreating the F1, just without all the background information you still
may have or may be able to gather about them.

Jochem

--
"A designer knows he has arrived at perfection not when there is no
longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Orval Fairbairn writes:

[...]

I don't think that the Russians ever solved the problems that they had
with their moon rocket. IIRC, one blew up on the pad, wiping out a
number of their technical staff; another blew up in flight.

I'm afraid you don't "RC". All four N-1 launches (their Saturn V
analog) failed during their first stage burns, but none resulted in a
loss of life on the ground (nor in flight, since they were all without a
crew). First one suffered an engine failure, causing 2 engines to be
shut down (they were shut down in pairs of diametrically opposed engines
to preserve thrust balance) followed by a fire in the engine compartment
which caused the remaining 28 engines to be shut down around 65 seconds
into flight; the powerless but fueled rocket fell to the ground and
burned, though its launch escape system worked and the descent module of
the dummy payload landed under parachute, so presumably a hypothetical
crew would have survived.

The second failed immediately after launch and fell back on the pad,
resulting in a conflagration that destroyed the pad. You are probably
thinking of this accident and conflating it with one of two launch
accidents (of unrelated launchers) the Soviets had that DID kill ground
personnel.

(The third and fourth launches likewise suffered first stage failure,
though neither caused damage to their launch pad. The third launch had
an uncontrolled roll that caused a shutdown after 50 seconds; the
onboard controllers had been modified to wait until then to ensure the
launcher would not fall onto the launch pad. The fourth launch failed 7
seconds before first stage burnout.)

"Chris Jones" wrote in message ...

Orval Fairbairn writes:

[...]

I don't think that the Russians ever solved the problems that they had
with their moon rocket. IIRC, one blew up on the pad, wiping out a
number of their technical staff; another blew up in flight.


Good synopsis on the part of Chris.

I suspect he's conflating the N-1 flights with the Nedelin disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe





--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net

On Tuesday, April 16, 2013 12:40:55 AM UTC+12, Jeff Findley wrote:
Essentially, the F-1B is an F-1A (extensively ground tested, but never

flown) that has been re-worked to be easier to manufacture. The other

notable difference is that the fuel rich exhaust of the gas generator is

dumped "overboard" on the F-1B (the F-1A injected this fuel rich exhaust

into the nozzle to help with cooling).





Links originally posted on ARocket email list:



How NASA brought the monstrous F-1 "moon rocket" engine back to life The

story of young engineers who resurrected an engine nearly twice their

age.



http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...e-monstrous-f-

1-moon-rocket-back-to-life/



----------------------------------------------------------------



New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of

thrust Dynetics and Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne rebuild the F-1 for the

"Pyrios" booster.



http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...gine-upgrades-

apollo-era-deisgn-with-1-8m-lbs-of-thrust/



----------------------------------------------------------------



Gallery: Behind the scenes at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center We

watched a rocket test and came away with a ton of awesome photographs.



http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/...the-scenes-at-

nasas-marshall-space-flight-center/





--

"the perennial claim that hypersonic airbreathing propulsion would

magically make space launch cheaper is nonsense -- LOX is much cheaper

than advanced airbreathing engines, and so are the tanks to put it in

and the extra thrust to carry it." - Henry Spencer

Fascinating and accurate stuff.

Yet, I am wondering if this is the right way to go.

Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) rockets have been the subject of research for the past 20 years. Basically, you take an inkjet print head, replace the colored inks with rocket propellants - a four color inkjet would then contain a hypergolic oxidizer and fuel pair along with a highly energetic oxidizer and fuel pair, that would start up with the hypergolic, and continue with the high Isp pair.

http://cap.ee.ic.ac.uk/~pdm97/powerm...53_Epstein.pdf

Tests with arrays show that 50 psi is possible and costs and areas are similar to that of HDTV plasma screens. So, we're talking $10 per square inch, $5 per pound. So a 1.8 million pound thrust engine would take an area of 36,000 square inches (250 sq ft or 23 sixty inch plasma screens) and cost $360,000 in quantity! A disk 17.84 ft across. Larger than than the 12.2 ft diameter nozzle, smaller than the 18.5 ft height. With a thrust to weight of the MEMS engine this engine would weigh 1,800 lbs one-tenth the F1B.

The wafer arrays would be set like heat shield tiles around the rim of a large aerospike engine forming a ring. A seven element launcher where each element has one of these guys at its base, with each massing 1.4 million lbs at lift off. Would put up, with a hydrogen/oxygen propellant combination, 175,000 pounds, with recovery of all seven elements!

A similar system on orbit, though with smaller area and reduced thrust, would be capable of landing a substantial payload on the Moon, and returning it safely to Earth, with reuse of the lunar lander.

The same vehicle adapted for Mars would send substantial payloads there and retrieve them.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/45631474/S...rived-Launcher