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Were liquid boosters on Shuttle ever realistic?
"Greg \(Strider\) Moore" wrote:
"Fred J. McCall" wrote in message .. . There is no such thing as assembly line production 'spewing out' rocket engines. It made sense to use Merlin engines because the idea was to have three identical cores for Falcon Heavy, sort of like what Delta IV Heavy does. In the event, Musk found they couldn't do that and that they couldn't just use three Falcon 9 cores for Falcon Heavy. The side boosters are now different from the central 'core'. What are the differences? Last I knew the side boosters for the primary flight are B1023.2 and B1025.2 (i.e 2nd flight for those two boosters) It's mostly got to do with mechanical loading. The side boosters are close (but not an exact match) for what they fly on Falcon 9. They're only slightly modified so as to be able to take structural loading from the attachment points on the sides rather than straight down through the center of the core. The center booster requires a lot more structural work to stand loads, both the side loads from the two attached boosters and the increased load on the front of the booster from the second stage and payload. Musk himself has said that he doesn't necessarily expect the first launch attempt to reach orbit and would consider it getting far enough away to avoid pad damage a win. Look at how many Falcon 9 launches failed before they got a success. According to Musk, Falcon Heavy was "shockingly difficult" to develop. It was originally supposed to use fuel cross-feed among the three cores, but that proved too difficult and was dropped. It was originally supposed to be three 'standard' Falcon 9 cores (with Falcon 9 eating the additional structure) but now the center booster is different from the side boosters. Yes, it really is rocket science... -- "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --George Bernard Shaw |
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