6 ms·
> Re-using boosters for your early development is pretty nice and efficient too I imagine. It sounds good on paper but it's not easy in practice, see: the Rus
by paulmd 9y ago
> Re-using boosters for your early development is pretty nice and efficient too I imagine.
It sounds good on paper but it's not easy in practice, see: the Russian N-1 moon rocket, which basically just took the R7 rocket and scaled it up with more engines. Turns out too many engines means too many points of failure, and the rocket never worked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
Much like in computing, you can't substitute one oxen with a thousand chickens and expect the same outcome when you plow your field.
- valuearb 9y agoThe N-1 failed for lots of reasons besides having so many engines. It's designer died before it was completed. It's primitive control systems were inadequate. It's funding was inadequate. SpaceX has already shown that with modern control systems, you can bundle a bunch of chickens together to plow a field. Having 9 engines has already helped them complete missions where one failed. The Falcon Heavy problem isn't scaling from 9 to 27 per se, it's building a new structure to handle all the new stresses that will occur, from the launch sequence to aerodynamic.
- MPSimmons 9y agoThe engines were also ablative and couldn't be tested together.
- geerlingguy 9y agoAnd even the seemingly small things; like how to detach the side boosters, how to handle the vastly different aerodynamics when you don't have an interstage (nosecone instead), etc. It uses the same engines and very similar hardware, but there are so many new/not-flight-proven things on this rocket that it will be exciting, one way or another!
- Pokepokalypse 9y agoAlthough, Boeing has proven the concept with Delta IV heavy, (and, I think there are a few other precursors, as well, including STS). So this isn't completely new territory.
- mulmen 9y agoI believe GP means literally re-using boosters that flew in space, not just the design.
- greglindahl 9y agoAll supercomputing is now done with armies of chickens. It was a great saying when Cray said it, but the future was not what he imagined.
- paulmd 9y agoArmies of chickens today would be something like ARM server chips, which have been touted for a long time but have perpetually stalled out precisely because replacing one powerful core with a dozen weak cores doesn't work. Even for commodity tasks, but especially when you throw the need for interconnect scalability into the mix. Don't make the mistake of thinking that a large system is implicitly using weaker processors. They're as powerful as we can make them, some tasks just need a lot of them.
- CPLX 9y agoIf you can control the chickens, anything is possible.
- troymc 9y agoWow, that's my new motto!