How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
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Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#2These techniques are the future of reverse engineering and product customization.
Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#3A superb promoted comment from a "ws3"
Imagine you're a Rocketdyne engineer in the 60's and one day, some guy walks out of a time warp into your assembly area, pulls out some weird looking cameras, takes a few pictures of your engine, plugs some cables into some unknown equipment, and then, looking bored, sits down and directs his attention to a thin metal and glass slab for a while. When a light changes on the unknown equipment, the guy gets up, sticks his hand inside, and pulls out a tool which takes apart your engine.
That would be magic. You'd think the guy was from the 25th century or something. But no, only 45 years.
Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#4This makes me wonder if it will be possible to reverse engineer some of the complex things we're building today.
Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#5This makes me wonder if it will be possible to reverse engineer some of the complex things we're building today.
I think the answer to that is "yes", since our technology is advancing all the time. The question this made me wonder about is, "If this new 2015 engine was given to the 1970s engineers, would they be able to understand how it was made and create a similar one?" This is just 40 or so years later. It makes you wonder how advanced an alien civilization would really have to be to impress us.
Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#6I want to complain about the fact that I read this a year and a half ago, but since I just reread the entire article, I'll just say: neat!
Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#7NASA is reverse engineering an old staged combustion engine. It is good of course, building a computer model, test firing the turbo-pump ... fun learning exercise ... leading nowhere (cheese shop?) While Musk has produced a new from scratch staged combustion engine and is working on full flow stage combustion. Because Musk's enterprise has specific goal, like actually flying to space where is NASA doesn't have such (NASA produced F1 when they did have real goal :).
Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#8NASA is reverse engineering an old staged combustion engine. It is good of course, building a computer model, test firing the turbo-pump ... fun learning exercise ... leading nowhere (cheese shop?) While Musk has produced a new from scratch staged combustion engine and is working on full flow stage combustion. Because Musk's enterprise has specific goal, like actually flying to space where is NASA doesn't have such (…
It's so true! NASA is suppose to be working towards "Deep Space" flight, but SpaceX seems to be beating them at that too! The Engines Musk is working on are based on the F1 and he is revolutionizing them by using 3D printed metal components and reusable rocket motors.
Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#9This is a really amazing article. And to readers who are reading the comments first: please don't be discouraged by the negativity. Just go ahead and read it first.
What I thought strange was that they would have to reverse engineer something that they themselves built? That sounded pretty strange to me. But the article clarifies this point:
"A typical design document for something like the F-1, though, was produced under intense deadline pressure and lacked even the barest forms of computerized design aids. Such a document simply cannot tell the entire story of the hardware. Each F-1 engine was uniquely built by hand, and each has its own undocumented quirks. In addition, the design process used in the 1960s was necessarily iterative: engineers would design a component, fabricate it, test it, and see how it performed. Then they would modify the design, build the new version, and test it again. This would continue until the design was "good enough.""
Re: How NASA brought the F-1 “moon rocket” engine back to life (2013)
#10This is a really amazing article. And to readers who are reading the comments first: please don't be discouraged by the negativity. Just go ahead and read it first. What I thought strange was that they would have to reverse engineer something that they themselves built? That sounded pretty strange to me. But the article clarifies this point: "A typical design document for something like the F-1, though, was produced…
We try very hard to do better, but even know this is the normal state of all manufactured products everywhere. One other problem is that mechanical design documents don't have good places for "why is this this way" type comments.