NASA Considers Apollo-Era F1 Engine For Space Launch System 197
MarkWhittington writes "A company named Dynetics, in partnership with Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, will perform a study contract for NASA to explore whether a modern version of the Saturn V F1 booster (PDF) could be used on the Space Launch System. These would be the basis for a liquid fueled rocket that would enhance the SLS to make it capable of launching 130 metric tons to low Earth orbit, thus making it capable of supporting deep space exploration missions in the 2020s."
Rocket engines (Score:5, Informative)
This is what I like about rocket engines. A rocket engine designed for a specific load in the 60s and today would have nearly the same design. A modernized F1 is entirely logical.
And before people complain about rocket engines not advancing at the same rate as microprocessors, let me note that the cost of a rocket is primarily determined by its complexity, not the cost of fuel or the size of the engines. A simple rocket engine (like the F1) that burns kerosene and oxygen is often cheaper than super advanced rocket engines like those on the Space Shuttle.
Minor nitpick. (Score:5, Informative)
The F-1 wasn't a booster, it was an engine. The booster stage using the F-1 was the S-1C.
Re:The Best or Cheapest Option? (Score:5, Informative)
Generally speaking, in rocket design, 'efficient' == 'expensive, temperamental, and hard to reuse'. Fuel is cheap, engines are expensive, so if you can throw more fuel at the problem you're usually better off than getting the last 10% efficiency out of the engine through complex design and materials.
Re:Total n00b here (Score:5, Informative)
Costs (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Seems like a tremendous waste (Score:5, Informative)
The Saturn V was the most cost efficient heavy lift launch vehicle to fly. The cost per lb to LEO is only $9,915 which is cheaper than the Atlas V or the Ariane V. The Falcon 9 does beat it but then you have the other metric.
Saturn V 118,000 kg to LEO
Falcon 9 10,450 kg to LEO
Falcon Heavy 53,000 kg to LEO
And that was with 1960s support systems. NASA was working on an improved Saturn 5 and tested F-1a engines that where ligher, had more thrust, and a higher specific impulse than the ones flown in the Saturn 5. Take the F-1a and add modern electronics for control and build the stage using modern methods and materials and you could drop the costs.
What I fear is this is just a tactic to do nothing. If you keep studying the new launch system and changing it you will never have to build it. If you do not build it can never fail so you can never be blamed. As a politico it works well you can spend a ton of money doing studies to save money by finding a better way and when you have spent a lot you can kill the project because "they" have wasted all this money and have not built a thing.
Re:Seems like a tremendous waste (Score:2, Informative)
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an odd number! Why was that gauge used? Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the US railroads. The first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. The people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing, because that was the spacing of wheel ruts in ancient English roads.
Who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since. Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or risk destroying their wagon wheels. Because those chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)
Now, how does this apply to space travel?: When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory inUtah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything...
Addendum: The average width of stone-age roadway ruts was about 4 feet 8 inches, the width of two horses' asses, as they pulled a sled. Thus, some of the major dimensions of our space vehicle components are based on stone-age technology!
Re:Total n00b here (Score:3, Informative)
If NASA wants to break out the most powerful liquid fuel engines ever built, they need to go to Russia with their checkbooks again. At the end of the cold war, the Soviets ended up way ahead in liquid engine design - which can be attested to by the fact that many modern US launchers use Russian engines (RD-180, NK-33 soon) or designs which draw on Russian expertise (RS-68)
Re:Seems like a tremendous waste (Score:5, Informative)
What's up, snopes [snopes.com]. Nice tall tale, though.
Re:Seems like a tremendous waste (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh man... (Score:5, Informative)
What's left of the test area is a toxic and radioactive waste site, as well...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Susana_Field_Laboratory
Re:Seems like a tremendous waste (Score:4, Informative)
Yes
Re:Rocket engines (Score:4, Informative)
SpaceX does not use second-hand parts from Norton.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/mar/25/science/sci-junkyard25 [latimes.com]
Norton has supplied parts to most of the new space rocketeers, including Burt Rutan's Mojave, Calif.-based Scaled Composites, which built the first privately funded manned craft to reach the edge of space, and Elon Musk's Space Exploration Technologies Corp. [aka SpaceX] in El Segundo, which launched the first privately funded craft to reach low-Earth orbit this month, though it malfunctioned after half an orbit.
These private companies can build their 'cheap' rockets because they're bootstrapping with the results of hundreds of millions in 60s NASA cast offs.
Re:Sorry to correct the flag waving, but ... (Score:5, Informative)
Sorry to correct you, but the F1 did bounce around all over the place until they found the correct pattern of holes in the injection plate.
This they did by blowing up a lot of engines, and when they did finally find the correct plate, they tested instability by putting an explosive charge and detonating it inside the combustion chamber while the engine was running. The F1 self-stabilized with the correct plate, within 1/10th of a second.
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BMO
Re:Seems like a tremendous waste (Score:4, Informative)