Get 50% off your first crate of a monthly subscription when you go to www.kiwico.com/curiousdroid and use code curiousdroid EDIT : I was wrong about the reusability of the SLS SRB boosters and they are infact not reused. I could have sworn I read it that that were or were meant to be at some point but anyways thanks for pointing that out, which means that the SLS is 100% disposable. A few have mentioned that I'm trashing NASA, wouldn't say that but I would say that SpaceX is doing a lot of more what old style NASA and their contractors did in the 60s & 70s and that was innovating and truly ground breaking stuff, now it seems as though they tied down and muzzled but think has more to do with the government than NASA its self.
Super - very concise and very difficult to not compress information down so much without "Lying" - I could see all the artful dodges and smoothing over. I had a few electronics kits like that back in the day - that certainly made more complex technologies to learn much less daunting. ["Old man " worked at MSFC back in the day ] - and many other things later - I GIVE this VIDEO TWO THUMBS UP !!! but you can only give one... How many fingers am I holding up - smack - raised by hand like Pip - from Great Expectations. Old man at the drawing board - at EMI me doing electronics quietly as I could.... All that sh*t I philched from Coalie's junk yard - making extra-ordinarily awful sounds and beeps and boops and they thought I was "cray cray" that Eric kid - but it only took me four decades to find out I was only "Circuit bending" - before the term circuit benders were even a thing... . . As long as one was quiet - you could pretty much get away with murder.
A bit unfair to blame the SLS on NASA engineers. The most fundamental design decisions were made by politicians, not engineers. The joke name "Senate Launch System" isn't that far off.
Tbf, iv read into the politics and it makes the program more cost-effective than I really realized. Most of the "useless costs" with the SLS, are mostly just glorified subsidies and welfare for keeping missile companies and other jobs in business. If were gonna have subsidies over these jobs, then we might aswell keep em productive while at it.
@@honkhonk8009 The fundamental problem with SLS is the entire decision to use space shuttle derived technology. The inefficiencies of the contractors just make it worse, but the fundamentals were already terrible. The space shuttle was already a failed program in terms of providing low cost space access. Sure, it launched lots of people and payloads, but for actually lowering the cost of space access, it was a failure right from the start (and there again, political design decisions were the main problem). Trying to modify an existing system into something drastically different in order to save development costs almost always ends up being more expensive than starting from scratch, and in this case we're talking about modifying half century old tech intended for a reusable space plane that was never going to be cost effective and turning it into an expendable rocket. The RS-25 in particular is a complex, high-strung, high-performance powerplant with a very expensive and labour intensive manufacturing process, yet most of its design requirements are unnecessary on SLS.
The fundamental problem with SLS is the entire decision to use space shuttle derived technology. The inefficiencies of the contractors just make it worse, but the fundamentals were already terrible. The space shuttle was already a failed program in terms of providing low cost space access. Sure, it launched lots of people and payloads, but for actually lowering the cost of space access, it was a failure right from the start (and there again, political design decisions were the main problem). Trying to modify an existing system into something drastically different in order to save development costs almost always ends up being more expensive than starting from scratch, and in this case we're talking about modifying half century old tech intended for a reusable space plane that was never going to be cost effective and turning it into an expendable rocket. The RS-25 in particular is a complex, high-strung, high-performance powerplant with a very expensive and labour intensive manufacturing process, yet most of its design requirements are unnecessary on SLS.
@TonboIV that is why I mentioned the Block III. The SSME underwent multiple major revisions over the years with most of the design being replaced Ship of Thesius style. Block I was the post-Challenger redesign, to give a starting point. The Block III replaces the nozzle and combustion chamber, the two most expensive and labor intensive points of the design. The replacement is derived from technologies made for the RS-68, an engine much more in line with what they need. Around when they will be ready is when the new boosters should be as well. That is why I am excited by the switch, to see what it can do with systems made for it, rather than hand me downs.
I built a Saturn V moon rocket in 6th grade for a science fair project (in 1968). I'd avidly watched all the Gemini and Apollo launches and by the time I finished collge in 1979 I had a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. I since left that field and have been a computer Network Engineer and nearing retirement. I can't say enough how lucky I was to have been born the same year Sputnik was sent into orbit. The 60's was an absolutely great time to be in school....
And today (in germany atleast) astro physics are barely ever taught. We had a whole 2 lessons about the planets in our solar system and how nuclear fusion worked in our sun. If I didn't have such an interest in spaceflight, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have learned anything...
Would want to know what they used to protect them self from radiation belt , and if starship need x amount of orbital refuels , how did Apollo manage to carry such fuel capacity to travel from a to b & back to a ?
Your career nearly matches that of my father, but he started twenty years before you. Aerospace engineering at a New York institute, but was "seduced" by computer programming during school and never served as a practicing AE. It was his son (me) that actually built astronomical instruments (and much of a small satellite) - so I sort of closed my dad's arc...
Oh my gosh, I NEVER thought I would see one of those electronic kits again! WHO could forget the bright yellow transistors, caps and ferrite rod! WOW thank you, you just took me back 45 years
1 addendum. The single merlin engine used for landing the Falcon9 is still too powerful to hover. So the engine is ignited at the exact altitude that it reaches zero velocity on the landing pad/barge and shut off before gaining altitude again.
@@dwaynepenner2788 you misunderstans, it’s MINIMUM thrust setting is too high to allow the booster to hover when its nearly empty, if it does not time it’s ignition PERFECTLY it will literally not reach the ground and start going back up again. That’s why the technique is called a hoverslam or suicide burn. Superheavy thankfully doesn’t need to do this.
@@wick9427 correct. So while having more engines allows more thrust options it's not as if falcon9 can land just because it has more engines. There's more variables to landing
Known as a suicide burn. However, the Merlin can be throttled, with its lowest throttle setting still too powerful. That does however allow room for error, so it is not just a full throttle burn to the deck
@@wick9427 it's not so much about the exact time of ignition - you can ignite it later, as you can still throttle it up when needed. It's the throttle control that is timed so that the rocket is fully decelerated at zero altitude. The time of ignition does not actually have to be as precise. (you could ignite early and throttle the engine down, or you could ignite later and throttle the engine up, the time window is determined by the minimum thrust and the maximum allowable deceleration magnitude)
This video only briefly mentions the most important point: you want to mass produce just one type of engine to bring the costs down. In turn that means in order to use that one type of engine for all the different stages of the rocket, you have to use a lot of them for the first stage. Saying it is due to throttling limits is putting the cart before the horse, if SpaceX had decided to use 5 huge engines on the booster and land it using just the centre engine, then they would have designed it to be deeply throttlable. And it is possible to have such deep throttle control, though it adds complexity so avoiding it is an additional benefit. But the fundamental driver is mass production of one engine type to reduce costs.
It would make much more sense to use 4 large engines, and perhaps two smaller engines, that work in unison at launch, but during the landing cycle, only the smaller engines are used, which removes the complexity of the large engines having to deeply throttle. But as you say, single engine design is what really drives down cost. The drawback of a large number of smaller engines is the plumbing, this becomes an incredible spaghetti of pipes.
Yea. Same with the military. SpaceX should deadass sell their raptor engines to other companies. With the economies of scale, they would be incredibly cheap and would help get us in space easier.
@@honkhonk8009 The alloy they use to achieve their ridiculous chamber pressures is their own tech. While I'm sure China has stolen the IP by now, it still makes the best sense to keep as much of Raptor development to themselves as possible.
Slightly error describing testing the N1 engines. While lack of testing facilities may have been a problem as well, the real issue with the N1 engines is that they used pyrotechnics to operate the main valves. This meant that short of rebuilding the engines they could only be used once, and also that the engines that were test fired weren't ever put on the rocket.
That and they may have rushed development. Not mentioned in the video is that Brezhnev came to power in a board room coup in 1964, which unsettled things for a many of a bureaucracy. And then Korelev dies in 1966 and is succeeded by a less than skilled successor. Glushko had no problem cleaning house in 1974, to put it mildly, but then he pressed/oversaw development of Energiya/Buran (which proved to be very costly).
@@michaeldunne338 Costs were not an issue to Russia (and still aren’t). It was all about showing off with a big bang. They certainly got that with N-1.
@@Dave5843-d9mYou are right in that the Soviet Union overall was working on different considerations from the 1950s to the 1980s. However, they certainly were highlighting costs in 1989, and there was debate about it at the tail end of the Soviet Union. In the 1976/1977 timeframe the Spiral spaceplane team got blown off when it came to the go ahead given to Buran (they said the math didn't work). In 1989 Dunayev conceded that "14 billion rubles had been spent during thirteen years of development and testing" to a bit of controversy (see page 373 of "Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle). By January of 1991, the "program had a cost of a total of 16.4 billion rubles, of which 12.3 billion had gone to design and testing and 4.1 billion to 'capital construction," according to Boris Gubanov. By 1991 there was quite a bit of criticism, usually involving comparison to the Soyuz launch system. Otherwise, no one was happy about the delays with development of the RD-170 engines and strap on boosters. Those engines wouldn't really get to prove themselves until test lights of Zenit from April 1985 onwards.... "Almost six years later than planned" ... (pg 407 IBID).
@@Dave5843-d9mCosts most certainly are an issue with the Russians and the Sovjets before them. It’s just that the Russian mode of technological development is to trade safety and bodies to make up for lack of money and competence.
Главная проблема двигателей N-1 была в том, что они были не доработанные и слишком часто отказывали. Требовалось много еще времени, чтобы довести их до нужной надежности, а их уже десятками ставили с конвейера на ракету и запускали в небо.
@@palmtreeshenanigansThe memes write themselves. Fanboys will ignore the very obvious failures and believe its all part of the plan. Not every kg needs to go to space only the parts that matter.
It's worth noting that Musk himself admitted that the Raptors 2 aren't reliable and "hopes" that Raptors 3 will be, while making them run even harder because they absolutely need much more thrust for the inflating mass of Starship v2 and v3, as they are now trying to bring back the payload to 100t or more... It's going to be very entertaining... Maybe less so for NASA.
@@classydave75 The Raptor 2 have already demonstrated decent reliability. For the last three flights, 116 out of 117 engines have worked for ascent. That's a 99.14% demonstrated reliability. That's a more confident reliability number than the F-1, which had a total track record of 65 out of 65 for ascent. It's also better than the well known RD-180, with 105 out of 106 for ascent. Musk hasn't said that the Raptor 2 aren't reliable. He's only said that Raptor 3 will be *more* reliable. No matter how good the Raptor 2 are, they can always get better.
Sergei Korolev was literally the person driving the whole Soviet space program the Politburo and the higherups couldn't care less and treated the whole program with derision he even had to con them into letting him send Gagarin into orbit telling them "they'd need someone onboard to listen to the radio if they wanted to spy on the Americans". It wasn't until they saw the western papers the next day that they started paying serious attention (Pravda initially announced Gagarin's historic launch with a single fairly drab paragraph on page 3)
The Soviets were good at unwittingly lighting fires under the Americans. In 1955, they paraded a flight of 10 new bombers over Red Square and by circling them fooled the US into thinking there were 60, meaning a bomber gap was developing. We responded by building many more than needed, a waste of resources, which the Soviets couldn't match.
Remember that Russia has long been a backwards country, and that the Soviet leadership were "workers" and weren't the brightest or most worldly people as a rule (ironically explains why being moderately cultured and well-educated in the old Soviet Union had cachet)
@@benfowler1134 most of the soviet leadership were intellectuals and well learned(even stalin was an acclaimed poet). That kind of explain why they were so out of touch with their policies (or symply the autoritharianism making it impossible to criticize those policies)
That is a myth. Korolyov was not conning the government as the space project was incredibly pricey. The government has listened to many expects in regards to what to do and how, it the space program would have happened regardless of Korolyov.
Apollo 5 was not launched on a Saturn V. It used the Saturn 1B originally planned for Apollo 1 to launch an unmanned lunar module into earth orbit for testing.
The wild ride of Apollo 5. They had tons of glitches, and it was only partially fueled. Gene went full speed ahead on the burns, in manual control. The ascent stage spun out of control after its burn. It was an overall success and the next test launch was canceled.
I know people like to compare the Saturn and starship rockets but there so many differences it’s like apples and oranges. Just remember that the Saturn was designed with slide rules and mechanical pencils with little reference material available. Starship is all computer design and 3D models with a library of resources to refer to. Hats off to those old men with the pocket protectors. 😁👍
Yes, at the same stage in the programmes, Apollo was sending craft around the moon. Starship can barely make it past the Karman Line with an empty payload bay, and making it back to earth without exploding is considered a wild success. Even though the 'reusable' craft is half melted! The booster did good, though.
@@splashfreelance2376 Starship has gone twice now to roughly 99% of the way to LEO. If they fired the engines for another 1-2 seconds they'd have been in orbit. That's not "barely past the karman line". The Karman line is more like 20% of the way to LEO. And they had tens of tons of propellant left over which could have been payload instead. Also, if we say Starship got started in 2018, and Apollo got started in 1960, we can compare what Starship is doing this year to what Apollo was doing in 1966. That was three suborbital flights, AS-201, AS-202 and AS-203. So no, at this stage of the program Apollo wasn't sending craft around the moon. (Setting a starting date isn't entirely easy. Hardware was being worked on years earlier for both programmes. But I think 1960 and 2018 are fairly accurate years for when major work started.)
Apollo was also under the gun to meet the moon landing deadline, which is why they went with the F1 engine concept that was already being developed, rather than start clean-sheet with something new.
The engines on the N1 weren't hot fired (tested) because they were fitted with burst disks which could only fire once. This wasn't a budget issue so much as a weight problem.
Literally what they sound like. Rather than a mechanical valve it's a weak disk you use to block a pipe. When the pressure gets too high on one side they rupture and the fluid flows.
18:20 As far as I know the SLS solids also aren’t being reused. As they burn for longer than the shuttle boosters and burn out at a higher altitude, they can't be recovered.
That's correct. They are not reused. Which is just as well, they would need to be stripped down to bare metal and then built back up. This was effectively more expensive than just making new ones for every flight.
So at this point the best use of SLS is just to get some use of legacy stocks of parts from Shuttle. With the caveat that they have to make a ton of new stuff to be able to use the old stuff. Should have at least painted the things white so they give off that classic NASA Saturn V look.
@@scottwatrousmain issue: with refurbishment and modifications this old stuff is WAY more expensive than new stuff. Rs-25, main engine of shuttle and SLS, costs of refurbishment and modifications is about 140mln per one engine. New rs-25E, currently in testing will cost 100 (later 70) mln per one. Cost of BE-4 ( stronger engine as it got ca 2.5 MN of force vs 1.8 of RS) internal cost of production is ca 7 mln, while it's sold to ULA for 20 mln. Raptor 2 engine, with 2.3 MN, costs around 1mln internally. Raptor 3 will be even cheaper. Simply put, modern technology of production is way more effective. From machining to 3d printing. And also modern materials that are way cheaper (raptor 2 uses mostly stainless steel and copper, raptor 3 uses almost exclusively stainless steel. Steel in late 70 wasn't as advanced as today, and due to technology wasn't practical to use it. During development of SLS there was lot of proposals that had way more sense from time perspective, but we're abandoned in favour of "safe approach". In example there was in pretty advanced engine from rocketdyne from J series (don't remember details) that could be much less expensive than legendary, but obsolete RS 25. Also, rocketdyne if I recall, tried to revive F1 engine in form of F1b. F1b used modern technology for production and its estimated cost would be 15-30 mln. They even tested powerhead. 2 of those engines should power kerolox sideboosters instead SRB, and that would increase capabilities of SLS. Because not only kerolox boosters would have more power, but much more DeltaV. All those proposals were shot down by politicians
Many smaller engines means some very important basic elements : a) you can manufacture much smaller components which makes them faster and cheaper to tool up and to build. b) like investing, you diversify your risk - a single failure means a much smaller % loss of thrust.
Also the SLS being a thing isnt anything to do with NASA but congress. Why do you think NASA are launching a satellite using the falcon heavy and not the SLS for?
@@geesehoward700satellite launching has nothing to do with it. The SLS is not intended to be a satellite launch vehicle so comparing it makes no sense. That said, the SLS is a massive waste of taxpayer money and should never have been built, but that's congress's fault.
It makes me so angry that shuttle engines are put on the SLS. Those belonged in a museum. They should have manufactured the cheaper versions they have to do anyways, supposedly, for future flights. As you said, it is ridiculous that the expensive bits are thrown in the ocean and they make a circus of recuperating the solid rocket boosters.
It's costing more to use the RS-25's than it would to build new ones. The whole project is ridiculously bloated and wasteful and should be cancelled ASAP.
There's plenty of space shuttle memerobilia to go around. They're working engines, still some of the most state of the art and capable ones around, being put to use like they were meant to. And the boosters are not recovered so there's no showboating going on. SLS' disposability is what makes it a capable launch platform and not a wildly aspirational, haphazard, speculative project like Starship that's going to be reliant on so much perfectly executed back to back refuelling to have any hope of being mission capable.
SLS should have used the RS-68 from the Delta IV. Better performance. Better ISP, cheaper and built to be expended. Only challenge would have been heat.
@@snizami My guess is that the first missions which actually demand orbital refueling, such as Polaris and HLS, will use disposable Starship tankers at around $30 million a pop. They'll be on Block 3 by then, so 200 tons per lift. Maybe six tankers? Rapid reusability can come down the road since it's not as critical a development.
Well, the SLS was dreamed up by a couple of senators who wanted to keep the space economy going after the retirement of the shuttle. I'd not beat NASA up too much about its design.
Likely they choose what they did to bring the wealth into favored contractors, keeping the shuttle engines going. Personally I think the capsule based booster rocket technology wasn't the way to go. I think space x has the right idea with starship, we need to develop capability like an airliner or the shuttle in the movie 2001 A space Odyssey. The shuttle was only partially what I am talking about, it was too expensive to fly and had too many compromises. It only existed because the military was interested in it, it was redesigned to fit their needs which also helped make it not what it was supposed to be. Not really NASAs fault, their budgets were slashed after Apollo,they were working with relative peanuts.
I'd say the best brains at NASA know exactly how ridiculous the situation is, but politicians want the things built in their districts by companies that donate to their campaigns.
Today, in terms of NASA civil servants, they hire based upon D.E.I. or Veteren status. This means the best youngest Engineers fresh out of college never worked at NASA. The laws of Physics do not include an equation of veteran status nor D.E.I. status.
@@nonowayjose9159 that is big pile of steaming lie, that you gave here. Go back to you qanon forum and discuss there how americans never landed on the moon.
Those two rockets landing at the same time was so badass! You have to love their sense of humor too. There's at least one compilation video of their test rockets blowing up and one of them was captioned as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly." 😋
I like the personal connection you explained to the video sponsor with that first electronics kit, nice that you were able to find and include a picture of it. Sponsorship done right.
Hearing your background on how you started with your electronics kids and worked up from there it was pretty neat. I followed a similar pattern, just 20 years after you!
And as of two days ago SpaceX has successfully demonstrated the catch of their Super Heavy booster back on launch pad with flight 5. Feels so good to be living in this era of rapid space innovations!
So many, and yet so little. It depends on which organization you look at private sector versus public sector. Or even amongst the private sector, it’s nearly night and day difference.
I have a Radio Shack Electronic Learning Lab. I worked my way through the text books that came with it. And repaired a couple of computer monitor power supplies with the knowledge gained. It’s still fun to tinker with, from time to time.
Got one sitting on a shelf. The '75 in one' Electronic Project Lab Cat. No. 28 - 267 I wish there were Radio Shacks again. I miss being able to go into one to get a replacement driver for a stereo speaker or a pack of diodes for an amplifier repair.
11:55 SpaceX has done and continually do tests on Raptor engines at their test facility in McGregor in Texas. They also perform static test fires before every launch. Before the first test flight, static test fires were performed on ever increasing numbers of engines: So, while they do get viewed as "fast and loose", they still do testing.
@@JoeOvercoat What do you mean? It's pretty clear why they developed starship. it was well publicized almost in real time on twitter the design decisions.
They're seen as "fast and loose" *because* they do testing... it's the testing where that attitude is most visible. If they relied more on simulations and less on real-world hardware (like their rivals mostly do), we wouldn't see anywhere near as many explosions... but SpaceX are big believers in validating models with real data, and blowing things up on the test stand is how they do it.
The F-1 was only "relatively" simple. Agreed, it could not throttle. But the sheer tonnage of fuel moved 0:07 through turbines in an ignition sequence requiring analogue components eg wax disks to burst at optimal time to ensure ignition was audacious, glorious, and never to be repeated. The US version if Soviet tractor design. Simple+adequate=good.
@@BigPapaVerde17 There were no computers in the F-1s, so the timing of things was often handled by bits of "stuff" that would burn through, or melt, at just the right time to -say- divert gases from the turbine "engines" to start entering the nozzle to help protect it before full ignition. A lot of it could have been a fantasy by Rube Goldberg, but engineered with precision. Did you know that the protective covers on the hold-down clamps for the Saturn V were literal bits of cord? Seriously.
Did Apollo 11 actually leave near-Earth orbit? Despite the revisionist narrative that this channel won't question -- unstable fuel burn for the oversized F1 engines was never rectified and another arrangement in their place was made in order to reach near Earth orbit, keeping the F1 bell nozzle to maintain the desired appearance. The great licking yellow flame was an indication that something was not normal as fuel was burning in the atmosphere while providing no additional thrust. This was the result of injecting additional kerosene into the exhaust stream for greater visual effect yet appearing to produce an inefficient burn unlike other rockets after launch. No explanation is forthcoming and this issue is not addressed in any usual report; however, using a smaller reliable engine with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement allowed the Saturn V to reach near-Earth orbit. The Apollo 11 crew attempted to demonstrate their position at over halfway to the moon as seen in the unedited version presented to the public while the more recently released unedited version reveals a flood of blue light entering the same window as the camera continues to roll, through which only a moment before, we saw the Earth far distant in what appeared to be very low light conditions. Then, as the camera pulls back from the window, the exposure settings are seen to return to normal as a flood of light enters the same window. Without a change in the orientation of the spacecraft assumed to be on a trajectory toward the moon, the only source for any flood of light can be the Earth while in near-Earth orbit. The usual sponsored efforts will try to make excuses for why the obvious did not take place -- yet is overly apparent in the unedited version. When facts cannot prevail in support, sponsored activity will resort to name calling and other derogatory comments discrediting themselves.
. . While remaining in near-Earth orbit, another indication are the impossible weather patterns seen on Earth, when in reality only a small portion of the Earth's surface was visible, framed by the round window of the command module. Straight line cloud fronts are seen on video to be extending for what appears to be more than 6000 miles, a quarter of the Earth's circumference -- something that has never occurred in the meteorological record on Earth. The round window of the command module was used to effect an image of the Earth but the weather in the region did not comply for a realistic view. No recognizable continents are found in view, but only the impossible weather patterns seen.
Did you ever see a documentary on the Russian moon capsule? The life support systems were built around an array of faucets instead of electronics! "Comrade, did you just fart? Turn on CO2 scrubber number 3!". Famously in the early manned space program astronauts systematically tested which ballpoint pen designs would still work in zero-G, while cosmonauts were simply issued pencils. As you say, simple+adequate=good. Not to mention cheap.
Did Apollo 11 actually leave near-Earth orbit? Despite the revisionist narrative that this channel won't question -- unstable fuel burn for the oversized F1 engines was never rectified and another arrangement in their place was made in order to reach near Earth orbit, keeping the F1 bell nozzle to maintain the desired appearance. The great licking yellow flame was an indication that something was not normal as fuel was burning in the atmosphere while providing no additional thrust. This was the result of injecting additional kerosene into the exhaust stream for greater visual effect yet appearing to produce an inefficient burn unlike other rockets after launch. No explanation is forthcoming and this issue is not addressed in any usual report; however, using a smaller reliable engine with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement allowed the Saturn V to reach near-Earth orbit. The Apollo 11 crew attempted to demonstrate their position at over halfway to the moon as seen in the unedited version presented to the public while the more recently released unedited version reveals a flood of blue light entering the same window as the camera continues to roll, through which only a moment before, we saw the Earth far distant in what appeared to be very low light conditions. Then, as the camera pulls back from the window, the exposure settings are seen to return to normal as a flood of light enters the same window. Without a change in the orientation of the spacecraft assumed to be on a trajectory toward the moon, the only source for any flood of light can be the Earth while in near-Earth orbit. The usual sponsored efforts will try to make excuses for why the obvious did not take place -- yet is overly apparent in the unedited version. When facts cannot prevail in support, sponsored activity will resort to name calling and other derogatory comments discrediting themselves.
. . While remaining in near-Earth orbit, another indication are the impossible weather patterns seen on Earth, when in reality only a small portion of the Earth's surface was visible, framed by the round window of the command module. Straight line cloud fronts are seen on video to be extending for what appears to be more than 6000 miles, a quarter of the Earth's circumference -- something that has never occurred in the meteorological record on Earth. The round window of the command module was used to effect an image of the Earth but the weather in the region did not comply for a realistic view. No recognizable continents are found in view, but only the impossible weather patterns seen.
Because we had 63 years of advancements in electronics which allows the rocket to adapt to engines going out and not significantly effecting the flight, which would enable greater rocket reliability without the engines having to be as rigorously tested, because if you had 4-5 engines it would be much harder to adapt to one of them going out where as with 33 smaller engines it's creates a smaller force if one engine were to go out, therefore making it easier to correct, also it's cheaper to produce many small engines than it 4 - 5 big engines because you start to get economics of scale.
This is why i feel it is wrong to have so many engines, spacex has had multiple rockets fail due to engine failure, spacex has still to have a launch where all rocket engines ignite on launch and restart when needed, every single booster has failed in every flight so far to do a perfect flight. Yes these are still test flights but you would think they would have resolved the engine problems, and no spacex cannot lose 4 or 5 engines and succeed with its mission, every engine has its job and if even one fails that means thrust is lost and burn time extended for the other engines, this uses extra fuel which impacts the goal of the flight unless spacex is sending a few extra tons of fuel for failures which is just a waste. Common sense shows that they should do everything to lower the engine count as much as possible, believing otherwise is just fanboy talk.
@@palmtreeshenanigans Only the first 2 failed that way and the more engine failures they have the more they know how they look like so they can shut an engine down before it damages it's self so I don't see it as being a long term issue also the first one blew up because the engines destroyed the launch pad and trashed a bunch of the engines I doubt a rocket with much fewer engines would have fairer as well, aka even clearing the launch tower.
@@Rich-on6fe to be fair so did Saturn V, SLS and to a lesser extent the Space shuttle. I'm not saying less rockets is nessarily a bad thing it just means your engines need to be a lot more reliable now which is expensive to validate and in the past especially with the Saturn V we just didn't have the electronics to reliably shut down engines before they got so damaged they have a significant chance of taking down the craft to adding more engines was just increasing your risk of failure no matter how long you operated and refined the rocket.
@@palmtreeshenanigans "every single booster has failed in every flight so far to do a perfect flight." yeah, we are just 4 flights in, and things are still in development, and they also don't have to perform perfectly...
Excellent explanation of the development of the Saturn rocket series. I have been researching this lately, and your explanation is the most comprehensive & clear I have ever seen. Thank you!
The real reason is because of Thrust to Weight ratio. Big engine have combustion instability issues that needs to be compensated with thicker metals to strengthen the engine structure. Smaller engine requires more plumbing. The optimum size is around Raptor size.
I have seen this video at least 10 times. People can get bored even with millions of videos Curious Droid is exactly what I love about science & Space !!
It seems glaringly obvious modern low-cost & advancement of computers allows for multiple engines, but that was glossed over in this video. The computing technology of the past did not make multiple engines feasible.
But the computing technology of the past - specifically the lack of Computational Fluid Dynamics - also made it very hard to build really big engines because you could not work out what was making them explode as they got bigger (as they always did). The Russian decision to use their very efficient (for the era) yet proven reliable smaller engines was correct given the technology and resources available to them.
Wonderful content! I got my daughter Kiwi co crates and she really digged them for almost a year before she became bored with the repetitious similarity of the latter crates!
Thank you for this video. What a great narration. Great visuals. Really clever segue into the KiwiCo sponsorship segment. At every point during the video where an answer spawned a new question in my mind, you answered within a few moments. Well done, sir.
I don't think that is totally the case. The idea of leveraging shuttle technology goes back to Robert Zubrin's "Case for Mars" in the early 1990s. Simply put, the elegant idea of repurposing technology and production facilities from one program to another turned out to be more costly and time consuming than thought. Otherwise, I thought the Constellation Program and then the Artemis program were a bit underfunded for a good amount of time. So, not get sufficient funds year over year, resulting in delays and then big investments in the programs over time.
Great video, thanks! Another reason for smaller engines is that the same engine can be used on the second stage. Avoiding the need to design and produce a second type of engine.
If you look at SpaceX boosters landing....they can decelerate from 2000km/h to 0 in a few seconds, because the thrust is the same but the weight is much lower. By saving this to land it, you are keeping 2000kmh of speed for the landing, the most bang for your buck, and it's not used to gain speed/altitude for the launch
That’s a 1 minute, spaceX use 33 for control and redundancy. You can’t land a rock is chopstick with 5 big engine, it’s impossible to reduce the trust that low.
one big advantage of having multiple engines is engine out capability: starship can loose 3 engines at ignition and still launch. With the most recent launch the booster lost one engine and still delivered the ship to space and during the landing burn it lost one and still managed to splashdown in the water. Even f9 has had missions where a merlin shutdown unexpectedly but it still delivered the payload to orbit.
The most important similarity between the N-1 and Starship is not the configuration, but the development method. There are two basic methods: 1. test individual stages on test stands exhaustively before proceeding to the first flight, in an attempt to make the first flight be flawless. This approach is used by most Western companies, and was used by NASA for the Saturn V. 2. Move to in-flight testing much sooner in the development process. This gives you flight experience earlier in the process, but risks blowing up a bunch of rockets. SpaceX is doing this with Starship, and the Soviets did it with the Proton and N-1. It saves a bunch of money. They also reckoned building a first-stage test stand for the N-1 would have taken years, and they were already behind the US in the race to the moon. For the Proton, 14 test launches were needed before it was ready for operational use, and for N-1 they were counting on a similar number of development launches. The differences between N-1 and Starship are far bigger. 1. Engines: the NK-15 could not be tested before use. It used pyrotechnic actuators that had to be replaced once used. So instead, they'd build 6 engines, test 3 of them, and if those passed, use the other 3 on the rocket. The successor, the NK-33, was designed for multiple starts and would have solved this problem. The NK-33 was scheduled to be used from the fifth launch onwards. SpaceX tests individual engines, AND can test the complete stage at least for brief test runs on the launch pad. 2. Control systems. KORD on the N-1 was unreliable, famously shutting down all but one engine when one of the launches developed a recoverable fault. Modern electronics are far more reliable and can monitor and control the engines in far more detail. 3. CAD. SpaceX can simulate the vibration environment in the stage in ways not possible in 1965, which eliminates many failure modes (at least one N-1 launch failed when a fuel line shook apart). 4. Money. SpaceX is rich and can afford to expend a bunch of rockets if it speeds up the development process. You can see them cranking out rocket at a high rate, even scrapping some of them without ever launching. The Soviets were not rich, and really couldn't afford the N-1 or its development program. It took a year to build a single N-1.
Конфигурация советской Н-1 и starship похожа, потому, что это реальные ракеты, а не фейковые, как Сатурн-5. Поэтому там стоят реальные маленькие двигатели, а не полуфейковый F-1.
@@swampfolk2526 Incorrect. The USSR observed transmissions coming from lunar orbit and from the moon, not from Earth orbit. The USSR exchanged lunar samples (retrieved by Luna missions) with the USA, and could compare Luna samples to Apollo samples.
"if" you lose, you lose 33. Yes. "IF" you. Btw, the 33 engines are not part of a 'rocket' but are part of a 'spacecraft' as in the context of an aircraft. Just as an aircraft is not built for single trip, this space craft is also not being built for single trip. Instead it will be used as a workhorse. That's the difference. Yes but if you lose, you lose 33 engines. That's the difference it makes. Thanks.
My dad introduced me building radios and steam engines at the age of 7 doing wood work all our Christmas presents were hand made by him - a work bench and tools a chemistry set and a steam set - mamod also. We built kites and learned how to fix bikes at the age of 6 and 7. I learned my appreciation of engineering at this age from ladybird books on rockets and aeroplanes primarily which were fantastically explained and illustrated in a simple form but with pictures which impressed upon my mind to this day - I am 58 years old now but always indebted ti my dad to his day.
I turned 14, in August of 1975. My father taught me to solder at age ten, and I had been building the electronic kits from Radio shack for a few years prior to that!
So tell me, in fifty-some years, have you figured out how to keep the solder fumes from aiming directly towards your face without just aiming a big fan at yourself? Because I haven't worked that one out yet. :D
@@IstasPumaNevadaYou don't need to aim a fan at yourself or your work. I've got an old desk that I've repurposed as my soldering station, I have a small desk fan sitting on the side of the desk facing away from me. I just open the window and let the fan pull the fumes away from me and blow them out the window.
Lol I turned 14 back in 2018. I turned 10 in 2014. My favourite childhood memory was learning how to do electronics stuff from the arduino kit I smuggled out of my dads office lmfaoo. It was mostly breadboarding with random IC's and stuff. Dad didn't allow me to solder cus he thought I would do some dumb shit with it, so for all my RC toys, I would make them by gluing together connections lmfao.
Also keep in mind, the ability to land the spacex boosters depends on the kind of watch. A high Earth orbit, will result in the loss of the booster. Also, keep in mind, the savings do not go to the customer. Spacex charges more to NASA to launch each astronaut more than the Russians, which of course were always a single used rocket.
@@TexasCat99 This is false. Russia currently charges $86 million per seat. The last time a Soyuz seat cost less than a Dragon seat was 2008. So there's your corrected "keep in mind."
The fact is that the Apollo Saturn V rocket was capable of lifting with one launch all of the prior US payloads sent up since the dawn of the space age is remarkable. Its 7.5 million pounds of thrust at take off was an incredible feat to achieve and its vehicle design was largely done without computers. It was an historic achievement before American children began to be deliberately dumbed down.
@alantasman8273 The Saturn V was capable of lifting off and getting out of sight to get any longer spotted before plummeting. Now they apparantly try to create a real functioning rocket with purpose and not only fireworks for the staged Apollo TV show.
@@THOUGHTCRIME_No1 So just how did those laser reflector panels and seismic Moonquake detectors used for generations get on the Moon. And I suppose you think the Apollo 13 mishap was staged as well. LOL
I already knew the answer to the video title question, of why they use 33 smaller engines. I just figured this would still be an interesting video and it was.
@@benfowler1134 With 350 bars of pressure, crazy. They are so powerfull, it's why the rocket is so tall, and it will grow by 26 meters with Starship V3. And the length of the flame!!!
Did Apollo 11 actually leave near-Earth orbit? Despite the revisionist narrative that this channel won't question -- unstable fuel burn for the oversized F1 engines was never rectified and another arrangement in their place was made in order to reach near Earth orbit, keeping the F1 bell nozzle to maintain the desired appearance. The great licking yellow flame was an indication that something was not normal as fuel was burning in the atmosphere while providing no additional thrust. This was the result of injecting additional kerosene into the exhaust stream for greater visual effect yet appearing to produce an inefficient burn unlike other rockets after launch. No explanation is forthcoming and this issue is not addressed in any usual report; however, using a smaller reliable engine with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement allowed the Saturn V to reach near-Earth orbit. The Apollo 11 crew attempted to demonstrate their position at over halfway to the moon as seen in the original version presented to the public while the more recently released unedited version reveals a flood of blue light entering the same window as the camera continues to roll, through which only a moment before, we saw the Earth far distant in what appeared to be very low light conditions. Then, as the camera pulls back from the window, the exposure settings are seen to return to normal as a flood of light enters the same window. Without a change in the orientation of the spacecraft assumed to be on a trajectory toward the moon, the only source for any flood of light can be the Earth while in near-Earth orbit. The usual sponsored efforts will try to make excuses for why the obvious did not take place -- yet is overly apparent in the unedited version. When facts cannot prevail in support, sponsored activity will resort to name calling and other derogatory comments discrediting themselves.
. . While remaining in near-Earth orbit, another indication are the impossible weather patterns seen on Earth, when in reality only a small portion of the Earth's surface was visible, framed by the round window of the command module. Straight line cloud fronts are seen on video to be extending for what appears to be more than 6000 miles, a quarter of the Earth's circumference -- something that has never occurred in the meteorological record on Earth. The round window of the command module was used to effect an image of the Earth but the weather in the region did not comply for a realistic view. No recognizable continents are found in view, but only the impossible weather patterns seen.
They clearly aren't: cascading failures will always be a problem when you pack a bunch of smaller engines together. The Russians spent many years on trying to solve this problem but finally gave up. That SpaceX sees better results due to much more advanced technology, doesn't solve the initial problem. Even with the latest SpaceX rockets there's still the risk that one of the engines failing in a catastrophical way, which DOES happen, can and often will wipe out its adjacent engines and it can even lead to a total failure of all the engines of that rocket.
@@tjroelsma It's just a matter of designing the rocket to avoid cascading failures. SpaceX is already there. An engine blew up on the landing burn for the most recent flight, and it was fine. Obviously you want to avoid failures, and we can expect that SpaceX will continue working on engine reliability and the like, but it is a solved issue. It's just a matter of optimizing the design so that you aren't wasting unnecessary mass on engine shielding and stuff like that.
@@SpaceAdvocate Murphy's Law: Anything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong on a project, advocates against complicated setups. And a rocket with 33 engines IS complicated. No matter how reliable your individual engines are, the failure of even a very simple and/or cheap component can result in a catastrophic failure, which then triggers the cascading failure I keep mentioning. Although SpaceX IS showing improvement with their rockets, there are still engines failing at each launch, meaning that their reliability is still questionable. Add to that the fact that they use far more fuel than SpaceX calculated they would, to me this points at SpaceX implying some protection measures against cascading failure that raise the weight of the rockets significantly. What you see looks more like band aids holding things together than actual solutions to problems and the giant elephant in the room is that despite these modest successes SpaceX is still 4-5 years behind on their own schedule.
Equating SpaceX to the N1 programme is very weird and misinformed. SpaceX engines are heavily tested before they get anywhere near a rocket, then tested some more on the rocket.
@@dudermcdudeface3674 Well Starship never ignited theire engines in space and the Booster already failed on the third flight to ignite ITs engines Same as Starship on the fourth flight. Also in the fourth flight one engine did Not ignite at all and you could See black smoke coming From the Others. This indicates a sub optimal fule mixture because methane and oxygen should burn Clean.
@@goldenshatter yeah but they still failed. Saturn V did Not fail a single time. When did we get From failure IS Not an Option to success IS one of the possible Outcomes.
@@OutsiderLabs You're assuming the unreliability introduced by the extra engines strictly adds up. Doesn't quite work that way if you take redundancy, full engine-out capability and differential thrust into account.
Did Apollo 11 actually leave near-Earth orbit? Despite the revisionist narrative that this channel won't question -- unstable fuel burn for the oversized F1 engines was never rectified and another arrangement in their place was made in order to reach near Earth orbit, keeping the F1 bell nozzle to maintain the desired appearance. The great licking yellow flame was an indication that something was not normal as fuel was burning in the atmosphere while providing no additional thrust. This was the result of injecting additional kerosene into the exhaust stream for greater visual effect yet appearing to produce an inefficient burn unlike other rockets after launch. No explanation is forthcoming and this issue is not addressed in any usual report; however, using a smaller reliable engine with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement allowed the Saturn V to reach near-Earth orbit. The Apollo 11 crew attempted to demonstrate their position at over halfway to the moon as seen in the unedited version presented to the public while the more recently released unedited version reveals a flood of blue light entering the same window as the camera continues to roll, through which only a moment before, we saw the Earth far distant in what appeared to be very low light conditions. Then, as the camera pulls back from the window, the exposure settings are seen to return to normal as a flood of light enters the same window. Without a change in the orientation of the spacecraft assumed to be on a trajectory toward the moon, the only source for any flood of light can be the Earth while in near-Earth orbit. The usual sponsored efforts will try to make excuses for why the obvious did not take place -- yet is overly apparent in the unedited version. When facts cannot prevail in support, sponsored activity will resort to name calling and other derogatory comments discrediting themselves.
I think advancement in sensors, computers, and materials have made reusability much more practical than it was the in 60s and 70s. I'm happy to see so much effort going towards space again!
In the 1960’s, rocket engines failed in spectacular explosions, not gentle shutdowns. The more engines you had, the more likely one of them would explode. 5 engines is much more reliable than 30. 50-60 years later, it’s possible that modern engines are more reliable or that modern engine failures don’t necessarily mean the vehicle explodes.
"The more engines you had, the more likely one of them would explode." But the bigger the engine the more likely it would explode because of combustion instability, which was not a solvable problem until good CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) was available. von Braun blew up an awful lot of F1s on the test stand fixing this problem by trial and error, even with his pintle injector design. How many engines you used, and therefore how big they were, was a balancing act between failure modes.
I'm no fan of Elon Musk, but I'm a big fan of SpaceX. If they can get Superheavy as mature at Falcon 9 then space is ours. "Gully Foyle is my name and Terra is my nation. Deep space is my dwelling place, the stars my destination."
Big Fan of Elon because people only hate him for being autistic and saying the truth in a plain and upfront manner. Hes not the only one. Many companies from finance to tech, is moving to Texas because Texas isnt clinically retarded. Texas is easily the new California. Only place where you can find actual humans instead of ideological NPC's and yes men.
Nope. In 63 years of manned space flight, fewer than 700 people have been to space, and just over 600 have been into orbit. It's niche, and it's going to stay niche.
I played ksp and was just starting career mode and was having issues getting to second stage too early because my booster just was terrible in design, i copied space X 31 engines (but i could only fit 17 due to the limited fuel tank sizes.) and not only was it MORE STABLE then my other designs, it was more efficient. i could almost land it with the remaining fuel for reuse.
@@viktorm3840what are you smoking dude? NASA actually sent people to the moon and they came back safely to earth. Also they designed the Hubble telescope which discovered so much things that Webb's telescope will never beat it's achievements. And what did space X do? Nothing even close to what NASA did.
Rockets to this day largely use classical control theory from what Iv heard. Back then they definitely used PID. Both the Proportional, Integral, and Derivative components of PID control can be calculated using op-amps. This is how early analog computers did it. Analog computing was insane. Nasa used lasers to do some fourier transform and do the computations involved for SAR radars.
At 1: 18, . . . Uh, Apollo 5 did *not* use the Saturn V! It used a Saturn 1-B launch vehicle vehicle with 8 H1 engines in the first stage and one J2 in the 2nd stage to launch the first lunar module on its first solo test flight into Earth orbit.
The biggest problem with the SLS is not the engineers, but there US government. Just like the Space Shuttle, what NASA wanted to do and designed had big changes done and corners cut due to other government agencies. SLS would be a lot different if NASA was left alone to develop, and had a better budget. Space X is the modern day Henry Ford, simplifying the construction of space vehicles. Space X's goal to develop a reusable vehicle is only one point, the second part is a multi-purpose launcher, that can carry heavy payloads.
Launching 40 rockets to go to the moon once, orbital refuelling, the insane maneuvering around the moon and landing the entire damn Starship with turbo pump engines that are totally unreliable, but have to be fired five times during the mission is literally the opposite of simplifying things...
@@Baerchenization Yeah but you don't understand, Mr. Henry Ford's soul as reincarnated in Musk's jellyfish body (as well as Ford's antisemitism and anti-union stances it seems)... And don't worry, Raptor v3 will "hopefully be more reliable" as Musk said, while making it run even harder because they need much more thrust for the tin can v2 and v3... Yeah... But hey, it's going great! Don't you think? Starship v3 will colonize the solar system!
@@benfowler1134 Yes, that is the problem, Musk is an idiot. NASA - not me - said they will need about 20 flights. Only problem now is, that was when Musk had still peddled Starship as having 100 t payload capacity. At the SpaceX event after the 3rd launch however, he suddenly said it is only good for 40 - 50 tonnes (and how could he not know that for all these years?!). Anyway, if the payload gets halved, the required number of flights doubles - do you follow? So 2 x 20 equals 40. And since they have to perform an unmanned test mission to the moon before the actual manned mission, that makes it 80, and since they haven't even finished development of the damn thing, it is basically close to 100, all things considered. In short, it is not looking good ;)
@@Baerchenizationtotally with you here, what we have seen from past launches, they are still quite far from having a reliable and working rocket. As far as I know they haven't tested re-firing the turbo pumps in orbit yet, which is going to be the death of their space project if it fails. The whole design of the starship baffles me, it's kind of one of those multitools that can do most things, but not particularly well.
With 99% engine reliability: 5 engines: 4.9% probability of launch failure 33 engines: 0.44% probability of launch failure (assuming 2 engines can be lost without consequences)
@@SpaceAdvocate I don't know about that, how are you calculating a 0.44% probability of launch failure with 33 engines? When you look at it from the view of probability of success with 99% engine reliability: 1 engine: 99% probability of success 5 engines: 95.1% probability of success 33 engines: 73.2% probability of success (assuming 2 engines can be lost without consequences)
@@tommy_egan I just used a binomial distribution calculator. With 33 engines with a 99% reliability, there's a 28.2% probability of losing at least 1 engine, a 4.3% chance of losing at least 2 engines and a 0.44% chance of losing at least 3 engines. Only with three or more failed engines would the launch fail.
@@willyolio9590 I'm sure at least one early Saturn 5 launch had one engine lose the plot halfway up, but due to a crosswire issue the computer shut down a good engine instead of the faulty one... they made it to orbit anyway. Good engines! I'm no V8-head but sometimes there's no replacement for displacement....
15.20: as I understand it, the Falcon 9 landing on one throttled down Merlin has a thrust to weight ratio of more than 1. If it didn't cut the engine at the moment of touchdown it would head skywards again. The one shot "suicide burn" strategy.
Nasa dont built rockets, they only fly prototypes for research. private companies built them. also nasa studied reusable rockets and without that research spacex could never fly the falcon 9.
The smaller size thrusters and large number of rocket thrusters do something else in addition to giving balance to the returning rocket: they are much more efficient because they give more thrust per square inch, i.e Force, can a 3 or 4 thrusters. The reason is simple: more thrust is generated as the fuel passes through smaller tubes toward the exhausts than through larger tubes: this is because fuel fluid molecules in the larger tubes do no interact directly with the tube providing the thrust to the rocket, while molecules do. As I said in a tweet to Elon Musk, if you have a bidet with a constant water flow rate, the multi-hole setting will make you feel a force on the bidet compared to the single hole setting. So, in short, Elon Musk is saving money by using multiple small engines (he took my advice :o).
The best answer why Space X uses 33 smaller engines compared to 5 bigger engines is the flexibility. In the event of engine failure( some presumably) the starship can still fire. While if a massive ship like that having 5 engines to experience engine failure it is likely to fail during launch or re entry
Лучший ответ... Потому что нету больших двигателей настолько же эффективно работающих как маленькие. Хуже того - их невозможно создать те гипотетические большие двигатели. А остальное это просто отмазки.
Get 50% off your first crate of a monthly subscription when you go to www.kiwico.com/curiousdroid and use code curiousdroid
EDIT : I was wrong about the reusability of the SLS SRB boosters and they are infact not reused. I could have sworn I read it that that were or were meant to be at some point but anyways thanks for pointing that out, which means that the SLS is 100% disposable. A few have mentioned that I'm trashing NASA, wouldn't say that but I would say that SpaceX is doing a lot of more what old style NASA and their contractors did in the 60s & 70s and that was innovating and truly ground breaking stuff, now it seems as though they tied down and muzzled but think has more to do with the government than NASA its self.
14:10 THE ANSWER
Super - very concise and very difficult to not compress information down so much without "Lying" - I could see all the artful dodges and smoothing over. I had a few electronics kits like that back in the day - that certainly made more complex technologies to learn much less daunting. ["Old man " worked at MSFC back in the day ] - and many other things later - I GIVE this VIDEO TWO THUMBS UP !!! but you can only give one... How many fingers am I holding up - smack - raised by hand like Pip - from Great Expectations. Old man at the drawing board - at EMI me doing electronics quietly as I could.... All that sh*t I philched from Coalie's junk yard - making extra-ordinarily awful sounds and beeps and boops and they thought I was "cray cray" that Eric kid - but it only took me four decades to find out I was only "Circuit bending" - before the term circuit benders were even a thing...
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As long as one was quiet - you could pretty much get away with murder.
Ghosted - but a Tesla ... drive once and never use it again ...
Could you do a video about the designed but never flown M-1 rocket, the most powerful oxygen/hydrogen engine ever designed
Thanks Paul. I've been waiting for videos from you about these rockets. 🙂👍
A bit unfair to blame the SLS on NASA engineers. The most fundamental design decisions were made by politicians, not engineers. The joke name "Senate Launch System" isn't that far off.
Tbf, iv read into the politics and it makes the program more cost-effective than I really realized.
Most of the "useless costs" with the SLS, are mostly just glorified subsidies and welfare for keeping missile companies and other jobs in business.
If were gonna have subsidies over these jobs, then we might aswell keep em productive while at it.
@@honkhonk8009 The fundamental problem with SLS is the entire decision to use space shuttle derived technology. The inefficiencies of the contractors just make it worse, but the fundamentals were already terrible.
The space shuttle was already a failed program in terms of providing low cost space access. Sure, it launched lots of people and payloads, but for actually lowering the cost of space access, it was a failure right from the start (and there again, political design decisions were the main problem). Trying to modify an existing system into something drastically different in order to save development costs almost always ends up being more expensive than starting from scratch, and in this case we're talking about modifying half century old tech intended for a reusable space plane that was never going to be cost effective and turning it into an expendable rocket. The RS-25 in particular is a complex, high-strung, high-performance powerplant with a very expensive and labour intensive manufacturing process, yet most of its design requirements are unnecessary on SLS.
NASA studied a lot of options, and frankly, the SLS is a good overall design. It will be better once the Block III engines are used.
The fundamental problem with SLS is the entire decision to use space shuttle derived technology. The inefficiencies of the contractors just make it worse, but the fundamentals were already terrible.
The space shuttle was already a failed program in terms of providing low cost space access. Sure, it launched lots of people and payloads, but for actually lowering the cost of space access, it was a failure right from the start (and there again, political design decisions were the main problem). Trying to modify an existing system into something drastically different in order to save development costs almost always ends up being more expensive than starting from scratch, and in this case we're talking about modifying half century old tech intended for a reusable space plane that was never going to be cost effective and turning it into an expendable rocket. The RS-25 in particular is a complex, high-strung, high-performance powerplant with a very expensive and labour intensive manufacturing process, yet most of its design requirements are unnecessary on SLS.
@TonboIV that is why I mentioned the Block III. The SSME underwent multiple major revisions over the years with most of the design being replaced Ship of Thesius style. Block I was the post-Challenger redesign, to give a starting point. The Block III replaces the nozzle and combustion chamber, the two most expensive and labor intensive points of the design. The replacement is derived from technologies made for the RS-68, an engine much more in line with what they need. Around when they will be ready is when the new boosters should be as well. That is why I am excited by the switch, to see what it can do with systems made for it, rather than hand me downs.
I built a Saturn V moon rocket in 6th grade for a science fair project (in 1968). I'd avidly watched all the Gemini and Apollo launches and by the time I finished collge in 1979 I had a degree in Aeronautical Engineering. I since left that field and have been a computer Network Engineer and nearing retirement. I can't say enough how lucky I was to have been born the same year Sputnik was sent into orbit. The 60's was an absolutely great time to be in school....
And today (in germany atleast) astro physics are barely ever taught. We had a whole 2 lessons about the planets in our solar system and how nuclear fusion worked in our sun. If I didn't have such an interest in spaceflight, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have learned anything...
Would want to know what they used to protect them self from radiation belt , and if starship need x amount of orbital refuels , how did Apollo manage to carry such fuel capacity to travel from a to b & back to a ?
Your career nearly matches that of my father, but he started twenty years before you. Aerospace engineering at a New York institute, but was "seduced" by computer programming during school and never served as a practicing AE. It was his son (me) that actually built astronomical instruments (and much of a small satellite) - so I sort of closed my dad's arc...
Impressive for a 6th grader. Or did you actually just build a model of a Saturn V moon rocket?
What did you and your classmates think of the atom bomb drills?
Oh my gosh, I NEVER thought I would see one of those electronic kits again! WHO could forget the bright yellow transistors, caps and ferrite rod! WOW thank you, you just took me back 45 years
1 addendum. The single merlin engine used for landing the Falcon9 is still too powerful to hover. So the engine is ignited at the exact altitude that it reaches zero velocity on the landing pad/barge and shut off before gaining altitude again.
If the engine didn’t have enough power have it gain altitude, it wouldn’t have enough power to decelerate the vehicle.
@@dwaynepenner2788 you misunderstans, it’s MINIMUM thrust setting is too high to allow the booster to hover when its nearly empty, if it does not time it’s ignition PERFECTLY it will literally not reach the ground and start going back up again.
That’s why the technique is called a hoverslam or suicide burn. Superheavy thankfully doesn’t need to do this.
@@wick9427 correct. So while having more engines allows more thrust options it's not as if falcon9 can land just because it has more engines. There's more variables to landing
Known as a suicide burn. However, the Merlin can be throttled, with its lowest throttle setting still too powerful. That does however allow room for error, so it is not just a full throttle burn to the deck
@@wick9427 it's not so much about the exact time of ignition - you can ignite it later, as you can still throttle it up when needed. It's the throttle control that is timed so that the rocket is fully decelerated at zero altitude. The time of ignition does not actually have to be as precise.
(you could ignite early and throttle the engine down, or you could ignite later and throttle the engine up, the time window is determined by the minimum thrust and the maximum allowable deceleration magnitude)
This video only briefly mentions the most important point: you want to mass produce just one type of engine to bring the costs down. In turn that means in order to use that one type of engine for all the different stages of the rocket, you have to use a lot of them for the first stage. Saying it is due to throttling limits is putting the cart before the horse, if SpaceX had decided to use 5 huge engines on the booster and land it using just the centre engine, then they would have designed it to be deeply throttlable. And it is possible to have such deep throttle control, though it adds complexity so avoiding it is an additional benefit. But the fundamental driver is mass production of one engine type to reduce costs.
More kiwiko than actual content lol
the throttle control required would have to be deeper than anything ever done on such a large rocket
It would make much more sense to use 4 large engines, and perhaps two smaller engines, that work in unison at launch, but during the landing cycle, only the smaller engines are used, which removes the complexity of the large engines having to deeply throttle. But as you say, single engine design is what really drives down cost. The drawback of a large number of smaller engines is the plumbing, this becomes an incredible spaghetti of pipes.
Yea. Same with the military.
SpaceX should deadass sell their raptor engines to other companies.
With the economies of scale, they would be incredibly cheap and would help get us in space easier.
@@honkhonk8009 The alloy they use to achieve their ridiculous chamber pressures is their own tech. While I'm sure China has stolen the IP by now, it still makes the best sense to keep as much of Raptor development to themselves as possible.
... because SpaceX hasn't unlocked those engines in the tech tree yet.
Please pin this comment this is too funny
Other way around. SpaceX has managed to unlock the smaller, more versatile, and more efficient engines.
Yeeps?
@@orppranator5230 They using MODS...
Uhm.. no
Space x produces quite the thrust for the size.
Would be the other way around
13:27 skip to the answer
It’s more then reusability. It’s also redundancy. If one or a few rockets fail, you are still ok.
Thank you, I don't have 20mins
Thank you.
Why does he do this every time. He needs a clips show - i do not care about the novel about this topic -
Just the facts
Slightly error describing testing the N1 engines.
While lack of testing facilities may have been a problem as well, the real issue with the N1 engines is that they used pyrotechnics to operate the main valves. This meant that short of rebuilding the engines they could only be used once, and also that the engines that were test fired weren't ever put on the rocket.
That and they may have rushed development. Not mentioned in the video is that Brezhnev came to power in a board room coup in 1964, which unsettled things for a many of a bureaucracy. And then Korelev dies in 1966 and is succeeded by a less than skilled successor. Glushko had no problem cleaning house in 1974, to put it mildly, but then he pressed/oversaw development of Energiya/Buran (which proved to be very costly).
@@michaeldunne338 Costs were not an issue to Russia (and still aren’t). It was all about showing off with a big bang. They certainly got that with N-1.
@@Dave5843-d9mYou are right in that the Soviet Union overall was working on different considerations from the 1950s to the 1980s. However, they certainly were highlighting costs in 1989, and there was debate about it at the tail end of the Soviet Union. In the 1976/1977 timeframe the Spiral spaceplane team got blown off when it came to the go ahead given to Buran (they said the math didn't work).
In 1989 Dunayev conceded that "14 billion rubles had been spent during thirteen years of development and testing" to a bit of controversy (see page 373 of "Energiya-Buran: The Soviet Space Shuttle). By January of 1991, the "program had a cost of a total of 16.4 billion rubles, of which 12.3 billion had gone to design and testing and 4.1 billion to 'capital construction," according to Boris Gubanov.
By 1991 there was quite a bit of criticism, usually involving comparison to the Soyuz launch system.
Otherwise, no one was happy about the delays with development of the RD-170 engines and strap on boosters. Those engines wouldn't really get to prove themselves until test lights of Zenit from April 1985 onwards.... "Almost six years later than planned" ... (pg 407 IBID).
@@Dave5843-d9mCosts most certainly are an issue with the Russians and the Sovjets before them. It’s just that the Russian mode of technological development is to trade safety and bodies to make up for lack of money and competence.
Главная проблема двигателей N-1 была в том, что они были не доработанные и слишком часто отказывали. Требовалось много еще времени, чтобы довести их до нужной надежности, а их уже десятками ставили с конвейера на ракету и запускали в небо.
11:50 It's worth noting that SpaceX tests every engine multiple times prior to launching.
Yet every flight has had them fail!
@@palmtreeshenanigansThe memes write themselves. Fanboys will ignore the very obvious failures and believe its all part of the plan. Not every kg needs to go to space only the parts that matter.
It's worth noting that Musk himself admitted that the Raptors 2 aren't reliable and "hopes" that Raptors 3 will be, while making them run even harder because they absolutely need much more thrust for the inflating mass of Starship v2 and v3, as they are now trying to bring back the payload to 100t or more... It's going to be very entertaining... Maybe less so for NASA.
@@klutzspecter3470 Agreed. I worked on the Orion space program and we still had junk weight flying up into space.
@@classydave75 The Raptor 2 have already demonstrated decent reliability. For the last three flights, 116 out of 117 engines have worked for ascent. That's a 99.14% demonstrated reliability.
That's a more confident reliability number than the F-1, which had a total track record of 65 out of 65 for ascent. It's also better than the well known RD-180, with 105 out of 106 for ascent.
Musk hasn't said that the Raptor 2 aren't reliable. He's only said that Raptor 3 will be *more* reliable. No matter how good the Raptor 2 are, they can always get better.
Sergei Korolev was literally the person driving the whole Soviet space program the Politburo and the higherups couldn't care less and treated the whole program with derision he even had to con them into letting him send Gagarin into orbit telling them "they'd need someone onboard to listen to the radio if they wanted to spy on the Americans". It wasn't until they saw the western papers the next day that they started paying serious attention (Pravda initially announced Gagarin's historic launch with a single fairly drab paragraph on page 3)
The Soviets were good at unwittingly lighting fires under the Americans. In 1955, they paraded a flight of 10 new bombers over Red Square and by circling them fooled the US into thinking there were 60, meaning a bomber gap was developing. We responded by building many more than needed, a waste of resources, which the Soviets couldn't match.
Remember that Russia has long been a backwards country, and that the Soviet leadership were "workers" and weren't the brightest or most worldly people as a rule (ironically explains why being moderately cultured and well-educated in the old Soviet Union had cachet)
@@jsmariani4180 But that was good for "Business"
@@benfowler1134 most of the soviet leadership were intellectuals and well learned(even stalin was an acclaimed poet).
That kind of explain why they were so out of touch with their policies (or symply the autoritharianism making it impossible to criticize those policies)
That is a myth. Korolyov was not conning the government as the space project was incredibly pricey. The government has listened to many expects in regards to what to do and how, it the space program would have happened regardless of Korolyov.
Apollo 5 was not launched on a Saturn V. It used the Saturn 1B originally planned for Apollo 1 to launch an unmanned lunar module into earth orbit for testing.
I caught that as well.... glad to see others know their space history!
Also looking for this comment 😊
The wild ride of Apollo 5. They had tons of glitches, and it was only partially fueled. Gene went full speed ahead on the burns, in manual control. The ascent stage spun out of control after its burn. It was an overall success and the next test launch was canceled.
Indeed that mention of Apollo 5 struck me as well. IIRC, Apollo 5 was launched by the very Saturn-IB that would have been used for Apollo 1.
@@Nighthawke70not sure what you mean... 🤔
I know people like to compare the Saturn and starship rockets but there so many differences it’s like apples and oranges. Just remember that the Saturn was designed with slide rules and mechanical pencils with little reference material available. Starship is all computer design and 3D models with a library of resources to refer to. Hats off to those old men with the pocket protectors. 😁👍
Thanks William Foster !!
Yes, at the same stage in the programmes, Apollo was sending craft around the moon. Starship can barely make it past the Karman Line with an empty payload bay, and making it back to earth without exploding is considered a wild success. Even though the 'reusable' craft is half melted!
The booster did good, though.
@@splashfreelance2376 Starship has gone twice now to roughly 99% of the way to LEO. If they fired the engines for another 1-2 seconds they'd have been in orbit. That's not "barely past the karman line". The Karman line is more like 20% of the way to LEO. And they had tens of tons of propellant left over which could have been payload instead.
Also, if we say Starship got started in 2018, and Apollo got started in 1960, we can compare what Starship is doing this year to what Apollo was doing in 1966. That was three suborbital flights, AS-201, AS-202 and AS-203. So no, at this stage of the program Apollo wasn't sending craft around the moon.
(Setting a starting date isn't entirely easy. Hardware was being worked on years earlier for both programmes. But I think 1960 and 2018 are fairly accurate years for when major work started.)
@@splashfreelance2376 absolutely! Starship is not even close to what it needs to be but still gets applause at every failure. 🤷♂️
Apollo was also under the gun to meet the moon landing deadline, which is why they went with the F1 engine concept that was already being developed, rather than start clean-sheet with something new.
The engines on the N1 weren't hot fired (tested) because they were fitted with burst disks which could only fire once. This wasn't a budget issue so much as a weight problem.
Interesting, thanks, do you mind explaining what are burst disks and what are they for?
Literally what they sound like. Rather than a mechanical valve it's a weak disk you use to block a pipe. When the pressure gets too high on one side they rupture and the fluid flows.
18:20 As far as I know the SLS solids also aren’t being reused. As they burn for longer than the shuttle boosters and burn out at a higher altitude, they can't be recovered.
That's correct. They are not reused.
Which is just as well, they would need to be stripped down to bare metal and then built back up. This was effectively more expensive than just making new ones for every flight.
SLS is a joke rocket. it's a jobs project and nothing more.
So at this point the best use of SLS is just to get some use of legacy stocks of parts from Shuttle. With the caveat that they have to make a ton of new stuff to be able to use the old stuff.
Should have at least painted the things white so they give off that classic NASA Saturn V look.
Solid booster reuse is not very economically worthwhile as the video mentioned they're relatively simple
@@scottwatrousmain issue: with refurbishment and modifications this old stuff is WAY more expensive than new stuff. Rs-25, main engine of shuttle and SLS, costs of refurbishment and modifications is about 140mln per one engine. New rs-25E, currently in testing will cost 100 (later 70) mln per one. Cost of BE-4 ( stronger engine as it got ca 2.5 MN of force vs 1.8 of RS) internal cost of production is ca 7 mln, while it's sold to ULA for 20 mln.
Raptor 2 engine, with 2.3 MN, costs around 1mln internally. Raptor 3 will be even cheaper.
Simply put, modern technology of production is way more effective. From machining to 3d printing. And also modern materials that are way cheaper (raptor 2 uses mostly stainless steel and copper, raptor 3 uses almost exclusively stainless steel. Steel in late 70 wasn't as advanced as today, and due to technology wasn't practical to use it. During development of SLS there was lot of proposals that had way more sense from time perspective, but we're abandoned in favour of "safe approach". In example there was in pretty advanced engine from rocketdyne from J series (don't remember details) that could be much less expensive than legendary, but obsolete RS 25. Also, rocketdyne if I recall, tried to revive F1 engine in form of F1b. F1b used modern technology for production and its estimated cost would be 15-30 mln. They even tested powerhead. 2 of those engines should power kerolox sideboosters instead SRB, and that would increase capabilities of SLS. Because not only kerolox boosters would have more power, but much more DeltaV.
All those proposals were shot down by politicians
Many smaller engines means some very important basic elements : a) you can manufacture much smaller components which makes them faster and cheaper to tool up and to build. b) like investing, you diversify your risk - a single failure means a much smaller % loss of thrust.
yup. It makes failure more likely socne there is more things that CAn fail, but redundancy means engine loss isnt as much of an issue
Good job on this video though small note:
The SRBs on SLS are not recovered and reused, they are expended just like the core stage.
YOOO DAVID
Also the SLS being a thing isnt anything to do with NASA but congress. Why do you think NASA are launching a satellite using the falcon heavy and not the SLS for?
@@geesehoward700satellite launching has nothing to do with it. The SLS is not intended to be a satellite launch vehicle so comparing it makes no sense.
That said, the SLS is a massive waste of taxpayer money and should never have been built, but that's congress's fault.
@@falxonPSN i thought the Europa Clipper was to be a SLS launch originally. I could be massively wrong.
@@falxonPSN it was hahahhahahahah
It makes me so angry that shuttle engines are put on the SLS. Those belonged in a museum. They should have manufactured the cheaper versions they have to do anyways, supposedly, for future flights. As you said, it is ridiculous that the expensive bits are thrown in the ocean and they make a circus of recuperating the solid rocket boosters.
It's costing more to use the RS-25's than it would to build new ones. The whole project is ridiculously bloated and wasteful and should be cancelled ASAP.
There's plenty of space shuttle memerobilia to go around. They're working engines, still some of the most state of the art and capable ones around, being put to use like they were meant to. And the boosters are not recovered so there's no showboating going on. SLS' disposability is what makes it a capable launch platform and not a wildly aspirational, haphazard, speculative project like Starship that's going to be reliant on so much perfectly executed back to back refuelling to have any hope of being mission capable.
SLS should have used the RS-68 from the Delta IV. Better performance. Better ISP, cheaper and built to be expended. Only challenge would have been heat.
@@snizami My guess is that the first missions which actually demand orbital refueling, such as Polaris and HLS, will use disposable Starship tankers at around $30 million a pop. They'll be on Block 3 by then, so 200 tons per lift. Maybe six tankers? Rapid reusability can come down the road since it's not as critical a development.
@@snizamiCurrent Starship will grow to double its current size. Picture 60 Raptors.
Well, the SLS was dreamed up by a couple of senators who wanted to keep the space economy going after the retirement of the shuttle. I'd not beat NASA up too much about its design.
Likely they choose what they did to bring the wealth into favored contractors, keeping the shuttle engines going.
Personally I think the capsule based booster rocket technology wasn't the way to go. I think space x has the right idea with starship, we need to develop capability like an airliner or the shuttle in the movie 2001 A space Odyssey. The shuttle was only partially what I am talking about, it was too expensive to fly and had too many compromises. It only existed because the military was interested in it, it was redesigned to fit their needs which also helped make it not what it was supposed to be. Not really NASAs fault, their budgets were slashed after Apollo,they were working with relative peanuts.
Why would they give shuttle attributes isn’t SLS a moon rocket
I'd say the best brains at NASA know exactly how ridiculous the situation is, but politicians want the things built in their districts by companies that donate to their campaigns.
Today, in terms of NASA civil servants, they hire based upon D.E.I. or Veteren status. This means the best youngest Engineers fresh out of college never worked at NASA. The laws of Physics do not include an equation of veteran status nor D.E.I. status.
@@nonowayjose9159 that is big pile of steaming lie, that you gave here. Go back to you qanon forum and discuss there how americans never landed on the moon.
Those two rockets landing at the same time was so badass! You have to love their sense of humor too. There's at least one compilation video of their test rockets blowing up and one of them was captioned as a "rapid unscheduled disassembly." 😋
I like the personal connection you explained to the video sponsor with that first electronics kit, nice that you were able to find and include a picture of it. Sponsorship done right.
Apollo 5, which was the Unmanned Test Flight of the LM, used the uprated Saturn 1, not the Saturn V as the Launch Vehicle
Hearing your background on how you started with your electronics kids and worked up from there it was pretty neat. I followed a similar pattern, just 20 years after you!
I had the exact same kit! And im still in the tech business!
Same, but I became a dropout!
I was poor, but my interest was sparked by LEGO Technic.😂
And as of two days ago SpaceX has successfully demonstrated the catch of their Super Heavy booster back on launch pad with flight 5.
Feels so good to be living in this era of rapid space innovations!
👍👍👍
So many, and yet so little. It depends on which organization you look at private sector versus public sector. Or even amongst the private sector, it’s nearly night and day difference.
The private sector space launch industry is basically SpaceX followed by SpaceX. Similar things can be said about satellite communication systems.
Rocket innovation not space innovatikn.
@@noticing33 and where is this rocket going Mr. Genius?
I have a Radio Shack Electronic Learning Lab.
I worked my way through the text books that came with it.
And repaired a couple of computer monitor power supplies with the knowledge gained.
It’s still fun to tinker with, from time to time.
Got one sitting on a shelf. The '75 in one' Electronic Project Lab Cat. No. 28 - 267
I wish there were Radio Shacks again. I miss being able to go into one to get a replacement driver for a stereo speaker or a pack of diodes for an amplifier repair.
Time well spent. Thank you.
Very interesting video and also very documented with lots of details about all these rocket engines. Thank you!!
10:51 that's Kerbal Space Program! It's always awesome to see it being used for 'real' science explainer content
i saw ksp on an israeli prime time news program, showcasing a new iranian irbm or something
@@unflexian North Korea uses KSP too !
11:55 SpaceX has done and continually do tests on Raptor engines at their test facility in McGregor in Texas.
They also perform static test fires before every launch. Before the first test flight, static test fires were performed on ever increasing numbers of engines:
So, while they do get viewed as "fast and loose", they still do testing.
The flights themselves are also "testing."
That's why they call 'em "test flights."
The mystery is how they went from Falcon to Starship. It’s schizophrenic.
@@JoeOvercoat What do you mean? It's pretty clear why they developed starship. it was well publicized almost in real time on twitter the design decisions.
They're seen as "fast and loose" *because* they do testing... it's the testing where that attitude is most visible. If they relied more on simulations and less on real-world hardware (like their rivals mostly do), we wouldn't see anywhere near as many explosions... but SpaceX are big believers in validating models with real data, and blowing things up on the test stand is how they do it.
@@JoeOvercoat what's "schizophrenic" about starting small and then going bigger?
Do you think it's normal to run a marathon before learning to walk?
The F-1 was only "relatively" simple. Agreed, it could not throttle. But the sheer tonnage of fuel moved 0:07 through turbines in an ignition sequence requiring analogue components eg wax disks to burst at optimal time to ensure ignition was audacious, glorious, and never to be repeated. The US version if Soviet tractor design. Simple+adequate=good.
Now in English please 😅
@@BigPapaVerde17 There were no computers in the F-1s, so the timing of things was often handled by bits of "stuff" that would burn through, or melt, at just the right time to -say- divert gases from the turbine "engines" to start entering the nozzle to help protect it before full ignition. A lot of it could have been a fantasy by Rube Goldberg, but engineered with precision. Did you know that the protective covers on the hold-down clamps for the Saturn V were literal bits of cord? Seriously.
Did Apollo 11 actually leave near-Earth orbit?
Despite the revisionist narrative that this channel won't question -- unstable fuel burn for the oversized F1 engines was never rectified and another arrangement in their place was made in order to reach near Earth orbit, keeping the F1 bell nozzle to maintain the desired appearance. The great licking yellow flame was an indication that something was not normal as fuel was burning in the atmosphere while providing no additional thrust. This was the result of injecting additional kerosene into the exhaust stream for greater visual effect yet appearing to produce an inefficient burn unlike other rockets after launch. No explanation is forthcoming and this issue is not addressed in any usual report; however, using a smaller reliable engine with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement allowed the Saturn V to reach near-Earth orbit.
The Apollo 11 crew attempted to demonstrate their position at over halfway to the moon as seen in the unedited version presented to the public while the more recently released unedited version reveals a flood of blue light entering the same window as the camera continues to roll, through which only a moment before, we saw the Earth far distant in what appeared to be very low light conditions. Then, as the camera pulls back from the window, the exposure settings are seen to return to normal as a flood of light enters the same window. Without a change in the orientation of the spacecraft assumed to be on a trajectory toward the moon, the only source for any flood of light can be the Earth while in near-Earth orbit. The usual sponsored efforts will try to make excuses for why the obvious did not take place -- yet is overly apparent in the unedited version. When facts cannot prevail in support, sponsored activity will resort to name calling and other derogatory comments discrediting themselves.
. . While remaining in near-Earth orbit, another indication are the impossible weather patterns seen on Earth, when in reality only a small portion of the Earth's surface was visible, framed by the round window of the command module. Straight line cloud fronts are seen on video to be extending for what appears to be more than 6000 miles, a quarter of the Earth's circumference -- something that has never occurred in the meteorological record on Earth. The round window of the command module was used to effect an image of the Earth but the weather in the region did not comply for a realistic view. No recognizable continents are found in view, but only the impossible weather patterns seen.
Did you ever see a documentary on the Russian moon capsule? The life support systems were built around an array of faucets instead of electronics! "Comrade, did you just fart? Turn on CO2 scrubber number 3!". Famously in the early manned space program astronauts systematically tested which ballpoint pen designs would still work in zero-G, while cosmonauts were simply issued pencils. As you say, simple+adequate=good. Not to mention cheap.
I fear no man. But Raptors... Those scare me.
At high speed, they are velociraptors! 😲
@@RWBHereif they are controlled by computers, they are called “clever girl”
@@RWBHere😂
Did Apollo 11 actually leave near-Earth orbit?
Despite the revisionist narrative that this channel won't question -- unstable fuel burn for the oversized F1 engines was never rectified and another arrangement in their place was made in order to reach near Earth orbit, keeping the F1 bell nozzle to maintain the desired appearance. The great licking yellow flame was an indication that something was not normal as fuel was burning in the atmosphere while providing no additional thrust. This was the result of injecting additional kerosene into the exhaust stream for greater visual effect yet appearing to produce an inefficient burn unlike other rockets after launch. No explanation is forthcoming and this issue is not addressed in any usual report; however, using a smaller reliable engine with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement allowed the Saturn V to reach near-Earth orbit.
The Apollo 11 crew attempted to demonstrate their position at over halfway to the moon as seen in the unedited version presented to the public while the more recently released unedited version reveals a flood of blue light entering the same window as the camera continues to roll, through which only a moment before, we saw the Earth far distant in what appeared to be very low light conditions. Then, as the camera pulls back from the window, the exposure settings are seen to return to normal as a flood of light enters the same window. Without a change in the orientation of the spacecraft assumed to be on a trajectory toward the moon, the only source for any flood of light can be the Earth while in near-Earth orbit. The usual sponsored efforts will try to make excuses for why the obvious did not take place -- yet is overly apparent in the unedited version. When facts cannot prevail in support, sponsored activity will resort to name calling and other derogatory comments discrediting themselves.
. . While remaining in near-Earth orbit, another indication are the impossible weather patterns seen on Earth, when in reality only a small portion of the Earth's surface was visible, framed by the round window of the command module. Straight line cloud fronts are seen on video to be extending for what appears to be more than 6000 miles, a quarter of the Earth's circumference -- something that has never occurred in the meteorological record on Earth. The round window of the command module was used to effect an image of the Earth but the weather in the region did not comply for a realistic view. No recognizable continents are found in view, but only the impossible weather patterns seen.
Because we had 63 years of advancements in electronics which allows the rocket to adapt to engines going out and not significantly effecting the flight, which would enable greater rocket reliability without the engines having to be as rigorously tested, because if you had 4-5 engines it would be much harder to adapt to one of them going out where as with 33 smaller engines it's creates a smaller force if one engine were to go out, therefore making it easier to correct, also it's cheaper to produce many small engines than it 4 - 5 big engines because you start to get economics of scale.
This is why i feel it is wrong to have so many engines, spacex has had multiple rockets fail due to engine failure, spacex has still to have a launch where all rocket engines ignite on launch and restart when needed, every single booster has failed in every flight so far to do a perfect flight.
Yes these are still test flights but you would think they would have resolved the engine problems, and no spacex cannot lose 4 or 5 engines and succeed with its mission, every engine has its job and if even one fails that means thrust is lost and burn time extended for the other engines, this uses extra fuel which impacts the goal of the flight unless spacex is sending a few extra tons of fuel for failures which is just a waste.
Common sense shows that they should do everything to lower the engine count as much as possible, believing otherwise is just fanboy talk.
Bold words. Engineering is a game of compromise, whether the budget is generous or not. Their system works.
@@palmtreeshenanigans Only the first 2 failed that way and the more engine failures they have the more they know how they look like so they can shut an engine down before it damages it's self so I don't see it as being a long term issue also the first one blew up because the engines destroyed the launch pad and trashed a bunch of the engines I doubt a rocket with much fewer engines would have fairer as well, aka even clearing the launch tower.
@@Rich-on6fe to be fair so did Saturn V, SLS and to a lesser extent the Space shuttle. I'm not saying less rockets is nessarily a bad thing it just means your engines need to be a lot more reliable now which is expensive to validate and in the past especially with the Saturn V we just didn't have the electronics to reliably shut down engines before they got so damaged they have a significant chance of taking down the craft to adding more engines was just increasing your risk of failure no matter how long you operated and refined the rocket.
@@palmtreeshenanigans "every single booster has failed in every flight so far to do a perfect flight."
yeah, we are just 4 flights in, and things are still in development, and they also don't have to perform perfectly...
Excellent explanation of the development of the Saturn rocket series. I have been researching this lately, and your explanation is the most comprehensive & clear I have ever seen. Thank you!
The real reason is because of Thrust to Weight ratio. Big engine have combustion instability issues that needs to be compensated with thicker metals to strengthen the engine structure. Smaller engine requires more plumbing. The optimum size is around Raptor size.
Seeing that heavy rocket come down and land never gets old. So cool
… “And rockets proudly land upon their tailfins,
As God and Robert Heinlein meant them to.”
I have seen this video at least 10 times. People can get bored even with millions of videos Curious Droid is exactly what I love about science & Space !!
It seems glaringly obvious modern low-cost & advancement of computers allows for multiple engines, but that was glossed over in this video. The computing technology of the past did not make multiple engines feasible.
Well, if we’re keeping score, it still isn’t..
But the computing technology of the past - specifically the lack of Computational Fluid Dynamics - also made it very hard to build really big engines because you could not work out what was making them explode as they got bigger (as they always did). The Russian decision to use their very efficient (for the era) yet proven reliable smaller engines was correct given the technology and resources available to them.
Wonderful content! I got my daughter Kiwi co crates and she really digged them for almost a year before she became bored with the repetitious similarity of the latter crates!
Thank you for this video. What a great narration. Great visuals. Really clever segue into the KiwiCo sponsorship segment. At every point during the video where an answer spawned a new question in my mind, you answered within a few moments. Well done, sir.
It's also worth noting that having so many engines means they are easier to replace when broken!
Awesome 👌 👍....
Thank you sir. Enjoyed the presentation 👍
There’s a simple way to put it in layman’s terms. The rocketdyne F-1 is a top fuel drag car and the spacex Raptor is a Formula 1 car.
Blame Congress, not NASA, they're are doing what they have with the little they are given. We american just need to elect better politicians.
I don't think that is totally the case. The idea of leveraging shuttle technology goes back to Robert Zubrin's "Case for Mars" in the early 1990s. Simply put, the elegant idea of repurposing technology and production facilities from one program to another turned out to be more costly and time consuming than thought.
Otherwise, I thought the Constellation Program and then the Artemis program were a bit underfunded for a good amount of time. So, not get sufficient funds year over year, resulting in delays and then big investments in the programs over time.
"We Americans just need to elect better politicians."
Vote harder.
Blame Russian govt for taking the L and gave up.
Nah. Just cut foreign aid, military spending and junk welfare programs. Invest in the future for a change.
@@TucsonDude Most Americans could care less about a space program. That's why NASA's appeal faded.
Great video, thanks! Another reason for smaller engines is that the same engine can be used on the second stage. Avoiding the need to design and produce a second type of engine.
If you look at SpaceX boosters landing....they can decelerate from 2000km/h to 0 in a few seconds, because the thrust is the same but the weight is much lower. By saving this to land it, you are keeping 2000kmh of speed for the landing, the most bang for your buck, and it's not used to gain speed/altitude for the launch
That’s a 1 minute, spaceX use 33 for control and redundancy. You can’t land a rock is chopstick with 5 big engine, it’s impossible to reduce the trust that low.
55 years ago is ancient history in tech terms but both systems are truly impressive.
Why are there 32 engines on the thumnail??🤔
one big advantage of having multiple engines is engine out capability:
starship can loose 3 engines at ignition and still launch. With the most recent launch the booster lost one engine and still delivered the ship to space and during the landing burn it lost one and still managed to splashdown in the water.
Even f9 has had missions where a merlin shutdown unexpectedly but it still delivered the payload to orbit.
Starship only reached low orbit.
@@LordZordid well sort of not really. They still have to demonstrate that they can de-orbit starship safely before they can achieve higher orbits
@@LordZordid yes? What that have to do with anything
But more engines to have more chances you lose some. And these guys aren’t kings of reliability of any sort.
Fundamentally flawed design.
Nothing will ever be as cool as the Saturn V's F-1 engines to me. Raptors are great but F-1 will always be my fave.
The most important similarity between the N-1 and Starship is not the configuration, but the development method. There are two basic methods:
1. test individual stages on test stands exhaustively before proceeding to the first flight, in an attempt to make the first flight be flawless. This approach is used by most Western companies, and was used by NASA for the Saturn V.
2. Move to in-flight testing much sooner in the development process. This gives you flight experience earlier in the process, but risks blowing up a bunch of rockets.
SpaceX is doing this with Starship, and the Soviets did it with the Proton and N-1. It saves a bunch of money. They also reckoned building a first-stage test stand for the N-1 would have taken years, and they were already behind the US in the race to the moon. For the Proton, 14 test launches were needed before it was ready for operational use, and for N-1 they were counting on a similar number of development launches.
The differences between N-1 and Starship are far bigger.
1. Engines: the NK-15 could not be tested before use. It used pyrotechnic actuators that had to be replaced once used. So instead, they'd build 6 engines, test 3 of them, and if those passed, use the other 3 on the rocket. The successor, the NK-33, was designed for multiple starts and would have solved this problem. The NK-33 was scheduled to be used from the fifth launch onwards.
SpaceX tests individual engines, AND can test the complete stage at least for brief test runs on the launch pad.
2. Control systems. KORD on the N-1 was unreliable, famously shutting down all but one engine when one of the launches developed a recoverable fault. Modern electronics are far more reliable and can monitor and control the engines in far more detail.
3. CAD. SpaceX can simulate the vibration environment in the stage in ways not possible in 1965, which eliminates many failure modes (at least one N-1 launch failed when a fuel line shook apart).
4. Money. SpaceX is rich and can afford to expend a bunch of rockets if it speeds up the development process. You can see them cranking out rocket at a high rate, even scrapping some of them without ever launching. The Soviets were not rich, and really couldn't afford the N-1 or its development program. It took a year to build a single N-1.
Конфигурация советской Н-1 и starship похожа, потому, что это реальные ракеты, а не фейковые, как Сатурн-5. Поэтому там стоят реальные маленькие двигатели, а не полуфейковый F-1.
@@swampfolk2526 The Saturn V is real, as was proven by observations from around the world, including the USSR.
@@Hobbes746 СССР ничего не наблюдал, кроме видео которые им передавало США. Сатун 5 реален, только дальше околоземной орбиты он не летал.
@@swampfolk2526 Incorrect. The USSR observed transmissions coming from lunar orbit and from the moon, not from Earth orbit.
The USSR exchanged lunar samples (retrieved by Luna missions) with the USA, and could compare Luna samples to Apollo samples.
@@Hobbes746 Да ничего они не наблюдали, никаких таких передач с орбиты луны, да и зачем им передачи вести когда луна над СССР?
I think this video is an excuse to show off that beautiful Artemis film footage again, always appreciated!
Which is far sharper and better than anything from SpaceX.
Thanks for this video, it explains a lot about rocket engines and how they work.
If you have 4 engines and lose 1 ... Then you lost 1/4 of your power. If you have 33 and lose 1. Well it doesn't really make any difference
"if" you lose, you lose 33.
Yes.
"IF" you.
Btw, the 33 engines are not part of a 'rocket' but are part of a 'spacecraft' as in the context of an aircraft. Just as an aircraft is not built for single trip, this space craft is also not being built for single trip. Instead it will be used as a workhorse.
That's the difference. Yes but if you lose, you lose 33 engines.
That's the difference it makes. Thanks.
@@guppi277 what you mean lose 33 engines?
On the other hand, with 33 instead of 5 it is much more likely that you will encounter problems. So...
@@andersnilsson973 its more likely to be a problem with 5 engines not 33
@@smking211no it isnt
Apollo 5 was actually a Saturn IB
My dad introduced me building radios and steam engines at the age of 7 doing wood work all our Christmas presents were hand made by him - a work bench and tools a chemistry set and a steam set - mamod also. We built kites and learned how to fix bikes at the age of 6 and 7. I learned my appreciation of engineering at this age from ladybird books on rockets and aeroplanes primarily which were fantastically explained and illustrated in a simple form but with pictures which impressed upon my mind to this day - I am 58 years old now but always indebted ti my dad to his day.
THEY CAUGHT THE SUPER HEAVY GUYS! SPACEX DID IT!!!!
Oops. Apollo 5 was a Saturn 1B.
Thank you, Paul, for a simple and direct analysis of 5 vs 30 engines in larger boosters.
I love every video you make! And secretly look forward to each exciting shirt :D
Yeah those shirts 👕 are really vibrant & dashing! 😎👍🏼👍🏼
I turned 14, in August of 1975. My father taught me to solder at age ten, and I had been building the electronic kits from Radio shack for a few years prior to that!
So tell me, in fifty-some years, have you figured out how to keep the solder fumes from aiming directly towards your face without just aiming a big fan at yourself? Because I haven't worked that one out yet. :D
@@IstasPumaNevada I used a fan on a lower speed for many years, until the technology improved. I built a solder fume extractor, from videos on UA-cam!
@@IstasPumaNevadaYou don't need to aim a fan at yourself or your work. I've got an old desk that I've repurposed as my soldering station, I have a small desk fan sitting on the side of the desk facing away from me. I just open the window and let the fan pull the fumes away from me and blow them out the window.
Lol I turned 14 back in 2018. I turned 10 in 2014.
My favourite childhood memory was learning how to do electronics stuff from the arduino kit I smuggled out of my dads office lmfaoo.
It was mostly breadboarding with random IC's and stuff.
Dad didn't allow me to solder cus he thought I would do some dumb shit with it, so for all my RC toys, I would make them by gluing together connections lmfao.
Your detail is the best! Curious Droid dropping a vid means serious info coming in
It doesn't matter how many times I see the Space X rockets land. I'm always astonished.
Just Brilliant!
That ability started in the 1990s. The Delta project. As usual with cuts to NASA, it did not get very far. But it did launch and did land.
Also keep in mind, the ability to land the spacex boosters depends on the kind of watch. A high Earth orbit, will result in the loss of the booster.
Also, keep in mind, the savings do not go to the customer. Spacex charges more to NASA to launch each astronaut more than the Russians, which of course were always a single used rocket.
@@TexasCat99 This is false. Russia currently charges $86 million per seat. The last time a Soyuz seat cost less than a Dragon seat was 2008. So there's your corrected "keep in mind."
🏆🤗⭐🙏
I had similar electronics kits and Estes rocket kits with solid rocket engines.
Extremely informative and well explained! You earned a subscriber
The fact is that the Apollo Saturn V rocket was capable of lifting with one launch all of the prior US payloads sent up since the dawn of the space age is remarkable. Its 7.5 million pounds of thrust at take off was an incredible feat to achieve and its vehicle design was largely done without computers. It was an historic achievement before American children began to be deliberately dumbed down.
Marxism (DEI) is to blame.
Agree, on top this was done all in less than 5 years… God bless each one of those magnificent engineers 😊
Our Best and Brightest worked on this.
@alantasman8273
The Saturn V was capable of lifting off and getting out of sight to get any longer spotted before plummeting.
Now they apparantly try to create a real functioning rocket with purpose and not only fireworks for the staged Apollo TV show.
@@THOUGHTCRIME_No1 So just how did those laser reflector panels and seismic Moonquake detectors used for generations get on the Moon. And I suppose you think the Apollo 13 mishap was staged as well. LOL
Should have been a five-minute video.
I already knew the answer to the video title question, of why they use 33 smaller engines. I just figured this would still be an interesting video and it was.
_"Why Does SpaceX Use 33 Engines While NASA Used Just 5?"_
_"These goes to eleven."_
Actually, yes. Raptor is a full-flow staged cycle, and are pretty much as good as chemical rockets get.
*EXACTLY !*
@@benfowler1134 With 350 bars of pressure, crazy. They are so powerfull, it's why the rocket is so tall, and it will grow by 26 meters with Starship V3. And the length of the flame!!!
Did Apollo 11 actually leave near-Earth orbit?
Despite the revisionist narrative that this channel won't question -- unstable fuel burn for the oversized F1 engines was never rectified and another arrangement in their place was made in order to reach near Earth orbit, keeping the F1 bell nozzle to maintain the desired appearance. The great licking yellow flame was an indication that something was not normal as fuel was burning in the atmosphere while providing no additional thrust. This was the result of injecting additional kerosene into the exhaust stream for greater visual effect yet appearing to produce an inefficient burn unlike other rockets after launch. No explanation is forthcoming and this issue is not addressed in any usual report; however, using a smaller reliable engine with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement allowed the Saturn V to reach near-Earth orbit.
The Apollo 11 crew attempted to demonstrate their position at over halfway to the moon as seen in the original version presented to the public while the more recently released unedited version reveals a flood of blue light entering the same window as the camera continues to roll, through which only a moment before, we saw the Earth far distant in what appeared to be very low light conditions. Then, as the camera pulls back from the window, the exposure settings are seen to return to normal as a flood of light enters the same window. Without a change in the orientation of the spacecraft assumed to be on a trajectory toward the moon, the only source for any flood of light can be the Earth while in near-Earth orbit. The usual sponsored efforts will try to make excuses for why the obvious did not take place -- yet is overly apparent in the unedited version. When facts cannot prevail in support, sponsored activity will resort to name calling and other derogatory comments discrediting themselves.
. . While remaining in near-Earth orbit, another indication are the impossible weather patterns seen on Earth, when in reality only a small portion of the Earth's surface was visible, framed by the round window of the command module. Straight line cloud fronts are seen on video to be extending for what appears to be more than 6000 miles, a quarter of the Earth's circumference -- something that has never occurred in the meteorological record on Earth. The round window of the command module was used to effect an image of the Earth but the weather in the region did not comply for a realistic view. No recognizable continents are found in view, but only the impossible weather patterns seen.
Smaller engines are clearly the way forward. But there was something epic about the old Saturn engines.
They looked simply amazing.
They clearly aren't: cascading failures will always be a problem when you pack a bunch of smaller engines together. The Russians spent many years on trying to solve this problem but finally gave up. That SpaceX sees better results due to much more advanced technology, doesn't solve the initial problem. Even with the latest SpaceX rockets there's still the risk that one of the engines failing in a catastrophical way, which DOES happen, can and often will wipe out its adjacent engines and it can even lead to a total failure of all the engines of that rocket.
@@tjroelsma It's just a matter of designing the rocket to avoid cascading failures. SpaceX is already there. An engine blew up on the landing burn for the most recent flight, and it was fine.
Obviously you want to avoid failures, and we can expect that SpaceX will continue working on engine reliability and the like, but it is a solved issue. It's just a matter of optimizing the design so that you aren't wasting unnecessary mass on engine shielding and stuff like that.
@@SpaceAdvocate Murphy's Law: Anything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong on a project, advocates against complicated setups. And a rocket with 33 engines IS complicated. No matter how reliable your individual engines are, the failure of even a very simple and/or cheap component can result in a catastrophic failure, which then triggers the cascading failure I keep mentioning.
Although SpaceX IS showing improvement with their rockets, there are still engines failing at each launch, meaning that their reliability is still questionable. Add to that the fact that they use far more fuel than SpaceX calculated they would, to me this points at SpaceX implying some protection measures against cascading failure that raise the weight of the rockets significantly. What you see looks more like band aids holding things together than actual solutions to problems and the giant elephant in the room is that despite these modest successes SpaceX is still 4-5 years behind on their own schedule.
@@tjroelsmahopefully they are building them agile enough to be making changes with each iteration that reliability will be achieved
Are they? I don’t buy in. I still think starship will not deliver on any of its promises
Thank you for narrating your videos. We the people appreciate your work.
Equating SpaceX to the N1 programme is very weird and misinformed. SpaceX engines are heavily tested before they get anywhere near a rocket, then tested some more on the rocket.
Oh thats why they fail so often to reignite or just to ignite at all thx for the Info.
@@_kampfkartoffel2195 How often would that be, troll boy?
@@dudermcdudeface3674 Well Starship never ignited theire engines in space and the Booster already failed on the third flight to ignite ITs engines Same as Starship on the fourth flight. Also in the fourth flight one engine did Not ignite at all and you could See black smoke coming From the Others. This indicates a sub optimal fule mixture because methane and oxygen should burn Clean.
@@_kampfkartoffel2195 They failed because of filter clogging which was fixed on ift 4.
@@goldenshatter yeah but they still failed. Saturn V did Not fail a single time. When did we get From failure IS Not an Option to success IS one of the possible Outcomes.
Multiple engines makes it possible to throttle over a much wider thrust range.
It also adds about 90 extra points of failure
But also the same number of redundancies.
@@OutsiderLabs
Engine out capability
@@OutsiderLabs You're assuming the unreliability introduced by the extra engines strictly adds up. Doesn't quite work that way if you take redundancy, full engine-out capability and differential thrust into account.
Did Apollo 11 actually leave near-Earth orbit?
Despite the revisionist narrative that this channel won't question -- unstable fuel burn for the oversized F1 engines was never rectified and another arrangement in their place was made in order to reach near Earth orbit, keeping the F1 bell nozzle to maintain the desired appearance. The great licking yellow flame was an indication that something was not normal as fuel was burning in the atmosphere while providing no additional thrust. This was the result of injecting additional kerosene into the exhaust stream for greater visual effect yet appearing to produce an inefficient burn unlike other rockets after launch. No explanation is forthcoming and this issue is not addressed in any usual report; however, using a smaller reliable engine with a reduced fuel load and stripped down mission requirement allowed the Saturn V to reach near-Earth orbit.
The Apollo 11 crew attempted to demonstrate their position at over halfway to the moon as seen in the unedited version presented to the public while the more recently released unedited version reveals a flood of blue light entering the same window as the camera continues to roll, through which only a moment before, we saw the Earth far distant in what appeared to be very low light conditions. Then, as the camera pulls back from the window, the exposure settings are seen to return to normal as a flood of light enters the same window. Without a change in the orientation of the spacecraft assumed to be on a trajectory toward the moon, the only source for any flood of light can be the Earth while in near-Earth orbit. The usual sponsored efforts will try to make excuses for why the obvious did not take place -- yet is overly apparent in the unedited version. When facts cannot prevail in support, sponsored activity will resort to name calling and other derogatory comments discrediting themselves.
I think advancement in sensors, computers, and materials have made reusability much more practical than it was the in 60s and 70s. I'm happy to see so much effort going towards space again!
In the 1960’s, rocket engines failed in spectacular explosions, not gentle shutdowns. The more engines you had, the more likely one of them would explode. 5 engines is much more reliable than 30. 50-60 years later, it’s possible that modern engines are more reliable or that modern engine failures don’t necessarily mean the vehicle explodes.
"The more engines you had, the more likely one of them would explode." But the bigger the engine the more likely it would explode because of combustion instability, which was not a solvable problem until good CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) was available. von Braun blew up an awful lot of F1s on the test stand fixing this problem by trial and error, even with his pintle injector design. How many engines you used, and therefore how big they were, was a balancing act between failure modes.
I'm no fan of Elon Musk, but I'm a big fan of SpaceX. If they can get Superheavy as mature at Falcon 9 then space is ours.
"Gully Foyle is my name and Terra is my nation. Deep space is my dwelling place, the stars my destination."
Musk is a good guy unless your ideology leans more totalitarian censorus left.😂
Big Fan of Elon because people only hate him for being autistic and saying the truth in a plain and upfront manner.
Hes not the only one. Many companies from finance to tech, is moving to Texas because Texas isnt clinically retarded.
Texas is easily the new California. Only place where you can find actual humans instead of ideological NPC's and yes men.
Nope. In 63 years of manned space flight, fewer than 700 people have been to space, and just over 600 have been into orbit. It's niche, and it's going to stay niche.
@@engineeredlifeformmost likely but I do enjoy the Livestreams
The booster looks really promising, Starship looks like a bit of a silly idea. Even if they get it to work it looks a bit over the top.
I played ksp and was just starting career mode and was having issues getting to second stage too early because my booster just was terrible in design, i copied space X 31 engines (but i could only fit 17 due to the limited fuel tank sizes.) and not only was it MORE STABLE then my other designs, it was more efficient. i could almost land it with the remaining fuel for reuse.
14:12 That’s rich coming from someone that makes disposable cars.
Any EV can be reused, including the batteries, just because it hasn't been profitable to do so up until now doesn't mean it wasn't possible.
100 percent agree. Funny I haven’t seen a Space X rocket even remotely near the moon.
@@JAMESWUERTELE isn't it more of a regulation restrictions rather than capability?
@@JAMESWUERTELE What? SpaceX has sent payloads to the moon, mars and other places in the solar system. You just didn't pay attention I guess?
@@Yattayatta the company does good work overall with underpaid and over worked staff led by a conman
This comment section is full of comments by trolls that do not even know basic facts about SpaceX, Falcon 9/Heavy and Starship.
@@viktorm3840what are you smoking dude? NASA actually sent people to the moon and they came back safely to earth. Also they designed the Hubble telescope which discovered so much things that Webb's telescope will never beat it's achievements. And what did space X do? Nothing even close to what NASA did.
@jan and you are completely, blissfully unaware of the mountain of challenges and struggles NASA went through to reach those achievements.
Just not enough complimentary words..... just great ...every time. Super Job
how could one imagine without all the technology advancement and conputing power today, people still managed to land on the moon. 👍🏼
Because what they lacked in technology they made up for with genius.
I can't imagine Elon Musk conning this many people.
The technology available in the 1960's was adequate.
The simpler something is the more reliable it is.
Rockets to this day largely use classical control theory from what Iv heard. Back then they definitely used PID.
Both the Proportional, Integral, and Derivative components of PID control can be calculated using op-amps. This is how early analog computers did it.
Analog computing was insane. Nasa used lasers to do some fourier transform and do the computations involved for SAR radars.
Making an RS-25 a 1 time use engine is incredibly stupid. The government is just there to waste money.
Bingo!
The Starship is looking more and more like the N1 Rocket
At 1: 18, . . . Uh, Apollo 5 did *not* use the Saturn V! It used a Saturn 1-B launch vehicle vehicle with 8 H1 engines in the first stage and one J2 in the 2nd stage to launch the first lunar module on its first solo test flight into Earth orbit.
The biggest problem with the SLS is not the engineers, but there US government. Just like the Space Shuttle, what NASA wanted to do and designed had big changes done and corners cut due to other government agencies. SLS would be a lot different if NASA was left alone to develop, and had a better budget. Space X is the modern day Henry Ford, simplifying the construction of space vehicles. Space X's goal to develop a reusable vehicle is only one point, the second part is a multi-purpose launcher, that can carry heavy payloads.
Launching 40 rockets to go to the moon once, orbital refuelling, the insane maneuvering around the moon and landing the entire damn Starship with turbo pump engines that are totally unreliable, but have to be fired five times during the mission is literally the opposite of simplifying things...
@@Baerchenization Yeah but you don't understand, Mr. Henry Ford's soul as reincarnated in Musk's jellyfish body (as well as Ford's antisemitism and anti-union stances it seems)... And don't worry, Raptor v3 will "hopefully be more reliable" as Musk said, while making it run even harder because they need much more thrust for the tin can v2 and v3... Yeah... But hey, it's going great! Don't you think? Starship v3 will colonize the solar system!
@@Baerchenization If you know better, then I'm sure SpaceX would love a copy of your CV.
@@benfowler1134 Yes, that is the problem, Musk is an idiot. NASA - not me - said they will need about 20 flights. Only problem now is, that was when Musk had still peddled Starship as having 100 t payload capacity. At the SpaceX event after the 3rd launch however, he suddenly said it is only good for 40 - 50 tonnes (and how could he not know that for all these years?!). Anyway, if the payload gets halved, the required number of flights doubles - do you follow? So 2 x 20 equals 40. And since they have to perform an unmanned test mission to the moon before the actual manned mission, that makes it 80, and since they haven't even finished development of the damn thing, it is basically close to 100, all things considered. In short, it is not looking good ;)
@@Baerchenizationtotally with you here, what we have seen from past launches, they are still quite far from having a reliable and working rocket. As far as I know they haven't tested re-firing the turbo pumps in orbit yet, which is going to be the death of their space project if it fails. The whole design of the starship baffles me, it's kind of one of those multitools that can do most things, but not particularly well.
It's just nice to finally see some real innovation and progress in space exploration again. We've waited too long.
5 engines, 5 chances of having an engine failure.
33 engines, 33 chances of having an engine failure...
With 99% engine reliability:
5 engines: 4.9% probability of launch failure
33 engines: 0.44% probability of launch failure (assuming 2 engines can be lost without consequences)
@@SpaceAdvocate I don't know about that, how are you calculating a 0.44% probability of launch failure with 33 engines? When you look at it from the view of probability of success with 99% engine reliability:
1 engine: 99% probability of success
5 engines: 95.1% probability of success
33 engines: 73.2% probability of success (assuming 2 engines can be lost without consequences)
@@tommy_egan I just used a binomial distribution calculator. With 33 engines with a 99% reliability, there's a 28.2% probability of losing at least 1 engine, a 4.3% chance of losing at least 2 engines and a 0.44% chance of losing at least 3 engines.
Only with three or more failed engines would the launch fail.
@@tommy_egan 5 engines, a single engine failure = launch failure.
with 33 engines, it requires 4+ engine failures to cause a launch failure.
@@willyolio9590 I'm sure at least one early Saturn 5 launch had one engine lose the plot halfway up, but due to a crosswire issue the computer shut down a good engine instead of the faulty one... they made it to orbit anyway. Good engines! I'm no V8-head but sometimes there's no replacement for displacement....
Redundancy....
When was there an engine failure, after launching?
33 engines seems like a better deal. If one goes out it's not that big a deal. With 5 engines, if 1 goes out, it's pretty grim, I'd say.
3 engines goes down:
SpaceX: 😂
NASA: 😢
30% of engines goes down
SpaceX: 😢
NASA: 😢
why is the moon landing so difficult when it was possible with some stuff wrapped in aluminium foil many decades ago?
It is mostly political, the tech has been around since the late 1960s. Our standard rocket tech is also very expensive to get in orbit
@@jonathanjones3126 good one 😂
..because SpaceX is learning from the failed Soviet N-1 Moon rocket cluster designs.
15.20: as I understand it, the Falcon 9 landing on one throttled down Merlin has a thrust to weight ratio of more than 1. If it didn't cut the engine at the moment of touchdown it would head skywards again. The one shot "suicide burn" strategy.
NASA: Money wasted is money well spent!
Why wasted?
SpaceX probably needs that many more because they can land their rockets an NASA cannot. Does that tell you anything.
Nasa dont built rockets, they only fly prototypes for research. private companies built them. also nasa studied reusable rockets and without that research spacex could never fly the falcon 9.
that sponsor segue was SMOOOTH!
Absolutely phenomenal explanation !
The smaller size thrusters and large number of rocket thrusters do something else in addition to giving balance to the returning rocket: they are much more efficient because they give more thrust per square inch, i.e Force, can a 3 or 4 thrusters. The reason is simple: more thrust is generated as the fuel passes through smaller tubes toward the exhausts than through larger tubes: this is because fuel fluid molecules in the larger tubes do no interact directly with the tube providing the thrust to the rocket, while molecules do. As I said in a tweet to Elon Musk, if you have a bidet with a constant water flow rate, the multi-hole setting will make you feel a force on the bidet compared to the single hole setting. So, in short, Elon Musk is saving money by using multiple small engines (he took my advice :o).
Nice to know a bit of your own story. I think following our childhood fascinations is the best way to make our way in life.
The best answer why Space X uses 33 smaller engines compared to 5 bigger engines is the flexibility. In the event of engine failure( some presumably) the starship can still fire. While if a massive ship like that having 5 engines to experience engine failure it is likely to fail during launch or re entry
Лучший ответ... Потому что нету больших двигателей настолько же эффективно работающих как маленькие. Хуже того - их невозможно создать те гипотетические большие двигатели. А остальное это просто отмазки.