Rocketdyne developed the F-1 and the E-1 to meet a 1955 U.S. Air Force requirement for a very large rocket engine. . . . The Air Force eventually halted development of the F-1 because of a lack of requirement for such a large engine. [0]
The fifties were such a crazy time where the USAF would commission wild things which in development were superseded or mooted by other developments, leaving the commissioned object as a cast-off vision of a future that didn't happen. Maybe the high point of this was the XB-70 Valkyrie. [1]
Today is the first day that I put two and two together on North American Aviation making both the XB-70 and the B-1: To take maximum advantage of [compression lift], they redesigned the underside of the aircraft to feature a large triangular intake area far forward of the engines, better positioning the shock in relation to the wing.
To bring things full circle, in 1955 NAA spun off its rocket division, which became Rocketdyne, the maker of the F-1 among other engineering marvels.
To explain it somewhat, that was also pre-MAD (in the modern sense, since ~1975), which meant a combination of (a) sudden potential existential threats & (b) rapid technological change.
In that environment, it was more reasonable to run parallel development projects, as one didn't want to be caught flat-footed if one approach failed (e.g. SLBM + ICBM + bombers).
Fear and naivete are powerful motivators, catalyzing these early innovations. More often the realities of budget, politics, and competing priorities hampers the same creative energies.
>As with everything else about the F-1, even the gas generator boasts impressive specs. It churns out about 31,000 pounds of thrust (138 kilonewtons), more than an F-16 fighter's engine running at full afterburner, and it was used to drive a turbine that produced 55,000 shaft horsepower. (That's 55,000 horsepower just to run the F-1's fuel and oxidizer pumps—the F-1 itself produced the equivalent of something like 32 million horsepower, though accurately measuring a rocket's thrust at that scale is complicated.)
That factoid, that the fuel pump on an F-1 was 55,000 horsepower, has stuck in my mind since the time I first read it. It's so mind-boggling. I would love to just experience the moment when the engineers on the program realized that this is what they needed to build and all they had was paper and pen and the will of a nation.
I had a chance to do some electronics work on an oceanic tug and at the time it blew my mind that the starter for its main engine was about the size of a semi truck's engine. They'd start that one electrically, let it warm up, then use it to start the big engine, then they'd switch it to being a generator for lights and radio and so on.
Well, if all of California's energy were produced by petrol (~13.1kWh/kg), it would consume about 900l per second. The F1 burns about 920l of RP1 fuel per second. And it has to bring its own oxidizer along for the ride.
It is useful to add that the tradeoff is that the engines are running for far less time than, well, California. It's still an incredible feat of engineering to pull off those kinds of energy densities though.
I wonder how they calculated that "32 million horsepower" figure. Is it in terms of kinetic energy of the exhaust stream, thermal combustion energy, or some other formulation (e.g. vehicle speed wrt Earth * thrust)?
I usually hear the term "kerolox" in the context of methalox vs kerolox discussions (and hydrolox, but I often hear that just called "hydrogen"). Methalox is relatively new, at least as a front-running contender, so the numerical majority of these discussions (and by extension use of the terms and consensus around the terms) probably did happen in the last 10 years, even though the roots go much further back.
Designs for this magnificent beast were probably started shortly into the Sputnik scare. At the time, the Soviet space program technical capabilities were overestimated by almost everyone because the Soviets managed to hit a bunch of milestones first by, essentially, being OK with taking on more risk.
> At the time, the Soviet space program technical capabilities were overestimated by almost everyone
Correction: Soviet (liquid fuel) rocket engines became world state of the art in 1950-s and mostly remained as such till about 2010. Rocket engines is the technology which is enabler to most - relatively simple, looking from today - space flights of 20th century.
One can't hit a bunch of milestones first just by chance - you have to have something behind it, and in addition to engines there were a lot of less-than-announced flights - remember how the back side of the Moon was successfully photographed only on the third flight and soft landing on the Moon took quite a few more attempts?
One can't be about as successful as the other guy in terms of deaths in space just because of luck - corner cutters were on the both sides of the Iron Curtain, but there were also understanding that you'll lose all your advantage by just having a few more deaths. No amount of successes in unmanned flights will help (because people are much more interested in manned flights), so you just can't really allow people to die - in USSR you could also have very personal displeasures of uncomfortable size.
In "History of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines" George Sutton mentions that USSR made about 10 times more liquid fuel rocket engine designs than USA. That should bring some perspective to the matters.
"We have to exploit the resources gained in Operation Paperclip before anyone else does and we need sufficient public justification for it."
It's absolutely bizarre to me to watch ancient Disney videos featuring Wernher von Braun discussing guided missiles and doing his best to downplay his German accent.
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The fifties were such a crazy time where the USAF would commission wild things which in development were superseded or mooted by other developments, leaving the commissioned object as a cast-off vision of a future that didn't happen. Maybe the high point of this was the XB-70 Valkyrie. [1]
Today is the first day that I put two and two together on North American Aviation making both the XB-70 and the B-1: To take maximum advantage of [compression lift], they redesigned the underside of the aircraft to feature a large triangular intake area far forward of the engines, better positioning the shock in relation to the wing.
To bring things full circle, in 1955 NAA spun off its rocket division, which became Rocketdyne, the maker of the F-1 among other engineering marvels.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_XB-70_Valkyrie
In that environment, it was more reasonable to run parallel development projects, as one didn't want to be caught flat-footed if one approach failed (e.g. SLBM + ICBM + bombers).
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Power = Force * Velocity = Thrust * exhaust velocity = Thrust * Specific Impulse * 9.80665
Did we invent kerolox as a portmanteau in the last 10 years? This article is a total time warp.
Designs for this magnificent beast were probably started shortly into the Sputnik scare. At the time, the Soviet space program technical capabilities were overestimated by almost everyone because the Soviets managed to hit a bunch of milestones first by, essentially, being OK with taking on more risk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_crisis
Correction: Soviet (liquid fuel) rocket engines became world state of the art in 1950-s and mostly remained as such till about 2010. Rocket engines is the technology which is enabler to most - relatively simple, looking from today - space flights of 20th century.
One can't hit a bunch of milestones first just by chance - you have to have something behind it, and in addition to engines there were a lot of less-than-announced flights - remember how the back side of the Moon was successfully photographed only on the third flight and soft landing on the Moon took quite a few more attempts?
One can't be about as successful as the other guy in terms of deaths in space just because of luck - corner cutters were on the both sides of the Iron Curtain, but there were also understanding that you'll lose all your advantage by just having a few more deaths. No amount of successes in unmanned flights will help (because people are much more interested in manned flights), so you just can't really allow people to die - in USSR you could also have very personal displeasures of uncomfortable size.
In "History of Liquid Propellant Rocket Engines" George Sutton mentions that USSR made about 10 times more liquid fuel rocket engine designs than USA. That should bring some perspective to the matters.
It's absolutely bizarre to me to watch ancient Disney videos featuring Wernher von Braun discussing guided missiles and doing his best to downplay his German accent.
If this doesn't spell defeat, I don't know what does. The richest country in the world is too poor for space launches. Or too cheap.
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