4 ms·

If you strap 10 rockets together, you don't need to keep all 10 copies of some components. You don't need 10 computers, or ten emergency abort systems, or ten

If you strap 10 rockets together, you don't need to keep all 10 copies of some components. You don't need 10 computers, or ten emergency abort systems, or ten communications systems, etc. One large tank will have less mass/volume than 10 small ones, etc.

m4rtink 7y ago
Interestingly there are couple rockets that are close to "strapping couple rockets together" for various reasons: The R7 rocket - mostly to avoid engine ignition in flight & due to having a lot of nozzles you need to fit on a rocket - this was then kept for Soyuz even after an additional stage has been added that is started in flight - Soyuz 2V uses a more efficient engine & uses only the central stage The proton Rocket - the central tank has the maximum diameter you can ship via rail from the factory to Baykonur - by mounting smaller tanks around it that are shipped separately you can avoid building an overly long rocket, that could be fragile and unstable Saturn 1/1B - basically a stop gap using existing Jupiter and Redstone rocket tankage tooling - strap 8 Redstone tanks around 1 Jupiter tank and you get the S-I first stage Delta IV Heavy/Falcon Heavy - you have a rocket that can launch by itself with smaller payload or by strapping 3 first stages together can launch a bigger payload - better economies of scale as you can doe more with a single rocket design instead of maintaining 2 separate one (big and small) - in Falcon Heavy case you can also save all the first stages from more demanding trajectories where you would otherwise have to expend the regular F9 first stage OTRAG - make dirt cheap and as simple as possible standardized "rocket tubes" - strap a lot of them together - fire and jettison in the right order to achieve orbit (check your staging! ;-) )
- nickik 7y ago
  While this does work, the Falcon Heavy has convinced Elon not to go into that direction again. Its actually not that simple to strap these together and just making a bigger tank is actually easier. Poorly for the current market using a FH makes sense, but to break to another level, building one big rocket is better. Both the US Saturn 5 and the Soviet N1 were big single tube vehicles.

m4rtink 7y ago

Interestingly there are couple rockets that are close to "strapping couple rockets together" for various reasons: The R7 rocket - mostly to avoid engine ignition in flight & due to having a lot of nozzles you need to fit on a rocket - this was then kept for Soyuz even after an additional stage has been added that is started in flight - Soyuz 2V uses a more efficient engine & uses only the central stage The proton Rocket - the central tank has the maximum diameter you can ship via rail from the factory to Baykonur - by mounting smaller tanks around it that are shipped separately you can avoid building an overly long rocket, that could be fragile and unstable Saturn 1/1B - basically a stop gap using existing Jupiter and Redstone rocket tankage tooling - strap 8 Redstone tanks around 1 Jupiter tank and you get the S-I first stage Delta IV Heavy/Falcon Heavy - you have a rocket that can launch by itself with smaller payload or by strapping 3 first stages together can launch a bigger payload - better economies of scale as you can doe more with a single rocket design instead of maintaining 2 separate one (big and small) - in Falcon Heavy case you can also save all the first stages from more demanding trajectories where you would otherwise have to expend the regular F9 first stage OTRAG - make dirt cheap and as simple as possible standardized "rocket tubes" - strap a lot of them together - fire and jettison in the right order to achieve orbit (check your staging! ;-) )

nickik 7y ago
While this does work, the Falcon Heavy has convinced Elon not to go into that direction again. Its actually not that simple to strap these together and just making a bigger tank is actually easier. Poorly for the current market using a FH makes sense, but to break to another level, building one big rocket is better. Both the US Saturn 5 and the Soviet N1 were big single tube vehicles.