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Building a rocket engine from scratch

blog.ablspacesystems.com

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Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#51

Post by z3phyr »

trhway wrote: post #47
adrianN wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think English has too many ambiguities to be well suited for technical writing. There are efforts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English but they don't have a lot of adoption.

In USSR/Russia we had a stand-up comedian (Zadornov) who in one of his jokes was explaining how the conciseness of the language is advantageous on the battlefiled. Recently I had to write in Russian (my native language) a tech doc of many pages. That is after 26 years of tech writing only in English (my 2nd language). That experience resulted in an epiphany for me on why Russia is so technically behind as I suddenly…

Th soviet mechanical and rf engineering efforts were very well regarded during the early cold war period, and I would argue, much more sophisticated. Language did not stop the USSR. It was the economic policy like banning some disciplines based on ideological grounds like cybernetics etc.

Check it out, the things for which a western scientist or engineer is given credit, were discovered/invented much earlier by soviet counterparts! What do you think about Kotelnikov?

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#52

Post by cuSetanta »

Oh wow, I work for a supplier for ABL and am today in the process of putting some of their stuff into our thermal chamber for cycling. Thats neat.

We work for a lot of launcher companies, but ABL is the most interesting for me (even though we do relatively little for them). The containerised approach to the entire system is a really clever adaptation of existing methods to create a rapid launch system.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#53

Post by vbezhenar »

trhway wrote: post #47
adrianN wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think English has too many ambiguities to be well suited for technical writing. There are efforts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English but they don't have a lot of adoption.

In USSR/Russia we had a stand-up comedian (Zadornov) who in one of his jokes was explaining how the conciseness of the language is advantageous on the battlefiled. Recently I had to write in Russian (my native language) a tech doc of many pages. That is after 26 years of tech writing only in English (my 2nd language). That experience resulted in an epiphany for me on why Russia is so technically behind as I suddenly…

I'm Russian speaker and I don't really understand why do you think that Russian sucks as a technical language. The only reason I could imagine is that computer science today is full of English words, so trying to translate every word to Russian will result in an incomprehensible text, but Russian is happy to adapt words from other languages.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#54

Post by myrmidon »

z3phyr wrote: post #51
trhway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In USSR/Russia we had a stand-up comedian (Zadornov) who in one of his jokes was explaining how the conciseness of the language is advantageous on the battlefiled. Recently I had to write in Russian (my native language) a tech doc of many pages. That is after 26 years of tech writing only in English (my 2nd language). That experience resulted in an epiphany for me on why Russia is so technically behind as I suddenly…

Th soviet mechanical and rf engineering efforts were very well regarded during the early cold war period, and I would argue, much more sophisticated. Language did not stop the USSR. It was the economic policy like banning some disciplines based on ideological grounds like cybernetics etc. Check it out, the things for which a western scientist or engineer is given credit, were discovered/invented much earlier by sovie…

I consider the view "many discoveries were made much earlier by soviet counterparts" to be mostly incorrect and heavily biased.

But it is a common and easy trap for a lot of nationalities to fall into, because there are innumerable discoveries that happen before (and/or independent of) the canonical "inventor" (and you're automatically more likely to know the independent inventors if they come from your country!).

Regarding Kotelnikov specifically: You could make the same argument (re: discovery of sampling theorem) for Whittaker, who published in 1915; ultimately, though, the whole debate is mostly pointless.

I strongly believe that no single inventor so far was truly "significant", in that his nonexistence would have delayed science as a whole by more than a decade or two (consider Newton/Leibniz for calculus, Einstein/Poincaré/Hilbert for relativity, etc.).

People should not focus so much on WHO discovered a particular fact, because the cold truth is that it's mostly a personality cult and that any single scientist that ever existed, no matter how brilliant, was still replaceable (from a "human progress" kind of view). Which does not stop me from being a Fermi-fanboy.

But I completely agree with you that language did not really hinder USSR science.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#55

Post by Breza »

trhway wrote: post #47
adrianN wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think English has too many ambiguities to be well suited for technical writing. There are efforts like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified_Technical_English but they don't have a lot of adoption.

In USSR/Russia we had a stand-up comedian (Zadornov) who in one of his jokes was explaining how the conciseness of the language is advantageous on the battlefiled. Recently I had to write in Russian (my native language) a tech doc of many pages. That is after 26 years of tech writing only in English (my 2nd language). That experience resulted in an epiphany for me on why Russia is so technically behind as I suddenly…

I wonder if it's because English adapts words from other languages when there's a need for a new or more concise phrase.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#56

Post by greenish_shores »

vbezhenar wrote: post #53
trhway wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In USSR/Russia we had a stand-up comedian (Zadornov) who in one of his jokes was explaining how the conciseness of the language is advantageous on the battlefiled. Recently I had to write in Russian (my native language) a tech doc of many pages. That is after 26 years of tech writing only in English (my 2nd language). That experience resulted in an epiphany for me on why Russia is so technically behind as I suddenly…

I'm Russian speaker and I don't really understand why do you think that Russian sucks as a technical language. The only reason I could imagine is that computer science today is full of English words, so trying to translate every word to Russian will result in an incomprehensible text, but Russian is happy to adapt words from other languages.

Yeah sure. And then you have smartphone parts labelled as "дисплей + тачскрин" (to non-speakers: it's "display + touchscreen" written phonetically), lol. Not to say it's bad, though. But it's funny.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#57

Post by greenish_shores »

nothercastle wrote: post #35
quartesixte wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or some people are so good at their jobs that even while being completely obsessed, they still have great work-life balance. I interact with a lot of people like the author in the article from this industry. And while yes, their worklife balance skews "work", they all have interesting hobbies and find time to hang out with friends, go on adventures, and live a pretty full life. Unless you're on the Starship team at S…

Employees who are married to their job are the best employees. Just like in a real relationship you can treat them like shit and they mostly stay married

Honestly I did read that as "Employers who are married to their job are the best employers". You probably won't treat them like shit, but they'll still remain married anyway.

But such employees will sometimes leave and build their own stuff. Which they'll very likely succeed at, exactly because of the approach they have.

Ultimately, I think these are a bit different fields/markets, and a bit different kind of jobs. Engineers creating real unique new stuff, vs more "bland" engineers just being a hand to accelerate someone's efforts. I worked in both roles and can clearly see pros and cons of both. Largely depends also on life phase one's at, which one would a person prefer.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#58

Post by criddell »

> You might call me an unlikely candidate to lead an engine program from scratch, but I was hired by ABL in 2018 to do just that. My background was in commercial aircraft interiors, web development, semiconductor fab fluid components, and SpaceX Falcon 9 hydraulic systems.

I don't mean this as an insult, but why did they hire you? It's obvious now that you were a great choice, but from your background story I wouldn't have guessed that to be true.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#59

Post by randmeerkat »

myrmidon wrote: post #54
z3phyr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Th soviet mechanical and rf engineering efforts were very well regarded during the early cold war period, and I would argue, much more sophisticated. Language did not stop the USSR. It was the economic policy like banning some disciplines based on ideological grounds like cybernetics etc. Check it out, the things for which a western scientist or engineer is given credit, were discovered/invented much earlier by sovie…

I consider the view "many discoveries were made much earlier by soviet counterparts" to be mostly incorrect and heavily biased. But it is a common and easy trap for a lot of nationalities to fall into, because there are innumerable discoveries that happen before (and/or independent of) the canonical "inventor" (and you're automatically more likely to know the independent inventors if they come from your country!). Re…

> the cold truth is that it's mostly a personality cult and that any single scientist that ever existed, no matter how brilliant, was still replaceable

I found the MBA.

Re: Building a rocket engine from scratch

#60

Post by Shawnj2 »

mdorazio wrote: post #40

Great post on building extremely complex hardware from scratch. At the same time I hate to be that business guy, but both this blog post and the abl site are missing a good answer to my first question: Why? Given that SpaceX exists and is quickly approaching feasibility of Starship on top of Falcon, what is the primary goal of this rocket system? How will it compete? Who will its customers be? Is it getting its metri…

IIRC ABL’s specific goal is that you can pack an entire launch setup into a shipping container and set one up anywhere in the world. Also the U.S. government will explicitly buy non SpaceX launch contracts specifically to keep smaller launch companies alive so they don’t get locked into a single supplier.
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