Multiple smaller engines are more redundant and modular. They're easier to
design, manufacture, test, qualify, transport, etc than a single giant
engine would be. They can be roughly the same on every stage, you just put
more of them on earlier stages, and if one of many craps out the remainder
can still handle the mission.
Saying that clustering many smaller engines for large payloads is the
result of haste makes as much sense as saying that staging itself is the
result of haste. If we REALLY put in the time and money we could just build
a single stage vehicle, right?
On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 5:15 AM, John Dom <johndom@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
George Herbert wrote on 210116:
Dawn or New Horizons (Ceres/Pluto) are several orders of magnitude
more sophisticated and enlightening for humanity than anything SpaceX
ever accomplished.
I don't know what you are basing your assessment of the sophistication ofNew Horizons on... does not appear to bear scrutiny.
The providing us with pictures of Ceres and Pluto up close require none of
your "scrutiny". For many, not only astronomers, it was a revelation. I
for
instance had been wondering about those pictures for years.
It was not a simple mission, but of necessity (time, power, mass) it wasa
relatively simple spacecraft. What cost was time and its one-off nature,
of
both instruments and flight systems.
It was the idea and the making it happen to go where no one has been
before.
Next take pictures of those unknown worlds. What could be more
sophisticated? Not so much in the hardware but in the purpose: exploration.
And yes, not to be naive, I guess only 1 % of the people cared about those
pictures.
I suspect any generation of the Merlin engine was more sophisticated alltold.
To my amateur mind, the fairly small Merlin 1D may be ingenious and
reliable. But requiring nine of them for a Falcon launch is NOT. Going for
too tiny motors and clustering them for larger payloads is typically the
result of haste and/or lack of funds.
Reminds me of the USSR N1 design haste. It had the then sophisticated
NK-15s
aboard but required THIRTY of them in the first stage. Ended badly.
As to the much larger Merlin 2 of the future, I could not find test status.
jd
