2 ms·
That's just one engine - much less than a 5-engine stage even on a test stand, not to say about flying. And combustion instabilities they were fighting were ra
by avmich 6y ago
That's just one engine - much less than a 5-engine stage even on a test stand, not to say about flying.
And combustion instabilities they were fighting were rather novel at the time, the engineers basically had no other options than to test a lot of variants - and invent debugging techniques with "bombs in the chamber" along the way. Fortunately it worked - low pressure of F-1 helped to mitigate problems of size.
- bernulli 6y agoI don’t understand your first paragraph - is this related to the F-1 development having strong iterative components? Also, Combustion instabilities date back to at least the A4/V2, not quite new, and largely the same engineers.
- WalterBright 6y agoThe F1 is a bigger (!!) version of the same engine. It's got the same crucial features: 1. turbo-pumps 2. the nozzle is cooled and the fuel warmed by making the nozzle out of tubes through which the fuel passed 3. holes drilled in the tubes so fuel leaked into the combustion chamber to provide boundary layer cooling I think the pogo-ing was solved the same way, too - putting baffles in in various places.
- bernulli 6y agoBy that logic essentially all cryogenic engines are “the same”.
- WalterBright 6y agoIn a similar vein, all modern jet engines can trace their core features back to the Ohain engine (not the Whittle engine).