5 ms·

TL;DR; - You get more fault-tolerance with a large number of smaller engines

nine_k 9y ago
Interestingly, the Soviet Н1 Moon-bound rocket [1] used a similar setup, and it was plagued be reliability problems: making many smaller parts work reliably at the same time is harder for obvious reasons. Either reliability of engines went seriously up, or software control (impossible in early 1960s) made it possible to operate a bunch of less-than-ideal engines successfully. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)
- tibyat 9y ago
  so...you didnt bother to even glance at the article but you still invested the time to write this post... people are confusing.
- russdill 9y ago
  A more accurate description would be that it's really hard if you never test things and rush them into a launch because of political pressure
- orbital-decay 9y ago
  Actually, N1 failures had little to do with the complexity itself, and engines were reliable enough for the time. Due to the lack of funding (the soviet lunar program was given the priority well into the moon "race") they were using the old methodology of testing it in the actual flight, not doing any static fires and only doing a bare minimum of ground testing. Saturn V, on the other hand, heavily relied on the ground testing before the launch. That's why Saturn V mostly worked and N1 failed. Energia worked perfectly much later, because it was developed with the proper amount of ground testing.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    > engines were reliable enough for the time. Engines alone could be, but the their combination wasn't reliable because of interactions between them and need for synchronization. As Musk points out, it was an avionics problem.
    - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
      The main reason why they failed is - they pushed testing into production, just like MySpace, because their funding and leadership disintegrated at the beginning of the program. See my other reply in this thread.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        Sure, their management was erratic. But the bottom line, their combination wasn't technically reliable (why, is already what you are saying).
        Florin_Andrei 9y ago
        This meme of the "inferior Soviet technology" needs to die in a fire. It's soothing for the fragile Western conservative ego, but it's just not true - not, at least, with regards to space. The failure of the N1 program was a leadership issue, period. Just like America trailing the Russians at first was a leadership and lack of focus issue. One team kept winning, then they lost their captains and their funding. Meanwhile, the other team got great leaders and awesome sponsors and started busting their collective ass really hard around the same time - and the wheel of fortune suddenly turned. Funny how that works, isn't it? What's strange is that the true events sound a heck of a lot more "american" (work hard and reap the laurels, or slack off and be a loser) and yet you keep hearing the same bullshit all the time as to how "the Russian stuff was just inferior". It's not true. And it's not a good story to tell your kids.
        shmerl 9y ago
        > This meme of the "inferior Soviet technology" needs to die in a fire. Technology turns out to be inferior, when quality control is superseded by political agenda. It should be quite obvious. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe > The failure of the N1 program was a leadership issue, period. Surely leadership failure is a key factor, but there was also an economical one. Space race was very expensive.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    The Soviets won the first round of the space race (until the mid-60s) because of multiple factors, but mainly because of the laser-focus at the highest levels to push the technology as far as it could go. It helped a lot that they had an engineering genius heading the program (Sergey Korolev), and the top politician during that time (Nikita Khrushchev) was a forward-thinking progressive (relatively speaking - please keep it in context) who was a big fan of space. Korolev (pronounce: Karalyov) died in the mid-60s, just before the Moon program had started to gear up for the big time. Khrushchev was ousted also during the mid-60s by retrograde bureaucrats. With both the political and the technical leadership in turmoil, the program fell on very hard times. The didn't get enough funds, could not get proper testing done, and pushed a lot of QA to the live launches. Predictably, the results were "spectacular" - but in a bad way. A little before that time America finally got its resolve together ("We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...") and started pouring massive amounts of financial and engineering efforts into its space program. Again predictably, the results were spectacular - but in a good way. If your leadership is indifferent and you don't have the stuff you need, you lose. If you work hard and put all your energies into it, you win. And that applied to both sides, each in its turn. Who knew? Good book on this topic (and related): https://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-America/dp/0471327212/ https://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-Ame... --- I wish Korolev was around these days so he could see Elon Musk's multi-engine design. I think he would like it. In a (somewhat vague) sense, I see the Falcon Heavy as late vindication for the tremendous efforts, against all odds, of the engineers who busted their asses trying to shoot the N1 into the Moon. The idea was sound, it was just not yet the right time for it.
    - cuspycode 9y ago
      Korolev's contribution is even more impressive when you consider that he was imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag for many years (for political reasons), suffering under living conditions which probably shortened his life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev
      - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
- IshKebab 9y ago
  It's almost like you read the article.
- Maybestring 9y ago
  The N1 had insufficient component level testing. They decided to go straight to full up tests due to the cost of the test stand needed. The big complication with the N1 was that they tried to steer it with variable thrust, rather than the usual approach of thrust vectoring.
0xfeba 9y ago
RAIE - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Engines

Interestingly, the Soviet Н1 Moon-bound rocket [1] used a similar setup, and it was plagued be reliability problems: making many smaller parts work reliably at the same time is harder for obvious reasons. Either reliability of engines went seriously up, or software control (impossible in early 1960s) made it possible to operate a bunch of less-than-ideal engines successfully. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)

tibyat 9y ago
so...you didnt bother to even glance at the article but you still invested the time to write this post... people are confusing.
russdill 9y ago
A more accurate description would be that it's really hard if you never test things and rush them into a launch because of political pressure
orbital-decay 9y ago
Actually, N1 failures had little to do with the complexity itself, and engines were reliable enough for the time. Due to the lack of funding (the soviet lunar program was given the priority well into the moon "race") they were using the old methodology of testing it in the actual flight, not doing any static fires and only doing a bare minimum of ground testing. Saturn V, on the other hand, heavily relied on the ground testing before the launch. That's why Saturn V mostly worked and N1 failed. Energia worked perfectly much later, because it was developed with the proper amount of ground testing.
- shmerl 9y ago
  > engines were reliable enough for the time. Engines alone could be, but the their combination wasn't reliable because of interactions between them and need for synchronization. As Musk points out, it was an avionics problem.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    The main reason why they failed is - they pushed testing into production, just like MySpace, because their funding and leadership disintegrated at the beginning of the program. See my other reply in this thread.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      Sure, their management was erratic. But the bottom line, their combination wasn't technically reliable (why, is already what you are saying).
      - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
        This meme of the "inferior Soviet technology" needs to die in a fire. It's soothing for the fragile Western conservative ego, but it's just not true - not, at least, with regards to space. The failure of the N1 program was a leadership issue, period. Just like America trailing the Russians at first was a leadership and lack of focus issue. One team kept winning, then they lost their captains and their funding. Meanwhile, the other team got great leaders and awesome sponsors and started busting their collective ass really hard around the same time - and the wheel of fortune suddenly turned. Funny how that works, isn't it? What's strange is that the true events sound a heck of a lot more "american" (work hard and reap the laurels, or slack off and be a loser) and yet you keep hearing the same bullshit all the time as to how "the Russian stuff was just inferior". It's not true. And it's not a good story to tell your kids.
        shmerl 9y ago
        > This meme of the "inferior Soviet technology" needs to die in a fire. Technology turns out to be inferior, when quality control is superseded by political agenda. It should be quite obvious. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedelin_catastrophe > The failure of the N1 program was a leadership issue, period. Surely leadership failure is a key factor, but there was also an economical one. Space race was very expensive.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  The Soviets won the first round of the space race (until the mid-60s) because of multiple factors, but mainly because of the laser-focus at the highest levels to push the technology as far as it could go. It helped a lot that they had an engineering genius heading the program (Sergey Korolev), and the top politician during that time (Nikita Khrushchev) was a forward-thinking progressive (relatively speaking - please keep it in context) who was a big fan of space. Korolev (pronounce: Karalyov) died in the mid-60s, just before the Moon program had started to gear up for the big time. Khrushchev was ousted also during the mid-60s by retrograde bureaucrats. With both the political and the technical leadership in turmoil, the program fell on very hard times. The didn't get enough funds, could not get proper testing done, and pushed a lot of QA to the live launches. Predictably, the results were "spectacular" - but in a bad way. A little before that time America finally got its resolve together ("We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard...") and started pouring massive amounts of financial and engineering efforts into its space program. Again predictably, the results were spectacular - but in a good way. If your leadership is indifferent and you don't have the stuff you need, you lose. If you work hard and put all your energies into it, you win. And that applied to both sides, each in its turn. Who knew? Good book on this topic (and related): https://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-America/dp/0471327212/ https://www.amazon.com/Korolev-Masterminded-Soviet-Drive-Ame... --- I wish Korolev was around these days so he could see Elon Musk's multi-engine design. I think he would like it. In a (somewhat vague) sense, I see the Falcon Heavy as late vindication for the tremendous efforts, against all odds, of the engineers who busted their asses trying to shoot the N1 into the Moon. The idea was sound, it was just not yet the right time for it.
  - cuspycode 9y ago
    Korolev's contribution is even more impressive when you consider that he was imprisoned in the Soviet Gulag for many years (for political reasons), suffering under living conditions which probably shortened his life. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Korolev
    - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
IshKebab 9y ago
It's almost like you read the article.
Maybestring 9y ago
The N1 had insufficient component level testing. They decided to go straight to full up tests due to the cost of the test stand needed. The big complication with the N1 was that they tried to steer it with variable thrust, rather than the usual approach of thrust vectoring.

0xfeba 9y ago

RAIE - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Engines