News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on SpaceX Picks Rocket for First Relaunch. Parent comment

Re:SpaceX Picks Rocket for First Relaunch by walrus01 on Sunday July 17, 2016 @09:35PM (#12112799)
Possibly of interest, the giant engines used in the Delta IV Heavy have 80% less part count than an SSME, but they were never intended to be human-rated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RS-68

Not that it has brought launch costs down much, considering how the ULA loves their juicy government contracts for billion dollar NSA/NRO satellite launches.

IIRC the Falcon 9 engine design is the opposite of an RS-68, which is the "one huge fucking engine" design philosophy, which is why a falcon9 has a cluster of many smaller engines and is tolerant of an individual engine failure during launch.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:SpaceX Picks Rocket for First Relaunch by toomuchtodo on Monday July 18, 2016 @01:16AM (#12113334)
> IIRC the Falcon 9 engine design is the opposite of an RS-68, which is the "one huge fucking engine" design philosophy, which is why a falcon9 has a cluster of many smaller engines and is tolerant of an individual engine failure during launch.

Indeed! A Falcon 9 mission has lost an engine mid-flight, and the flight system adjusted the burn duration on the fly to compensate:

http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/spacex-s-non-fatal-failure

[ Parent | on HN ]