• originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    5 months ago

    answer; big engines have acoustic/vibration side effects making them unstable. smaller engines more reliable, reduce risk of overall failure.

    • toast@retrolemmy.com
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      5 months ago

      That, and a single Rocketdyne F-1 would have waaaaay too much thrust for the job of getting an almost empty booster to hover

      (Didn’t watch the video, don’t know if this was covered)

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      5 months ago

      I’m going to assume in the 50’s/60’s the manufacturing time table played a role, as did the limited control systems?

      • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        Controlling that many engines back then was very difficult. A lot of the N1 issues were from the limited processing power in its computer.

  • CMDR_Horn@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Also additional engines equal more fault tolerance. They can sustain several engine failures without mission loss