Re:SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches
by avmich on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @08:03PM
(#16321466)
It's interesting that in Soviet rocket engine school engines count by pumps, so, e.g. RD-180 is one engine, one pump, two chambers. In American rocket engine school engines used to count by chambers.
In this sense R-7 is remarkable because it has a good overall success record (most launched rocket) and 32 chambers working at liftoff. Some of those chambers are rather small - about 3 metric tons of thrust, about as much as main chambers on British launcher Black Arrow - but still.
Re:SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy successfully launches
by NamTaf on Tuesday February 06, 2018 @08:34PM
(#16321611)
My feel/understanding is that chamber design is something that gets more difficult as it increases in size (obviously), but also by combining multiple smaller chambers you only suffer minimal downsides from a reliability perspective. After all, it's not like multiple smaller chambers result in heaps of extra moving parts, so a lot of the risk of duplicating components is gone.
You're right, though, the R-7 is a fantastic achievement not only for the chambers, but also considering how many engines and pumps it has. All those spinning, moving parts are another point of failure and they're all necessary for success.
In comparison, the Saturn V used only 5, they were just that much bigger. It's widely regarded that the 5 vs 30 was the difference as to why Saturn V was successful and N1 was not, as the Soviets simply had to roll too many dice in a situation where a failure resulted in complete mission loss.
It's a lesson in system engineering, particularly around failure durability and parallel vs serial critical subsystems.