How NASA Brought the F-1 Rocket Engine Back To Life 221
First time accepted submitter Martin S. writes "How NASA Engineers have reverse engineered the F1 engine of a Saturn V launcher, because: 'every scrap of documentation produced during Project Apollo, including the design documents for the Saturn V and the F-1 engines, remains on file. If re-creating the F-1 engine were simply a matter of cribbing from some 1960s blueprints, NASA would have already done so.
A typical design document for something like the F-1, though, was produced under intense deadline pressure and lacked even the barest forms of computerized design aids. Such a document simply cannot tell the entire story of the hardware. Each F-1 engine was uniquely built by hand, and each has its own undocumented quirks. In addition, the design process used in the 1960s was necessarily iterative: engineers would design a component, fabricate it, test it, and see how it performed. Then they would modify the design, build the new version, and test it again. This would continue until the design was "good enough."'
F1 engine (Score:5, Funny)
Bernie Eccelstone is suing for trademark infringement
iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:5, Insightful)
the design process used in the 1960s was necessarily iterative: engineers would design a component, fabricate it, test it, and see how it performed. Then they would modify the design, build the new version, and test it again. This would continue until the design was "good enough."'
take note modern IT managers - this is agile, not that bastardised process-heavy "agile" scrum-style crap you do today.
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every IT shop... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, if one is doing a one off project, or a prototype that will then be given to someone else to redesign, the perhaps this is the a good method.
Every mid to large sized IT shop I've ever seen or worked in (dozens) has basically been a "one-off project" when viewed as a whole. Yes sure, every one is basically built out of off-the-shelf hardware and OSes, but there is so much customization and scripting, customized apps and databases and communication software, and other various "glue" bits holding these microcosms all together, but after you examine the innards of any decent sized IT shop that's been running a while, the place as a whole is actually a giant hodge-podge Rube Goldberg contraption that has evolved and taken final shape over time and iterative development.
We've not building Henry Ford assembly line Model Ts here.
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be brainwashed by all this "process" crap. These days you have to talk to guys in their 60's and 70's to get the full oral history, but they wistfully recall days when the emphasis was on getting things done and making them work, rather than mindlessly following "process". There were always procedures and so forth to keep documentation straight, but it was a means to an end instead of an end in itself. These days you get more brownie points for following process than you do for making things work. "Process" should be a way to get things done, not a fetish.
Nor was everything simple in the old days. For example, the B-29 project was hideously complex. If they'd injected modern "process" instead of making it work and writing ECO's, everyone west of the Mississippi would probably be speaking Japanese now.
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:5, Informative)
In fact, many of the hated design processes these days were actually invented by the Apollo program. They were the brainchild of Gen. Sam Phillips, who was brought in to NASA after the spectacular failures of the Pioneer and Surveyor programs. He had learned process management while leading the Air Force's Minuteman ICBM program, and it was he who dragged the NASA engineers, kicking and screaming, into a world where they had to actually document everything they did. He even wrote a memo a year before the Apollo 1 fire predicting the extreme dangers of the seat-of-the-pants approach Apollo had previously been taking.
A perfect counterexample to Apollo's process system was the European Launcher Development Organization's [wikipedia.org] failed Europa rocket. With six nations contributing engineering work to the rocket and no centralized direction, failure was inevitable.
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What were those "spectacular" failures of the Surveyor program? The 5 out of 7 missions were successful. Those were the IIRC the first U.S. lander missions to the moon, BTW. Sure the Pioneer program had a more dismal record.
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In fact, one of the primary missions of Apollo 12 was to touch down very close to one of the Surveyor probes, so that they could retrieve equipment that had been exposed to cosmic radiation for a number of years, so it could be studied.
They ended up touching down 185m from Surveyor 3.
Not bad for 1969, after flying almost half a million kilometers to get there on less computing power than a modern day feature cellphone has.
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:4, Interesting)
What they did back then, and what they call "process" today, are two different things. Talk to some old timers. Here on Long Island I've met guys who worked on the LEM (built about five miles from where I grew up). Every engineer hates documentation, but good engineers appreciate that a certain level of formal specs and documentation (of designs, test procedures and test results) are necessary. There's an easy way to determine whether documentation serves a purpose or is just horse shit. Put yourself in the place of some poor slob picking up the documentation 5 or 10 (or even 50) years from now, and decide whether reading what you're writing would be useful to them. If it would be, it's useful. If you'd skip over it as something that was judged by how much it weighed, it's garbage.
I'm mostly a hardware guy. I've worked in places where the documentation was awful and caused many problems. I've also worked in places where there was endless procedure and process, and while the documentatin weighed enough to satisfy project managers and process fetishists, it was often wrong. My favorite was when I worked for a small East Coast subsidiary of a large West Coast (LA area) company. There was a heavy mil influence at the parent, and every drawing had more stamps, signatures and dates than the Declaration of Independence. It was also often wrong. Sometimes I'd hit a schematic I couldn't figure out, and feeling like an idiot, call the designer, only to have him tell me he knew it was wrong! Meanwhile our garage shop (50 people tops) had dead nuts accurate documentation. In some cases I had things like cable drawings on a piece of scratch paper, but they were accurate, had the proper revision and approval info, and were properly logged into documentation control. Ask for the complete set of drawings for one of our satcom terminals, and you'd get a copy of it. The right rev and completely accurate. Documentation and procedures (oops, I mean process) has gone from something that's a means to an end, to a fetish that justifies the existence of buzzword spouters. ISO9000 anyone?
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There's an easy way to determine whether documentation serves a purpose or is just horse shit. Put yourself in the place of some poor slob picking up the documentation 5 or 10 (or even 50) years from now, and decide whether reading what you're writing would be useful to them. If it would be, it's useful. If you'd skip over it as something that was judged by how much it weighed, it's garbage.
Not true. Process and procedures change as technology and organizations change. Hardly anything is useful 5 to 10 years out. However, that in no way invalidates it's usefulness today. I work in networking and a snapshot of the network design today is invaluable when troubleshooting problems. 5 to 10 years down the line, the same documentation would be useless without updates.
I'm mostly a hardware guy. I've worked in places where the documentation was awful and caused many problems. I've also worked in places where there was endless procedure and process, and while the documentatin weighed enough to satisfy project managers and process fetishists, it was often wrong.
This is the crux of the problem with most documentation, inaccuracy and failure to keep it updated. Documentation needs to be pe
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:5, Informative)
That is wrong.
There are many computer programs still in active use that are more than 10 years old that could benefit from good documentation.
More than once, I've used documentation over 100 years old (obviously not computer-programming related) that proved to be very useful in designing heating, ventilation, and plumbing for an old building.
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And yet, with today's "processes", an extension of that mentality, nothing seems to be able to complete on time and anywhere near budget.
There's a point when processes are good enough, where they just work, and things are still getting done. Don't forget that processes increase time and effort for the engineers, but produce meta-work that does not contribute directly to the output. Processes are useful only if that meta-work can save the engineers more time and effort in future work, than the meta-work requ
That "process crap" is vitally important (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't be brainwashed by all this "process" crap. These days you have to talk to guys in their 60's and 70's to get the full oral history, but they wistfully recall days when the emphasis was on getting things done and making them work, rather than mindlessly following "process".
All that "process crap" is exactly how any successful engineering project is done. The space program in the 60's and 70's was no exception. Do some reading about the actual engineering that went on and you'll quickly realize it was ALL about developing working processes. A process is nothing more than a set of procedures used to accomplish a task. If the task has to be communicated to someone else or cannot be overlooked or is just plain complicated, documentation becomes a vital aspect of the process. You can't build something as complicated as a space ship without a huge amount of extremely robust processes and accompanying documenation. Developing effective production processes isn't mindless busywork - it is among the most challenging and important things we do. The best manufacturing companies spend a tremendous amount of resources on process development because without them they would be unable to function.
If you want to ensure that a rocket blows up, by all means ignore developing processes and don't worry about documenting or communicating the procedures used. Just be a cowboy and "get it done". When you have no way to discover what went wrong, who was responsible, when you were supposed to do it or how to do it again you might begin to understand why process is important. My company makes wire harnesses and we've made products that have gone into space. For even the simplest cable with a crimped terminal on one end we typically have about 15+ pages (and often much more) of assembly instructions, QA instructions, machine setup instructions, QA logs, shipping and packaging instructions, manufacturing orders (how many to build and when to build them), bills of material, training documentation, defect logs, packing slips, and invoices. And every bit of that documentation is genuinely important. Without robust processes in place it would be complete chaos to try to make even the most basic products, never mind something as complicated as a F1 engine. All that "process crap" lets us build a high quality product (repeatedly if needed), diagnose and correct any problems that may arise, and make sure everyone knows what they are supposed to do and when they are supposed to do it.
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:4, Insightful)
"everyone west of the Mississippi would probably be speaking Japanese now"
Doubt it.
Don't be so skeptical. Ever work for a defense contractor? If the same approach was used in the 40's as today, the Arsenal of Democracy would still have been holding meetings while the invasion was underway.
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:4, Insightful)
The saturn V was not production, was only reliable with great effort, and with incredible highly skilled and trained people.
I agree with the majority of this sentence, save for the first section.
The Saturn V was launched ten times as part of a mission, which would make them all "production". That's a total of fifty F1 engines (5 per each first stage). If I'm not mistaken, two unmanned tests were scheduled; I cannot remember if it was tested on those after the engine became flight rated. With a usage window for the engine in production from 1968 to 1973 (Skylab).
I believe the OP was referring to the process to get the engine flight rated with all the nuances noted, which means his initial heads up to the managers of today accurate.
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:4, Insightful)
I one read an overview of the CMM levels, and what struck me was this:
At level one, it doesn't say the organization is hopeless, doomed to failure, it says "success depends on the skills of exceptional individuals"
The rest of the levels are built on a fantasy it could be otherwise.
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The saturn V was not production
There were 15 Saturn V rockets, with many spare parts.
was only reliable with great effort
There was not a single F1 engine failure.
and with incredible highly skilled and trained people.
Going to space is not monkey business. highly skilled personnel is also required to operate and service an Airbus A-320, and they have sold *thousands* of them.
Something one does not want to have to deal with when trying to make a profit.
Want to bet that the builders made a buck or two?
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You know, we used to call it simply, "engineering" - back before business school type managers stuck their dicks into the soup and soured the pot for everyone.
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That is what you call continuous integration and test first. But what else should they have done, there is so much you can do on paper. Only in the last two decades are we in the position where we can reliably "test" without ever building something physical and even there only on a limited scope. But even there, the effort put into building a digital model is similar in effort than a physical one. The only part you save are the actual resources and maybe an explosion or two.
Re:iterative dev, no docs, took us to the moon... (Score:5, Funny)
65 unique, poorly-documented builds?
Sounds like a typical SAP migration to me.
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Um, we went to the Moon nine times. Six missions resulted in manned landings on the Moon surface, one attempt resulted in an abort (Apollo 13) and merely went around the Moon.
All of these, IIRC, used the Saturn V.
You, know whoever you are, you are wasting your meager talents here. You should be writing for HuffPo. Or Slate.
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A correction, Apollo 7 used a Saturn IB, for an orbital mission, no LM. This was the only Moon mission not to use a Saturn V.
The Saturn V launched 13 times, all successful.
Sheesh.
Mentioned this last week (Score:5, Interesting)
I mentioned this in a comment last week [slashdot.org]. Manned spaceflight in the USA is essentially a matter of history, not something we know how to do today. If we wanted (for whatever reason) to go back to the moon, we'd bascially have to start over from scratch. It would probably take as at least as long as the original Apollo program, and cost far more.
After the fall of the Roman empire, knowledge of concrete was lost, and for about 500 years Europeans were walking around Roman buildings and upon Roman roads that they had no idea how to recreate. Right now all our Apollo engineers are dead or dying, and the Astronauts will soon follow suit. Soon there will be no living human who has set foot on another world. Then we will know just how those Medieval Europeans felt when we go look at our old Apollo relics in the museums.
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Why would we not just put people in a dragon capsule? If we really cared about having a sack of mostly water on site.
Why would we go to the moon? Why not send robots?
It seems pointless to send humans to do something a machine can do better.
Re:Mentioned this last week (Score:5, Insightful)
Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men.
-Gus Grissom
This was also proven in several instances where manual human intervention saved a mission when automated systems failed.
Before you counter, yes, there were also man-made mistakes that caused problems during a mission. (Example Lovell's mistake in Apollo 8, which he manually corrected, and then used the skill on Apollo 13 when he didn't make a mistake).
I'd also agree that sending the Mars automated rovers were the best first step, rather than jumping right to a manned landing.
I think the thing we must accept is that both manned and unmanned missions are useful and different in their abilities & goals. Calling one "better" is over-simplifying.
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Robots are cheaper, send more of them to do different tasks.
So far PR is the only reason I have ever seen for sending humans.
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Robots can only do the tasks we imagined they would need to do when we get there.
Humans can use their imagination to change what they do based off of the new information received.
In addition, the technology of getting off this rock is a worthwhile pursuit. As Dr. Hawking pointed out recently, we have to get off this planet & colonize somewhere else to increase our chances of survival.
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Supporting humans costs and arm and a leg.
Without the ability to survive at that location there is no value gained in going there. If you are still stuck waiting on supplies from Earth there is no survivability gained.
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I have to agree. If I wanted to plan for the long road of human survival off-earth I'd focus first on figuring out terraforming, or operating sealed self-supporting environments (something that you can do just fine on the ground on Earth).
Once you can create completely self-sufficient and reliable environments with nothing but solar power input, then you can talk about sticking those up in space. I see no reason to stick those down on some planet at the bottom of yet another gravity well - just stick them
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So go use robots and other more automated vehicles to create the means necessary for human survival.
For instance, send a robot to Mars ahead of future human exploration and set up a habitat, start making oxygen, water, and foodstuffs.
No need to wait till we get there to start terraforming/colonizing a small piece.
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>Without the ability to survive at that location there is no value gained in going there.
It's a good thing King Ferdinand & Queen Isabella didn't share your view. In a more recent context, I suspect there are quite a few people in Las Vegas and Dubai who'd beg to differ (not to mention Antarctica, undersea, the summit of Mt. Everest, and South Florida around August & September).
If you were exiled to what's now Las Vegas 500 years ago, and had to somehow live off the land without external supplies
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> So far PR is the only reason I have ever seen for sending humans.
And PR is what generates public (and ultimately political) support for NASA's budgets. If NASA decided to reinvent itself as an agency focused exclusively on pure science, and eliminated everything you might regard as "PR Fluff" from its mission, it wouldn't *have* a mission within 10 years. It would end up on the chopping block and get cut the next time there was any kind of budget crisis. Oh, ok... it might not get abolished and defunde
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I think that says more about our culture than it does about NASA or manned space missions. NASA should be doing just that, but cannot just to keep the idiots happy.
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several instances where manual human intervention saved a mission when automated systems failed
Sure, they used the shuttle to put spectacles on Hubble but only because they already had the shuttle. Do the overall economics make sense? Unmanned missions are so much cheaper that you can just send another if the first fails. A bit embarrassing but no dead astronauts.
I'd also agree that sending the Mars automated rovers were the best first step, rather than jumping right to a manned landing.
For a fraction the price of a manned mission, we could send fleets of ever more advanced rovers. Probably even bring samples back to Earth. And go to even more interesting places, like the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
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I have to agree with this. If 20% of your robotic missions fail due to the inability to adapt, and each mission is 1/50th the cost of a manned mission, I'd call that a big success for robotics. How many Ranger probes did we crash into the Moon before we actually got useful data from them? Even so, in total they cost a fraction of what the first Apollo landing cost.
If we spent on robotic missions the way we spend on manned ones we'd have probes launching every other Tuesday, and we'd lose probes a few tim
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Our God-given curiosity will force us to go there ourselves because in the final analysis, only man can fully evaluate the moon in terms understandable to other men. -Gus Grissom
Gus was biased by his desire to go there personally. I don't blame him, but he wasn't planning to buy his own ticket. He also said that back when robots were incredibly primitive.
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Don't underestimate lag time.
An HD camera that is sending real-time video back on a ROV that is being controlled by a human in real-time is a far cry from the long delays of planet to planet communication.
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>It seems pointless to send humans to do something a machine can do better.
Because PR. People can relate to a human stepping foot on the Moon/Mars/Asteroid/etc. and get excited about it. Excited people will want to spend more money doing it. It's good for the whole program. Now, whether that is worth the extra expense is obvious up for debate, but you can't deny that there is a benefit to having a human go to these places.
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It seems pointless to send humans to do something a machine can do better.
Cheaper, but far from better. We've learned a lot from the Mars rovers for example, but in all the years they've been driving around up there, a geologist on-site could have learned more about the planet in a weekend of study there.
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Cheaper is often better. That means we can actually afford to do it.
I doubt that geoligist would agree, and even if he did it would cost more to land him there than we spent on exploring mars so far. Nevermind the cost of keeping him alive for the weekend, no returning him.
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It seems pointless to send humans to do something a machine can do better.
I think this somehow ties into nerd personality -- dehumanizing things because they can't relate to the human element of it. Nerds have weak social skills and just can't relate to things which have a social value.
Part of the reason for sending humans into space is because exploration of the unknown is part of the human experience. You can rationalize the practical end of it as advances in engineering and science (life support system
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So to keep idiots happy we should send men up? That is what you are saying.
I weep for humanity.
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Why would we go to the moon? Why not send robots?
It seems pointless to send humans to do something a machine can do better.
This has been answered a hundred times before by people who can do a much better job. Still...
Its not so much the destination that's important, but the technology to get there and survive. Neither is it about packing up a bunch of stuff from earth and taking a vacation on the moon. Its about building sustaining environments that don't require resupply from the earths biosphere. That is
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It is certainly possible for machines to have capability to repair themselves. For robotic space exploration, though, it's simply cheaper to design a machine that can tolerate some likely failures while still completing the mission, while taking the chance that some other failures will end the mission. Remember: those kilograms delivered safely to Mars's surface are very expensive.
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Concrete was a useful technology. I'm not sure that's true of manned space flight. For a fraction of the money you can send a robot.
As someone who grew up as an enthusiastic proto-nerd on the Gemini and Apollo programs, I hate to say that. I still feel privileged that I lived at the time in history where I could watch the first man walk on the moon. But amongst the things we learned is that manned space flight is hideously expensive, and our robots have gotten a lot better since then too.
Re:Mentioned this last week (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, a robot is cheaper, but you get what you pay for. Steve Squyres (you know him, he's the guy in charge of Spirit and Opportunity) once noted that what the rovers had accomplished in five years could have been done by humans in a mere five days. (In fact, the total mileage covered by both rovers is less than one days traverse by one of the lunar rovers.) Robots are great when you want to mindlessly collect great heaping mounds of the same data, day after day... But at anything much more than that, they're still far inferior to people. (Which is why all three rovers to date aren't actually robots - they're teleoperated.) And there's nothing on the horizon to think that'll change anytime soon.
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And added bonus, NASA doesn't get shut down for a investigation for years when something goes wrong either. Lets not also forget that there are a huge amount of assumptions in that "a human could have done it 5 days". Like say no need to wear a space suit. We were on the moon for a lot of days. And quite frankly didn't get much done at all.
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In some fantasy universe where the main limits on robotic performance is cash and mass, sure. But that's not the universe we live in. Here in the real world, the limitations on robotics are technological - despite the fact that over many decades, by many organizations, many, many, times to amount that's been spent on manned space has been poured into computa
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In some fantasy universe where the main limits on robotic performance is cash and mass, sure.
Then you compare walking speed to rover motion speed. Both things are easily solved with mass and budget. And we are talking about a massive increase in both mass and budget here. In fact half of the this very slow progress is NASA over abundance of caution. Oh and the fact they don't have the energy budget for better computers on board because of mass constraints.
Yes, there's huge assumptions there - like "humans will perform to their usual and proven standard".
What proven record? On earth doesn't count. For mars there is the trip to consider, with both physical and psychological effects. And the suit th
Re:Mentioned this last week (Score:5, Insightful)
Except - this story reveals your claim to be bullshit. We have (literally) tons of documentation on how they did it, and that's just the beginning...
In some fantasy world where we had stopped rocketry and spaceflight development and operations... you'd be right. But here in the real world, we're still flying rockets, we're still developing engines, and electronics, and materials, and... well... pretty much everything required for a moon flight. (In fact, there's a lot of Apollo components that will never see the light of day again because they're obsolete... long since replaced with something better.)
One might as well complain about how nobody has built a Wright Flyer in over a century and how everyone who ever designed of flew one is dead.
(Seriously, how does drivel like this get modded "Insightful", when it's clueless bilge?)
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If you read TFA, you'll see that the design process for the F1 was basically to try almost random variations until they found one that worked. These days, we have a much better understanding of what happens in a rocket engine, and much better tools to help with the design of a new engine. So if we did start from scratch, we'd arrive at a working design much sooner. Compare SpaceX' relatively trouble-free entrance into the launcher market with the explosion festival that was NASA's early years.
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This. A call to arms for the next gen space explorers.
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That's if you limit your definition of "knowledge gained" to JUST what was discovered on the trip itself!
What about all the knowledge gained by figuring out how to do it? That's where the real gains came from.
We really are in the "corporate era" aren't we? We believe as a society right now that nothing is worth knowing unless there are immediate financial gains involved. It's not healthy. Eventually there won't be any platform of new fundamental science to grow the "practical" stuff from, so it's self d
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Your definition of "defeat" may be erroneous in your referenced context. Keep in mind that in the "corporate era" the goal of corporations becomes that which has so far been assigned to nation-states and governments - to perpetuate. (Profit being secondary to perpetuation.) From the perpetuation point of view, "new fundamental science" is really a big hassle, because it opens to door to disruptive technologies, and disruptive technologies tend to unseat comfortable incumbent corporations.
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In may ways, though, reverse engineering a design is more difficult than starting from scratch. To re-engineer a design and continue production without notes explaining the design rationale, you basically end up recapitulating their entire design process. You have to try to rationalize design errors that they made and decide whether you can fix (what appear to be) suboptimal design choices. Major design decisions may have been based around materials deficiencies that we don't have today, but if you don't ha
Zomg! (Score:4, Funny)
The biggest engines we could buy for our model rockets was the D. This F is awesome!
And it's just the F1 !
You can buy up to a "G-80" nowadays.... (Score:2)
, and if you pass a certification test, commercial motors up to an O-8000 are available if you have the cash:
http://www.pro38.com/products/pro150/motor.php [pro38.com]
Model rocketry has come a LONG way since cardboard Estes rockets in the schoolyard....
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But could an F-1 even lift its own weight? After all the venerable D was at least a D-13, and even the C series was typically a C-6. At that scaling I would have expected the F to be something like an F-50.
Perhaps the solution is that we're using a "new engine scale", kind of like ST:TNG moved to the new Warp scale instead of the old W**3 of ST:TOS. And of course since it's a first-stage booster, it would be an F-1-0. (I wonder what the ejection charge delay would be for a single/upper-stage version.)
Best it was on paper, not computers (Score:5, Insightful)
A typical design document for something like the F-1, though, was produced under intense deadline pressure and lacked even the barest forms of computerized design aids.
Thank goodness for that. People still know how to read paper drawings. If it was computerized, we might be able to read the media if it survived (1/2" mag tape or punch cards) but would probably have to spend a lot of time reverse engineering obsolete CAD formats.
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There is much truth here. I remember when my advisor in grad school pointed out that we have stone tablets from a few thousand BC which we can read today, but he has tapes up on a shelf that he couldn't read without essentially re-engineering the systems used to create them.
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There is a company doing archival documentation work, and their solution is to etch small characters onto a metallic wafer. To read, you need a microscope - and know how to read the language it was written in.
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Paper will never die.
Imagine Da Vinci had stored his notes on magnetic media. I wonder how much of it would have survived and been restorable for general consumption (hint: probably none).
Digital storage makes duplication and sometimes modification much easier. But all it really does is commoditize the knowledge that's being stored. I.e., only the worthless stuff really qualifies to be stored digitally.
And how is this different than the F-35 JSF progra (Score:2, Insightful)
We constantly test, and call it good enough. The difference is the fighter is going to cost more than the Saturn missions...go figure.
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We constantly test, and call it good enough. The difference is the fighter is going to cost more than the Saturn missions...go figure.
Well, there is no doubt a ton of waste in the fighter programs, but do consider that the Saturn V did not have to deal with people trying to shoot it down, only had a run of a dozen or two units, and each unit only had to work one time on a single day, only spending a few days outdoors. That means that you could have a complex series of tests/checks/etc that all take place up until launch which are good for only that one launch. You can't exactly design an F-35 so that you need to reassemble the thing fro
This is amazing (Score:3)
These are the types of Articles I still come to Slashdot for ... and for the comments, which have (sadly) diminished in quantity in the last decade. Amazing engineering work, amazing science.
Some things are far easier now--computers help (Score:2)
Hello,
Some people are claiming that all spaceflight knowledge in this country has been lost and it would cost far more (in constant dollars?) to re-do what was done in the 60's to get us to the moon. I'm not so sure.
I'm working in an engineering field (not rocket science) which was dominated by experimentation/prototyping when it was "hot" (WWII and shortly thereafter). Giant teams of people (100s or more) would be doing what our very small team is today (3-ish).
nice if we had a reusable engine (Score:2)
Meanwhile, Space-X builds the Falcon Heavy (Score:2)
Meanwhile, Space-X is building the Falcon Heavy [spacex.com], with twice the payload of the Space Shuttle. The Falcon Heavy is three Falcon-9s. The Falcon-9, which is in current production and has been launched successfully several times, uses 9 Merlin engines. The Merlin engine is in current production, and about 400 a year are being manufactured. The first Falcon Heavy launch is scheduled for this year. For an actual commercial customer.
So why is NASA trying to build a big booster again?
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I think the article and summary refer to the engineering process. In the 60s you did not have CAD applications. Sure they had computers, on the ship, on the ground and all, but not in the engineering department. Engineers where able to make technical drawings and hand that of to workers building the actual thing. Oh yea and they assisted and oversaw the work done, to correct any misunderstandings. It worked, why add computers.
Why computers? Because they help. A LOT. (Score:3)
Sure they had computers, on the ship, on the ground and all, but not in the engineering department. Engineers where able to make technical drawings and hand that of to workers building the actual thing. Oh yea and they assisted and oversaw the work done, to correct any misunderstandings. It worked, why add computers.
Why add computers? Because it makes the lives of us engineers who do what you are describing (I am one) VASTLY easier. I've worked on a drafting table and I know how to use a slide rule. I've designed products and overseen their production. While it can be done without computers I don't really relish the thought of going back to the days without them. People who pine for the "good old days" when we didn't have computers to help with the work almost invariably never had to actually do real engineering w
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This is true. Although I am bit too you to remember it. I do recall the black and white vector CAD monitors, and that damn strobing lightpen that we had to tap the glass of the monitor with. Talk about bleeding eyes.
I also remember the thrill when the software went from mainframes, to run on x286 PCs, and it was fast too!
SPICE [Re:Lacked the barest of computer aids...] (Score:5, Informative)
They had CAD applications, just not what you think as CAD. Anyways, this is interesting, because when do you think CAD applications started? Did the whole thing just pop into existence fully formed, or were there intermediary steps? Just on the electronics side, look at something like SPICE. It didn't pop into existence with a GUI on a personal computer, it started as a punch-card reading batch application on a mainframe.
SPICE dates to 1972. The Saturn V had been designed, built, flown, and out of production for years by the time SPICE was released to the public.
To be fair, SPICE derived from CANCER ("Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation"). But that was also not released to the public ready until the early 70s (the paper describing it was dated 1971: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=1050166 [ieee.org] )
Boom, computer aided design.
"Boom," just in time to be ten years too late to be used in the Apollo program.
ECAP is older, but no CAD for Saturn V (Score:2, Interesting)
The Saturn V was designed with paper and slide rules, and very little computer work.
As far as circuit simulation goes, ECAP is probably the first full circuit simulator. I have a copy of the manual for the 1620 version, but it's dated 1970, but there are earlier versions. All written in FORTRAN. I'll bet that almost no computer simulation was done for the electronics on the Saturn V.
For thermal and mechanical FEM analysis, NASTRAN started in 1964 and was delivered in 1968 Not used for Apollo, but used
Computers not in routine use in engineering in '63 (Score:3)
SPICE was a combination of earlier programs...
Right. Specifically, what I said was "SPICE derived from CANCER ("Computer Analysis of Nonlinear Circuits, Excluding Radiation")."
So, you think they didn't use computers to solve numerical problems in 60s? Problems related to design? Is this what you are claiming?
The article said that the F-1 engines were not designed with computerized design aids. That is correct. CAD was just being developed-- in fact, it used to be called "Computer Assisted Drafting", long before it became a design tool-- and was not being used at MSFC back then.
http://www.cadbuilt.com/cad-drafting.html [cadbuilt.com]
I don't think you have much of a memory of what engineering was
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They used freakin slide rules back then dude. What passed for computers in the early 60s was shit. Get over it. Go do some CAD/CAM on your TI calculator - it is probably an order of magnitude more powerful.
Re:Lacked the barest of computer aids? (Score:5, Insightful)
Compared to what we were doing at NASA in the 90s - much less by today's standards - the 60s really were lacking in the barest of computer aids. In hindsight, the assistance of computers was amazingly rudimentary. The ability to do structural analysis was being built "as they needed it" and independently in each group or center - NASTRAN, even in its earliest state, didn't exist yet. These are the people who started developing tools which didn't exist.
You have to remember - this was a time when Battin was using discrete math to plan missions, and a general n-body problem was considered unsolvable (and, afaik, still is in explicit form - but is trivial on modern computers for relevant values of n).
Re:Lacked the barest of computer aids? (Score:5, Informative)
I have a news flash for you, young man. Numerical solutions, on computers, for the n body problem were being done in the 1950s, S. von Horner being a notable person in the field.
Yes, analytical math can be used to plan orbits, even done today for first passes. my senior year physics project was orbital calculations by both numerical and multi-variate calculus. No reason what I did couldn't be done on say an IBM 701 or 7000 in the 50s...
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"So Black and Decker were able to use computers to design a small permanent magnet motor, but NASA itself was using what for the F-1? Was NASA ordering envelopes by the carton for their back-of-the-envelope calculations?
Yes.
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I find these urban legends amusing. NASA had IBM mainframes circa 1960, the 7090 at AMES for example
Re:Lacked the barest of computer aids? (Score:5, Insightful)
This flies in the face of at least history. It also flies in the face of the usual mythology that NASA invented the computer. Which is it?
I never heard that myth. But NASA and its contractors were pioneers in some CAD tech, like FEM (finite element modelling), and the computers for Apollo spacecraft designed at MIT/Lincoln labs were marvels of miniaturization for their day.
But by 1963 manufacturing, at least for the money-means-nothing military, was already computerized.
Maybe a tiny amount of it. Don't confuse NC (numerically controlled) with CNC (computer numerically controlled). NC was developed largely in the late 40's and was widely used by the 50's. It used relay logic and so forth. CNC was too expensive until "inexpensive" minicomputers came along later in the 60's, and didn't take off until micros came along in the 70's. The video probably shows a futuristic "we tried it who cares what it costs" type of setup, like Doug Engelbart's WIMP interfaces in the 60's. Good forward looking stuff, but not necessarily ubiquitous, even for NASA.
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The myth only pops up with a certain subset of people who are utterly convinced that NASA spinoffs include computers and ICs.
I'll give you that. I've heard the same sort of ignorant worship for many things.
wasn't the whole Moon landing a "we tried it and who cares what it costs" type of exercise as well?
ii Sure it was, but I'm skeptical of NASA using much CNC. It was very rare then and NASA's focus was on going to the moon, not developing manufacturing techniques that were not essential to that effort. NC may be another story, and already widely used. With few exceptions, CNC (and even NC) are more about doing things cheaper than about doing things you can't do by hand. For a handful of units, who cares.
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whoooosh.
do you even understand what CAD stands for?
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Wow dude.. get a grip. "NASA engineers worked in an air conditioned room" would be translated to you to mean "NASA engineers were using life support systems" "NASA accountants used adding machines to see if the project was in cost" = "NASA used computers to do the project!"
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I never heard the myth about NASA inventing the computer. And I've heard a LOT of myths about computers and space. I'm not saying the myth doesn't exist, but if it does chances are it's a very rarely said one.
As for "lacked even the barest forms of computerized design aids" perhaps they just mean that the design lacked the creation / use of them. Not that there were no aids available for them had they chosen to use them.
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Heck, I recall being told that in the 1940's they used a computer for the Census and that was way prior to the push to the moon.
I could see that the push to the moon ADVANCED the computers of the era but definitely didn't create them. Like perhaps a bump in power / clock-speed / utility / etc. Or new architecture or just new ways of thinking. I don't know if that actually happened but it's a valid assumption.
In which case, the general theme of "another moon trip == new advancements" still holds.
Heck, tha
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Agreed - for the most part. Banking and Financial-Trading are probably pushing networking and data-processing to the limit.
But I mean for the Moon / Mars / Elevator... the technology in general evolves (not just computers). Materials, manufacturing processes, various gadgets. Sure, toy manufacturers + car manufacturers + etc. push lots of new tech, but going to space means more out of the box thinking which can lead in advancements going in new directions instead of further along the same direction.
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Banks were among the earliest commercial users of computers.
And tea shops [wikipedia.org].
Re:Lacked the barest of computer aids? (Score:5, Interesting)
This flies in the face of at least history. It also flies in the face of the usual mythology that NASA invented the computer. Which is it?
NASA didn't invent the computer. However, in the 1950s computers were room-sized assemblies of hardware. NASA and the Air Force were the only two entities that needed computers that were smaller than that (the Air Force to put in missiles, NASA to put in spacecraft). The Block I Apollo computer was the driver for integrated circuits, and hence the grandfather of all of today's desktop computers (called "microcomputers" back in the old days, when "non-micro" computers meant the Univacs and 1103 and the other big iron of the day.
http://www.computerhistory.org/semiconductor/timeline/1962-Apollo.html [computerhistory.org]
They had no computers, or they invented them?
Both.
It's neither, actually. But by 1963 manufacturing, at least for the money-means-nothing military, was already computerized.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=_1g1b_EeVHw&NR=1 [youtube.com]
Why do you think it's called "numerically controlled" and not "digital"? It's because the whole concept is so old that the wording has had time to become obsolete.
The comment you're responding to was about computer design tools--CAD--not about numerically-controlled milling machines. And for that matter, the numerically-controlled milling machines of 1963 weren't really what you would call general purpose computers.
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And the Navy (to put in missiles as well as shipboard), and the Army (to put on missiles and mobile launching equipment), and all four services to put on aircraft...
Slide rules, not computers [Re:Lacked the bare...] (Score:5, Informative)
They needed them smaller, but banks and businesses needed them cheaper and more reliable.
Correct. NASA was the driver for small computers, where "small" meant "smaller than a room." Pretty much all other applications-- such as the banks and businesses you mention-- used timeshare on big mainframes. Or, for the early 60s, sent the punch-cards to the mainframe to be entered.
By the way, in 1963 banks mostly didn't use computers. You youngsters are too young to remember when a bank "passbook account" meant a physical object that the teller wrote in by hand.
How can NASA be a "driver" for ICs when they were using generic commercial ICs????
They paid the companies to develop those products in the first place, because they didn't exist until the NASA contracts to develop them. The IC was developed with Air Force and NASA funding, because at the time, those were the two customers for whom integrated circuits were an enabling technology.
The comment you're responding to was about computer design tools--CAD--not about numerically-controlled milling machines."
They designed the parts on computers.
Wrong.
They fabricated the parts as part of a computer-driven process.
Wrong.
Look, learn something about 1963 before posting so confidently about how engineering was done with computers back in the early 60s, OK? Do you even know what a slide-rule was???
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By the way, in 1963 banks mostly didn't use computers. You youngsters are too young to remember when a bank "passbook account" meant a physical object that the teller wrote in by hand.
I had one of those when I was little in the 80s. At that time the teller didn't write in it by hand but it had printed entries from the dot matrix printer the teller would put it into. I had forgotten about those accounts until you mentioned it.
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... by 1963 manufacturing, at least for the money-means-nothing military, was already computerized.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=_1g1b_EeVHw&NR=1 [youtube.com]
Unfortunate choice of future technologies to demonstrate, at 4:00 min into the video the V-22 Osprey is shown.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1g1b_EeVHwM#t=3m57 [youtube.com] starts at that point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-22_Osprey#Controversy [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why?!? (Score:4, Informative)
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Why? Because sometimes reverse-engineering something that has been shown to work is cheaper than going through the entire development process from scratch. The fact that F-1 engines were built manually and designed without the use of electronic computers doesn't mean that they are much worse for it. Why the heck do you think a lot of Chinese products were reverse-engineered western designs?
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From another article linked in the original:
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Adam.S wrote:
The F1 was unquestionably an amazing engine when it was built, but is the F1B the best engine that can be made of this scale today? So much has changed since - they didn't even have CFD (computational fluid dynamics) back then. I'd like to understand why they chose to modify an old design, rather than creating an entirely new engine from scratch, using all the technology available today.
Response:
Because the cost and effort to eke out few fractions
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"Russia did it better on less than one hundredth of the budget,"
Russia never landed a human on the moon.