Obviously one burns kerosene and one burns hydrogen it's physically impossible for a kerosene engine to come close to hydrogen engine in ISP. If you compare to other kerosene engines it blows them out of the water. And one is fuel rich while the other is oxygen rich. There really is no way you could compare those engines fairly or any way they could be more polar opposites of rocket engine design. Especially the fact that one is fuel rich hydrogen engine and the other an oxidizer rich kerosene engine. That is an entirely different engineering challenge and frankly fuel rich hydrogen is easier to do.
TheAtom Yeah, but if it is a good design and you can’t really improve on it, why try to improve it? The hammer has been around for millenia, and it hasn’t changed as well.
It seems the Russians were good at getting a long way on smaller budgets than the US. If you look at Mir which set numerous endurance records for Cosmonauts vs. Space Station Freedom which cost billions of dollars in development and never got off the ground, but it’s remnants became the non-Russian parts of the ISS. The peaceful repurposing of Russian Rocket Scientists for Western Commercial Rocket launches reminds me somewhat of how enriched uranium produced for Soviet Nuclear warheads was bought by the USA to fuel Nuclear Power Plants. There is something poetic about some of largest cities in America being powered for the last 25 years on Uranium that was enriched for the explicit purpose of destroying those exact same cities. It shows what can be done through international cooperation.
The most efficient engine of those that are mass-produced, is an American RS-25. He just runs on hydrogen, on this very road. The same applies to its modification - the RS-68, on which the heavy, most powerful ULA rocket is mounted on the Delta 4. They are both more effective than any other engines, but they are working on hydrogen, which significantly increases the cost. That is why the less powerful missiles, ULA and Orbital ATK decided to put the RD-180. But those and others are past. future for Raptor and BE-4 engines, from SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively.
Vyacheslav Potapenko why is that when something good from the Soviet Union it is recognized as being from the Soviet Union(makes logical sense), however all bad things that happened during the Soviet Union, the “Russians” are blamed...
@@Alex-qd5hy This is just a cheap engine, no more. American RS-68 is more effective, but more expensive. For this, ex is only used on the most powerful ULA rocket.
Stalinite is actually a real existed Fe-Cr-Mn-C alloy for cutting tools used in USSR since early 1930s. All soviet weapons in WW2 were made using Stalinite tools.
you're both probably thinking about something else. nk-33 is an old discontinued engine. there are some remaining units which are going to be used when needed, but this engine is being replaced with another engine from rd-series.
@@nvlietstra They were using them for Antares but since all the remaining NK-33s were "old stock", no longer manufactured, they later replaced them with the RD-170 and RD-180.
As always great content! And perfect timing. I just had a conversation with my dad as to WHY are these engines still used and why does US not develop their own “copy” of this! Thanks Scott!
Yea, that is a good documentary. Storing a forest of engines in a remote location because they didn't want to follow orders and destroy their beautiful engines.
The intelligence community control the narrative, don't belive in what they say, as much as I won't to believe am skeptical. I don't believe they wanted to destroy their price , but I do believe the narrative is for the CIA/US to always take the price of a hero
I have a degree in aerospace engineering, and now I'm studying for a space and astronautical engineering master degree. My next exam will be space propulsion, and is always a pleasure to hear you saying exactly (and quite accurately) the things that I'm studying now. Great video, you've earned a new subscriber :)
It's actually a ceramic coating they use to stop oxygen from attacking the hot parts of the engine. I believe this is what drove the choice of an integrated powerhead on Raptor as it eliminates the need for a lot of ceramic coated pipes and they can inspect everything exposed to hot O2 by simply unbolting the O2 turbo pump.
@@picramideWell, the premium refractory ceramic is MgO with its high thermal conductivity, toughness and extremely high 2800C heat resistance. It's common, used for those spiral stove elements with a Stainless steel resistance wire molded in. They only fail when the wire melts and boils.
Good insight that oxygen-rich turbopumps are the way to avoid coking. You might talk about the inlet temperature of the RD-170/180 turbopumps, in comparison to the inlet temperatures of the fuel-rich turbopumps on the SSME engines, and especially in comparison to the inlet temperature of the full-flow turbopumps of the Raptor. I've done some modelling of the Raptor, and it appears their turbopumps are going to be running at approximately room temperature. No joke... that's the turbine inlet temperature on a FFSC methalox engine.
That is strange. If RT is enough, then more sensible way is to cranked up the temperature just below the material limit so that chamber pressure can be increased. Or at least it should be increased to auto ignition region for better/faster reaction in the chamber. Anyway, it is my guess.
Remember that the turbopump only needs to get the propellants up to the chamber pressure + injection drop. In the case of LOX flowing into a 20 MPa combustion chamber, that's about 20 J/g, less than 1 part in 1000 of the total energy in the propellant. Turbopumps aren't generally very good at extracting energy from their fluid, but even so, total turbopump power is typically 1-4% of the total thermal power of the rocket (more for anything with ultra-squishy hydrogen). When that power is added to a small fraction of the stream, yes, it gets hot. But when that power is added to the full flow of propellants, it rises a few percent of the total temperature rise of the rocket. That's not much. One of the big problems in LOX systems is water ice. The stuff abrades the inside of the plumbing, and if that plumbing is aluminum (and maybe even titanium), the fresh metal surface after the oxide is removed is quite combustible in LOX. One issue with an FFSC engine cycle is that the ultra-lean oxygen turbine exhaust is going to have water in it. If this water is ice or even liquid droplets, it's going to be hard on the machinery. Water's critical point is at 22 MPa and 647 K, and Elon has mentioned combustion chamber pressures of 20 and 30 MPa. I suspect they are going to end up with a combustion chamber pressure of over 22 MPa, so that any water in their system is going to be at least compressible and close to if not actually supercritical. Maybe they'll run the preburners over 647 K just to avoid any two-phase flow entirely. Any CO2 will be supercritical, as the critical point is 302 K and 7 MPa. No problem there. I think it's amusing that high pressure in the preburner and combustion chamber might actually solve problems rather than just cause problems.
Excellent and thank you! Scott Manley in his video on rocket plumbing didn't make clear just how oxygen rich the raptor was going to be. By going full-flow you don't have a drive shaft and a separate turbine, as the burner exhaust itself is what drives the combustion chamber. I love it! Especially since it lowers burner temperatures so much (RT !)
Iain McClatchie ... Excellent points.. I wonder how aluminum would do for reusable engine giving high stress/vibration. Will stress crack be problem? any idea?
I found the video, ‘the engines which came in from the cold’ fascinating especially the arrogance of the American engineers and that politician who explained that they were buying Russian engines to help them through the fall of communism. Prat. They were just better units. Regards
Lol, it is lie, just propaganda. Actually Russia signed incredible huge public deal with India, the last one ordered for self whole space program in Russia: from building modern spaceports to development of rockets, own space station, programs for Indian universes, etc. They wanted to buy de facto whole space industry equal to Russian. In US immediately started hysteric when deal was signed, because it meant India could get modern technologies and later develop even more regards to more resources and large population than had USSR and left in Russia. Also it meant of course, that India could became incredible powerful from military point of view, equal or even more developed than US. So, US forced Yeltsin (whom they controlled and brought to power) to withdraw from already signed contract to stop development of India. And this freak did it, it is one of shameful example from 1990s. Russia lost tens billions (de facto over $100 billions), more than country earn/spent for last 30 years, including reputation in India and a lot of rest contracts which Indians stopped after this. From another side, American regime not canceled own restrictions/sanctions which introduced else against USSR, including against space program. The last anti-Soviet sanctions was canceled only in 2012 (!) and in same year replaced with new one. For that money country could even send man on Mars, incredible money. Actually US helped almost destroy Russian space program. While engines they bought because they were best and had no direct alternative. P.S. Russian space industry still works de facto in communistic economy. Roscosmos is just new name for Soviet ministry which developed space. It in state property and control. It have no profit, but connected directly to state budget. It is reasons why Russian space budget in near 15 times less than American, but in general both countries have equal programs and by a lot directions Russia even more progressive.
I find the lack of engineering towards improving things to be disheartening. Until SpaceX came along with Raptor and BO with the BE4, there wasn’t much interest at all moving beyond 70s era soviet engines... which are only being banned from us launches for potential disruption during geo conflict... and 70’s designed shuttle engines which are still being used in the 2020s on SLS. Great example of the lack of progress and even continuing steps backward we’ve made in space flight until SpaceX started shaking things up. The future I was promised back in the 80’s never materialized, not because it was impossible, but because nobody had the will to take risks and find research and development towards long term projects past their current term in office.
Daniel Guisinger I agree. But the shuttle engines are designed upto the teeth. ISP of hydrogen/Lox is 450 and Chris Craft is adamant the SSME’s are at at 448... NASA believing they could improve the shuttle engines for use in SLS are dreaming. The problem with the soviet RD180 and all its variants is that it’s just to damn efficient and reliable. You can built it quicker, cheaper and simpler but there isn’t a way of making it much better without increasing risks that don’t need to be taken. In all fairness to SpaceX the merlin engine is very reliable with only a single fail safe incident I know of... but it’s hardly cutting edge in terms of efficiency even though they are doing amazing things with multiple starts and full throttle range for landings. Like all engineering they could potentially push the merlin even higher but the compromises wouldn’t be worth the payload gains
Well, on the other hand, 80'th engines are really darn effective and it's just not worth the money trying to squeeze a handful of power from them. New engines are getting developed though, Blue Orion are pritty innovative with their methane-propelled motor.
Daniel Guisinger when you strap 3 living, breathing people on top of a big tower of fuel, you will probably want something that absolutely does not fail. Silicone Valley did some good work, but their products were horribly buggy at launch (hehe). How many versions are there on your phone's software? Can't really do thay with rockets that carry people. SpaceX did their work, but they are simply using existing technologies, just more efficiently. The real leaps in science and technologies are still happening in government grants lab (like NASA)
Capitalism is extremely risk averse, rather than fostering innovation it stifles it. The space race wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the USSR, everything the US invented in the 20th century was basically the state funding it, that funding would have never came about of it weren't for the cold war. The state innovates and the markets, left alone, stagnate.
It’s always fun working on the Aerojet campus in Rancho Cordova/Sacramento - whenever there’s a launch that features something that campus worked on, they put up a banner to congratulate whatever team for the launch (usually the strap on boosters).
Dear Scott, your comment is very fair. They have unique tech for metal production and process control. Nobody can still reach the chamber pressure and other parameters, even decades later...
I saw a comment on droid’s video on aerospike engines, describing in excrutiating detail the reason the aerospike, despite it’s advantages, manages to be less efficient through greater friction due to the effective nozzle surface area. I would love a video talking about that in a easily-digestible fashion. ^^
Scott Manley 6:46 Thank you. That's been my argument for a long time. It came down to management decisions on both sides. Everyone had deadlines to meet and that required focus.
I thought that too, but he said large rockets. The Electron is decidedly a small launcher. Watching the batteries ditch off it while in flight was kinda neat (off subject)
Just the engines ? How about the fact that the whole Orbital ATK/Northrop Grumman Antares first stage is manufactured by the same Ukrainian outfit that also builds the Zenit Rocket ?
In the case of the Atlas V, more like end of 20th century American rocket design using Soviet Era engines that received an upgrade. The Atlas V was part of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, which kicked off in 1994. Lockheed Martin was able to harvest a whole lot of hard work the Soviets put into the difficult RD 170/171, developed for the Energiya strap on boosters (and a cause of delay for the program). The collaboration appears to have gotten it right given the record of the Atlas V and the RD-180; and given a few of the accidents with the RD 170/171 in the 1990s and 2000s.
Cuz if we don't buy them they'll sell to someone else. That someone else will have them pointed at us too. Which would cost us a whole lot to deal with.
They also strapped together dozens of WWII-era rotary Diesel aircraft engines to power their patrol boats. Engineering by necessity since they never had the kind of money the US throws around.
Neither the RD-180 nor the RD-181 are actually Soviet-era, both having been developed after 1990, although they are heavily based on the RD-170 which was a Soviet engine.
@@scottmanley good luck! It's a beautiful language, but takes time to open itself before you. What may will be hard for you (next to grammar) is the intonation. For example зАмок (zAmok) means fortress/castle, but замОк (zamOk) means lock. Another tip! In Russian everything which is connected to beauty, is described with the root of the color RED (красная f/красный m/красное n) for example beautiful is красивая (kraci/y/vaya). And in the Russian alphabet there are some letters which counterpart you can't find in English. These are the Ч (~ts), Ж (~zh) and Ы (it's a weird kind of "I" like in the word "index", but you have to elevate the rear of your tongue. For me as a Hungarian is/was a bit hard, as I'm learning it by myself, but I believe you can do it too.
@SüdAntares Cosmonautics A correction: ч = ch, ц = ts. Speaking of ы, it's historically a digraph of ъ (hard sign) + i. Whereas the hard sign itself can be seen as very short o, the sound you make when starting pronouncing the usual o. Cyrillic alphabet is perfect in every way! We even can write борщ just as it is.
@@lake258 спасибо за коррекцию. Yes, it was hard for me how to pronounce the letter "ы". But after a week or so I already felt the difference between и and ы. Also, I had to train myself to find the difference between the hard and soft л, so I know it now. Anyway, Russian language is beautiful in it's own way. And I don't find it so hard anymore as I found it earlier.
And now we know... United Launch Alliance today has announced that they have chosen the BE-4 as the main engine for their next generation Vulcan rocket.
A few years on from that decision, I wonder if they're regretting it. Development of the AR1 engine may have been slow, but progress on the BE-4 hasn't exactly been speedy either. And perhaps if they'd not distracted themselves with trying to adapt the BE-4 to ULA's needs, Blue Origin might be a little closer to putting their own rockets into orbit...
@@simongeard4824 Aerojet Rocketdyne wanted more money, had no hardware to speak of, and they effectively gave up nearly all work on AR1 when the Space Force funding ended, much as Northrup Grumman did with their OmegA rocket when they didn't get the NSSL 2 contract. Based on the single complete engine they finished last year, it'd have taken AJR way longer than it's taken Blue Origin.
@@simongeard4824 Slow? it was virtually non-existent. After all these years and the government $$$, they managed to eke out a single prototype engine for testing. Blue Origin, on the other hand, invested a lot of their own money before the ULA deal, got hardware built, tested it, and then a year after the deal was inked had several BE-4s ready to go to the stands for testing. And they've not been all that slow. It's only been a little more than three years since they got selected over AJR.
@@jkerman5113 Well.. no. It's more than the Soviets tended to keep on refining their recipes, while the Americans were always in search of the next breakthrough. The American approach allowed them to have the F1 engines when the Soviets didn't have anything similar, but led to the demise of the same F1 engines as soon as the Saturn program was cancelled, and well before that design had been fully developed, to search for something else. Weirdly, the "Soviet" approach is the one typical of the automotive industry, when engines trend to be refined, not revolutionised.
it is amazing how slowly space technology advances. i hear today’s solar panels are only 10 percent more efficient than those used in the early 60s. amazing how rockets from the 80s are still the best around.
Many technologies require fine methods of production, but not that complexed by themselves. Compare gas and electric car. Electric car is much more simple.
Probably inconel; nickel/chrome alloy. Very popular in high temperature turbines, and Russia has lots of nickel. There are surface coatings that can drastically increase performance in high temperatures, but given the pressure and temperature, I'm guessing you'd want to stick with a single homogeneous material.
Scott mentioned the secret soviet metallurgy became immune to oxidation but I remember from somewhere that the turbopumps and some pipes do suffer some horrific oxidation. I remember that when the engine shuts down after it has done its job, it's pretty much a wreck and that some of its parts are "evaporated" in a hot oxygen environment, making the engine lighter than it was before launch. As opposed to many other engine types that get heavier as they run due to accumulating soot. I also remember that it was also attributed to the genius of the Soviet engineers that while the engine does not only burn fuel, it is also itself "burning" (some of the metal components) while it is running, it manages to be ok in the reliability department. So my impression so far has been that the metallurgy was not immune to oxidation, but the engine was designed to handle the rapid loss of metal in some of its parts. In addition to that, I'm sure exotic metallurgy was indeed required so as to not lose metal too rapidly, blow up as a result. This comment may be regarded as a nitpicking, or simply misinformed (might be) but it matters when thinking of possible reusability. This particular engine line has no reusable models, but if I'm correct, it is also the case that however much it will be further developed, reusability is something that simply can not be achieved with that type of combustion cycle. Unless the Soviets really developed a metal that is immune to oxidation in a hot oxygen-rich environment. Thanks to Scott for another great video that sparked a little thought concerning rockets and their awesome engines (even while I know little about them) :)
The sources I read describe recovery of the rd-170 engines used on Energia for inspection, and an estimate that they could be reused at least 10 times.
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom raptor uses methane/lox mixture. So as aspected it has higher chamber pressure. Rd-180 defenly is one of the best engines in theyr class .
At 2:24 I thought of something I saw in the library. I had some time to kill & picked up a US Patent book. Glancing through it I came across a water injector for a steam boiler. As I remember it didn't use this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injector but it used heat from the boiler to turn some water into steam which then would push water into the boiler. It was 1 pipe of varied sizes to make the water turn into steam & provide a wall so the water/steam being forced towards wouldn't back up away from the boiler.
although I was hoping for a video about #dearMoon and JAXAs rovers. But this topic is exactly what I need for my presentation on rockets and the cold war. great - thanks a lot.
I'm sad the Proton is being killed off. There are probably thousands of three eyed people in Altai who would disagree with me, which they have every right to do. There is something about a staged N2O4/UDMH engine that just makes THE BEST mach diamonds I've ever seen. Literally makes me sexually excited.
That is a perfectly valid opinion. I feel terrible for all those poor people that have had the not so empty 1st stages falling in their fields. I wouldn't drive through that region without a spacesuit on.
My mum went hiking and camping there :) About a decade ago. She is still fine. To be fair, there are not that many roads to drive on. And I think we still have few pics of few rocket remains in in the mountains.
which will be better? the Raptor engine or the Blue Origin BE-4? i havent seen anyone directly compare them even though they will compete against each other
I think there haven't been any comparisons because both are still in development (as far as I know), so all of the parameters are still subject to change or not published.
I'm no electrical engineer, but I can't see it being that much different that grounding an electrical circuit in a car. in a closed electrical system you just ground back to the source.
To illustrate, there is a fun experiment You can do, You need for example a low voltage lightbulb, a battery and some pieces of wire to connect it with, one part goes directly to the lightbulb, the other part You can fix on for example a wallradiator or something else that will lead electricity and then another piece of wire back to the lightbulb, if eweryting has good contact the lightbulb will still light up, despite of the massive resistance in the radiator.
This is why you never just forget what the opponents were working on. No shame in just saying "hey, you guys got something really good there! Can I take a look at your plans?"
@@jshepard152 My uncle bought one (LADA) because he had a ranch in the south of Italy and it was dirt cheap. I can never forget the day we started for the first time the heater (it was a bit chilly, Italian chilly) We had to open immediately all the windows because we were suffocating by the monstrous heat blowing inside the car (It was engineered for Siberian winter...)
Chemical rockets reached a price / performance plateau. The Koreliov closed cycle combustion system raised the bar and today chemical rockets have reached another plateau. Give the Russians credit, they were willing to blow up a lot of rockets to figure closed loop pumps while the Americans weren't. I think they did blow a lot of rockets up tho.
The gas laws state that one could potentially squeeze even more efficiency out of a rocket's exhaust, by choking it even more than just enough to bring the flow to sonic (internally). As thickening (pressurising) a gas will tend to heat it up, bumping the local speed of sound even higher.
The USSR develpoed a Full flow staged combustion engine the rd-270, a tri-proppelant engine rd-701 ,they also developed n204/udmh a rocket fuel and a fluorine engine rd-301
They beat the US in cost, they weren't light-years ahead because the US developed hydrogen engines instead, now the US produces re usable RP-1 rocket engines domestically.
I thought that ULA had already announced selection of the BE-4 for the Vulcan rocket and Tory Bruno had stated that they were going with methane in a 5.4 meter tank dimension. The kerosene Atlas V is 3.8 meter and the hydrogen Delta IV is 5 meter.
I strongly disagree. I am glad that you are having fun with the game, Scott. But I am not. The strategic part of the game is much simpler and less interesting now in my opinion. Dramatic changes absolutely broke the game in serious ways, as numerous players complained about and even the devs themselves admitted. Only some of this was later fixed. Even rolling back to an old patch version isn't very satisfying as some balance issues and bugs remain in those versions. The game showed great promise and could have been something really special but it never quite got there.
The burritos I ate while watching this video were also made with Secret Soviet Sauce. The secret is ghost pepper. I may hate MY plumbing, but I love rocket plumbing! Thanks for the video.
the Electron rocket from Rocketlabs actually uses an engine with an electric pump using droppable batteries. and once again, material science proves to be the most critical field ever.
While one must give credit where credit is due, it must be noted that the decision to pursue the closed cycle virtually, and to incur its attendant long gestation period, virtually assured the USSR would lose the Moon Race, which it must be remembered, was the whole purpose of the exercise. The US looked at the closed/open cycle question, as well as liquid hydrogen upper stage fuels, combustion instability (and its implications for an engine which could be used in a reliable Saturn-class booster) and chose the only combination of those 3 factors which could likely permit the attainment of Kennedy's goal. Thus the Americans flew a Saturn V in January 1967, with only 5 large, open-cycle engines and a very large payload, and never had a booster failure in the entire program, while the Russians could only manage a very belated failure in 30 magnificently-engined N1, which never even made first stage cut-off, despite trying well into the 70's, and would have supported an extremely risky manned lunar landing at best. Despite some stellar engineering on the cycle question, the Russians erred in all three of those important areas, and lost the Moon Race before it began.
Not sure if the big friendly giant would survive in space, but maybe. And yeah, with orbital refuel BFS could definitely do a moon landing and return, probably wouldn't even take a full refuel.
Probably would need a refuel on the surface of the Moon. A free-return trajectory, Apollo 13 style, won't need refueling. Landing means having to propulsively shed all velocity and put it all back again. The Apollo LEM made it easy with paper-thin walls and an even smaller ascent stage. BFR/BFS would try to descend and ascend with everything including atmospheric reentry heat shielding and sea-level engines.
@@CarFreeSegnitz I'm pretty sure the delta V required to get to the moon, land, and come back is quite a bit less than getting to Mars and doing a propulsive landing there. If the BFS didn't refuel in Earth orbit you're right that it would need to refuel on the moon, actually I'm not sure it would even have enough fuel to land. But that would be a stupid way to do things until a fuel depo gets built.
I wonder if the alloy is fluorine passivated stainless? ie. an alloy that's been exposed (carefully!) to fluorine gas, which reacts on it to leave an even tougher more un-reactive surface
Thank you!!! Always wondered this and wanted to know about this topic Despite the ehh..current relations between the US and Russia currently,... why this is still a convention
True. For comparison new American and Russian spaceships for Moon. Both almost equal, but Russia develop it for $800 millions, while US for $15 billions (!!!). Near the same difference will be in cost of each ship.
Soviet and Russian mantra ringing true again: If not broken why replace it. The USA? Yay lets do something expensive - the hydrogen engine (was efficient sure but hellish expensive). So I ask do we use tried and tested systems as the Soviets did, or go for the $15,000 (gold plated) toilet seat (Independence Day) and something new.
The specific impulse of hydrogen is far too tempting to ignore. The Atlas V booster has only about half the thrust of Falcon 9, but thanks to its 60-year old technology Centaur upper stage, it can put more mass into geosynchronus orbit ... and that despite the woefully limited thrust of the RL-10 engine, which barely gets Cygnus into LEO. And no doubt you can't remember thay many Atlas-Centaurs failed in the early 1960's before they finally got it right.
And results for not using hydrogen? See N1. Because the soviet had no LH2 engine, that 4-stage monster had to use a full 4-stage kerosene configuration. And the result? LESS THAN HALF capacity than Saturn V. So a single soviet lunar mission requires 2 N1 launch. One for the crew modules, one for an additional trans-lunar-injection rocket, which will be ASSEMBLED IN ORBIT. And the resulting crew module is much smaller, sporting 1-2 cosmonaut. Now tell me which is the "tried and tested system" and which is the "fancy, expensive, unrealistic, and failed trick"?
Slow down there you will blow an O ring. Who is still launching the bulk of the missions to the ISS? That would be the Russians with to Soyuz rocket which is ancient. So yes tried and tested wins out while the Americans are scrambling around (although the private launchers also use Soviet tech)
Scott Manley so were the machinists that operated that machinery. That was the real loss. Because the blueprints alone do not fully describe how the components were made.
Андрей Желтяк The F1 is not a very good design from a todays point of view, thats why noboy is reviving it. The US brute-forced their way to this engine. It was desinged and built by a massive testing and fine-tuning effort. It is a very costly process to built an engine that only works if you test and tune it while building with the effort of hundresds of very skilled engineers. The F1 is impressive and legendary but would never be built today.
Nit: Fairly certain most of the F-1's contemporaries were, or would have been built in such a manner as well. At least with their technology. I'm reminded of the reliability on the N-1 NK-33s I'm guessing most of the old engines that are still flying received minor redesigns to work with more modern production methods and technology, but since nobody wanted it, the F-1 just sat in a drawer somewhere. Though, if they do get around to building one or something like one, it'll be without a fair few of its iconic features, I'd say.
@@Orandu technically, all sides ate a lot of propaganda by the people for the people about how inhumane the people are on the other side. It is not the system (Nazi and alike who promote racial superiority are exceptions), it is the people.
You're just WRONG. The current US/NASA program has already developed the GEM-63 SRB. Successfully tested on an Atlas V last July (2019). The GEM-63 will also be employed as a 2nd stage booster pair w/ the HAPI-V launch system that's in pre-production. "High Altitude Platform Insertion Vehicle" is a revolutionary approach to putting things into space. GEM-63 SRBs are manufactured by AMERICAN companies Alliant Tech, Orbital ATK, & Northrop-Grumman. My father was William Gladden. NASA Project Manager for the original Space Shuttle SRB team. That was UTC/CSD/USBI-made SRBs & recovery ships. Going back to 1976. I was weaned on this shit, dude.
Except they are *not* simple. Hence why the US scientist back in the day didn't believe such an engine could even exist when they heard about it. That Soviet tech was simple is a myth. Some where (like computers, cameras...) but at the same time they made remote controlled rovers when the US needed hands on to do the same work in space. In alloy, rockets, rovers, missiles they were far ahead. Russia is still making better missiles than anyone else today (though no American military fan would ever acknowledge it even if it had lasers up its ass).
+Dahoon it is relatively simple. You can save your day by simplifying certain things so that you can make more complex components where it matters, improving reliability and making certain designs possible. It's similar to calculating tolerances on blueprints. By changing the way you measure them you can easily make your part a lot cheaper.
It is about money but that still does not make it simple. US money keeps Russian rocket engineers from seeking money elsewhere. Elsewhere would be what we like to call terrorist states these days. Russian techs do have to eat after all. We recognize this.
It also shows that politics ruins everything. It’s too bad we have so many people around the world. They feel they should rule it and not let everyone live in harmony.
So it seems the USSR has effectively seized the means of propulsion.
8/10 solid. haha
Perfect 5/7
why is everything in fraction ?
while the joke is very good, the Shuttle main engine is 453 seconds, while the RD-180 is 338 seconds
Obviously one burns kerosene and one burns hydrogen it's physically impossible for a kerosene engine to come close to hydrogen engine in ISP. If you compare to other kerosene engines it blows them out of the water. And one is fuel rich while the other is oxygen rich. There really is no way you could compare those engines fairly or any way they could be more polar opposites of rocket engine design. Especially the fact that one is fuel rich hydrogen engine and the other an oxidizer rich kerosene engine. That is an entirely different engineering challenge and frankly fuel rich hydrogen is easier to do.
Well there is this saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" I guess it applies here fairly well.
That mindset Kinda hampers innovation though which is why Aerojets engines are still a late 20th century design.
TheAtom Yeah, but if it is a good design and you can’t really improve on it, why try to improve it? The hammer has been around for millenia, and it hasn’t changed as well.
simplicity over complexity wins almost every time in engineering
I'm pretty sure this is the motto of the russian space program.
I think aerospike jets would have been better
It seems the Russians were good at getting a long way on smaller budgets than the US. If you look at Mir which set numerous endurance records for Cosmonauts vs. Space Station Freedom which cost billions of dollars in development and never got off the ground, but it’s remnants became the non-Russian parts of the ISS.
The peaceful repurposing of Russian Rocket Scientists for Western Commercial Rocket launches reminds me somewhat of how enriched uranium produced for Soviet Nuclear warheads was bought by the USA to fuel Nuclear Power Plants. There is something poetic about some of largest cities in America being powered for the last 25 years on Uranium that was enriched for the explicit purpose of destroying those exact same cities. It shows what can be done through international cooperation.
first - not Russians, it was Soviet Union. second - when you pay your engineers salary like 300-400USD/month you can be low on a budget.
The most efficient engine of those that are mass-produced, is an American RS-25. He just runs on hydrogen, on this very road. The same applies to its modification - the RS-68, on which the heavy, most powerful ULA rocket is mounted on the Delta 4. They are both more effective than any other engines, but they are working on hydrogen, which significantly increases the cost.
That is why the less powerful missiles, ULA and Orbital ATK decided to put the RD-180.
But those and others are past. future for Raptor and BE-4 engines, from SpaceX and Blue Origin, respectively.
Vyacheslav Potapenko why is that when something good from the Soviet Union it is recognized as being from the Soviet Union(makes logical sense), however all bad things that happened during the Soviet Union, the “Russians” are blamed...
@@Alex-qd5hy This is just a cheap engine, no more. American RS-68 is more effective, but more expensive. For this, ex is only used on the most powerful ULA rocket.
Агент госдепа Not my point, but ok
Nickel? Chromium? Bah, superior Soviet engines made from pure Stalinium, and plated in Leninite.
forged by sheer force of proletariat will
The best unbreakable engines are made out of Rasputinum.
Stalinite is actually a real existed Fe-Cr-Mn-C alloy for cutting tools used in USSR since early 1930s. All soviet weapons in WW2 were made using Stalinite tools.
Da! Stalinium ultra stronk!
Now engines modified by Putinit.
The abbreviation "RD - 180" is translated as "Rocket Engine - 180".
R - Rocket. In Russian sounds (Raketnyy)
D - Engine. In Russian sounds (Dvigatel')
Заяц, dont tell them our secrets, tovarisch!
ну погади
Which engine is best the cryogenic engine or the merlin engine?
@@lordpochinki2112 The Merlin is not a closed cycle engine. So, it is inefficient but it is cheap.
😂🤣😂🤣❤️ Raketni dvigatelj
Good job that they hid those engines instead of destroying them as ordered.
You're thinking NK-33, which nobody is using. RD-180 and RD-181 are all recent production.
you're both probably thinking about something else. nk-33 is an old discontinued engine. there are some remaining units which are going to be used when needed, but this engine is being replaced with another engine from rd-series.
@@nvlietstra They were using them for Antares but since all the remaining NK-33s were "old stock", no longer manufactured, they later replaced them with the RD-170 and RD-180.
As always great content! And perfect timing. I just had a conversation with my dad as to WHY are these engines still used and why does US not develop their own “copy” of this! Thanks Scott!
Yea, that is a good documentary. Storing a forest of engines in a remote location because they didn't want to follow orders and destroy their beautiful engines.
Those NK-33 were nice.
The intelligence community control the narrative, don't belive in what they say, as much as I won't to believe am skeptical. I don't believe they wanted to destroy their price , but I do believe the narrative is for the CIA/US to always take the price of a hero
Could you do a video explaining how launch towers work? And what different parts of them do? I would be very thankful.
I have a degree in aerospace engineering, and now I'm studying for a space and astronautical engineering master degree. My next exam will be space propulsion, and is always a pleasure to hear you saying exactly (and quite accurately) the things that I'm studying now. Great video, you've earned a new subscriber :)
It's actually a ceramic coating they use to stop oxygen from attacking the hot parts of the engine.
I believe this is what drove the choice of an integrated powerhead on Raptor as it eliminates the need for a lot of ceramic coated pipes and they can inspect everything exposed to hot O2 by simply unbolting the O2 turbo pump.
This is correct...the secret sauce is a very unusual ceramic coating. I'm shocked there is something I know that SM doesn't.
@@picramideWell, the premium refractory ceramic is MgO with its high thermal conductivity, toughness and extremely high 2800C heat resistance.
It's common, used for those spiral stove elements with a Stainless steel resistance wire molded in.
They only fail when the wire melts and boils.
@@Maungateitei The coating NPO Energomash uses is more than MgO. How would you get MgO to bond to Hastelloy or Inconel under such scouring?
"secret soviet sauce" -> it's forged in a fire of feverish of communist chants in a secret factory situated right under Lenin's tomb. :)
no, it uses stalinuim
Also, Russian rockets don't need a guidance system, as Stalin's hand will guide them to their destination.
nraynaud1 Powered by the forgotten souls of thousands of dissidents sacrificed in the gulags of Siberia.
While dead vietnam US GI’s cry in hell 😂😂
The Soviet engines are not made of some specially developed alloy, they are made of Stalinium!
It miraculously drips from his mausoleum when you feed him vodka.
Top Marx for the joke man.
Nothing like work hardened stalinium to bounce 75 mm capitalist shells
It also serves as a cloaking device. You can easily make 20 million people disappear with it.
War Thunder meme squad. Lol
Good insight that oxygen-rich turbopumps are the way to avoid coking.
You might talk about the inlet temperature of the RD-170/180 turbopumps, in comparison to the inlet temperatures of the fuel-rich turbopumps on the SSME engines, and especially in comparison to the inlet temperature of the full-flow turbopumps of the Raptor. I've done some modelling of the Raptor, and it appears their turbopumps are going to be running at approximately room temperature. No joke... that's the turbine inlet temperature on a FFSC methalox engine.
Would like to know more. I’m not a rocket scientist, just an amateur.
That is strange. If RT is enough, then more sensible way is to cranked up the temperature just below the material limit so that chamber pressure can be increased. Or at least it should be increased to auto ignition region for better/faster reaction in the chamber. Anyway, it is my guess.
Remember that the turbopump only needs to get the propellants up to the chamber pressure + injection drop. In the case of LOX flowing into a 20 MPa combustion chamber, that's about 20 J/g, less than 1 part in 1000 of the total energy in the propellant. Turbopumps aren't generally very good at extracting energy from their fluid, but even so, total turbopump power is typically 1-4% of the total thermal power of the rocket (more for anything with ultra-squishy hydrogen). When that power is added to a small fraction of the stream, yes, it gets hot. But when that power is added to the full flow of propellants, it rises a few percent of the total temperature rise of the rocket. That's not much.
One of the big problems in LOX systems is water ice. The stuff abrades the inside of the plumbing, and if that plumbing is aluminum (and maybe even titanium), the fresh metal surface after the oxide is removed is quite combustible in LOX. One issue with an FFSC engine cycle is that the ultra-lean oxygen turbine exhaust is going to have water in it. If this water is ice or even liquid droplets, it's going to be hard on the machinery. Water's critical point is at 22 MPa and 647 K, and Elon has mentioned combustion chamber pressures of 20 and 30 MPa. I suspect they are going to end up with a combustion chamber pressure of over 22 MPa, so that any water in their system is going to be at least compressible and close to if not actually supercritical. Maybe they'll run the preburners over 647 K just to avoid any two-phase flow entirely.
Any CO2 will be supercritical, as the critical point is 302 K and 7 MPa. No problem there.
I think it's amusing that high pressure in the preburner and combustion chamber might actually solve problems rather than just cause problems.
Excellent and thank you! Scott Manley in his video on rocket plumbing didn't make clear just how oxygen rich the raptor was going to be. By going full-flow you don't have a drive shaft and a separate turbine, as the burner exhaust itself is what drives the combustion chamber. I love it! Especially since it lowers burner temperatures so much (RT !)
Iain McClatchie ... Excellent points.. I wonder how aluminum would do for reusable engine giving high stress/vibration. Will stress crack be problem? any idea?
I found the video, ‘the engines which came in from the cold’ fascinating especially the arrogance of the American engineers and that politician who explained that they were buying Russian engines to help them through the fall of communism. Prat. They were just better units. Regards
Lol, it is lie, just propaganda. Actually Russia signed incredible huge public deal with India, the last one ordered for self whole space program in Russia: from building modern spaceports to development of rockets, own space station, programs for Indian universes, etc. They wanted to buy de facto whole space industry equal to Russian.
In US immediately started hysteric when deal was signed, because it meant India could get modern technologies and later develop even more regards to more resources and large population than had USSR and left in Russia. Also it meant of course, that India could became incredible powerful from military point of view, equal or even more developed than US. So, US forced Yeltsin (whom they controlled and brought to power) to withdraw from already signed contract to stop development of India. And this freak did it, it is one of shameful example from 1990s. Russia lost tens billions (de facto over $100 billions), more than country earn/spent for last 30 years, including reputation in India and a lot of rest contracts which Indians stopped after this.
From another side, American regime not canceled own restrictions/sanctions which introduced else against USSR, including against space program. The last anti-Soviet sanctions was canceled only in 2012 (!) and in same year replaced with new one. For that money country could even send man on Mars, incredible money. Actually US helped almost destroy Russian space program. While engines they bought because they were best and had no direct alternative.
P.S.
Russian space industry still works de facto in communistic economy. Roscosmos is just new name for Soviet ministry which developed space. It in state property and control. It have no profit, but connected directly to state budget. It is reasons why Russian space budget in near 15 times less than American, but in general both countries have equal programs and by a lot directions Russia even more progressive.
@@juliap.5375 America is communistic due to 4 letters.... ITAR.
this is a much better explanation of the differences than i've heard previously - thank you
I find the lack of engineering towards improving things to be disheartening. Until SpaceX came along with Raptor and BO with the BE4, there wasn’t much interest at all moving beyond 70s era soviet engines... which are only being banned from us launches for potential disruption during geo conflict... and 70’s designed shuttle engines which are still being used in the 2020s on SLS. Great example of the lack of progress and even continuing steps backward we’ve made in space flight until SpaceX started shaking things up. The future I was promised back in the 80’s never materialized, not because it was impossible, but because nobody had the will to take risks and find research and development towards long term projects past their current term in office.
Daniel Guisinger I agree. But the shuttle engines are designed upto the teeth. ISP of hydrogen/Lox is 450 and Chris Craft is adamant the SSME’s are at at 448... NASA believing they could improve the shuttle engines for use in SLS are dreaming. The problem with the soviet RD180 and all its variants is that it’s just to damn efficient and reliable. You can built it quicker, cheaper and simpler but there isn’t a way of making it much better without increasing risks that don’t need to be taken. In all fairness to SpaceX the merlin engine is very reliable with only a single fail safe incident I know of... but it’s hardly cutting edge in terms of efficiency even though they are doing amazing things with multiple starts and full throttle range for landings. Like all engineering they could potentially push the merlin even higher but the compromises wouldn’t be worth the payload gains
Well, on the other hand, 80'th engines are really darn effective and it's just not worth the money trying to squeeze a handful of power from them. New engines are getting developed though, Blue Orion are pritty innovative with their methane-propelled motor.
Yeah, the future of spaceflight will be in the hands of private launch companies now since NASA doesn't want to innovate anymore.
Daniel Guisinger when you strap 3 living, breathing people on top of a big tower of fuel, you will probably want something that absolutely does not fail.
Silicone Valley did some good work, but their products were horribly buggy at launch (hehe). How many versions are there on your phone's software? Can't really do thay with rockets that carry people.
SpaceX did their work, but they are simply using existing technologies, just more efficiently. The real leaps in science and technologies are still happening in government grants lab (like NASA)
Capitalism is extremely risk averse, rather than fostering innovation it stifles it.
The space race wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the USSR, everything the US invented in the 20th century was basically the state funding it, that funding would have never came about of it weren't for the cold war. The state innovates and the markets, left alone, stagnate.
It’s always fun working on the Aerojet campus in Rancho Cordova/Sacramento - whenever there’s a launch that features something that campus worked on, they put up a banner to congratulate whatever team for the launch (usually the strap on boosters).
I wonder if I can pay a visit someday....
Dear Scott, your comment is very fair. They have unique tech for metal production and process control. Nobody can still reach the chamber pressure and other parameters, even decades later...
And time jas done it's usual thing. Your comment is outdated.
This is a great presentation. And very enjoyable as well. Thanks!
The Russian scientists did their homework when it came to engines, NGL. Respect +
The secret 'soviet sauce' for the rocket engine metals might be something like Inconel. Iron + Chromium/Nickel
I love that documentary The Engines that Came in from the Cold
Is it just me, or is Scott looking directly into my soul in this video. I feel like he's unusually intense.
Jeb is just staring Into your soul as you watch this video
Hahaha :)
I saw a comment on droid’s video on aerospike engines, describing in excrutiating detail the reason the aerospike, despite it’s advantages, manages to be less efficient through greater friction due to the effective nozzle surface area. I would love a video talking about that in a easily-digestible fashion. ^^
Scott Manley 6:46 Thank you. That's been my argument for a long time.
It came down to management decisions on both sides. Everyone had deadlines to meet and that required focus.
It did but it doesn't today and it is still not beat.
There is also the Electron Rocket using battery powered turbo pumps. Of course using that method you have to carry the extra weight of the batteries.
ascii892 Until you turn them into reaction mass.
I thought that too, but he said large rockets. The Electron is decidedly a small launcher. Watching the batteries ditch off it while in flight was kinda neat (off subject)
Just the engines ? How about the fact that the whole Orbital ATK/Northrop Grumman Antares first stage is manufactured by the same Ukrainian outfit that also builds the Zenit Rocket ?
glorious ukraina
Also navigation computer of Antares and sensors similar to those on SS-18 Satan rocket also from Ukraine: Khartron corp.
Great video!! On my birthday too! Thanks Mr. Scott!!
It's really early and I need a Scott Manley video to start the day.
Did the Saturn V in the background have a launch abort?? Fascinating video! (as always, heh)
there are literary light coming out from your eyes when you are talking about rockets. wow!
In the case of the Atlas V, more like end of 20th century American rocket design using Soviet Era engines that received an upgrade. The Atlas V was part of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, which kicked off in 1994. Lockheed Martin was able to harvest a whole lot of hard work the Soviets put into the difficult RD 170/171, developed for the Energiya strap on boosters (and a cause of delay for the program). The collaboration appears to have gotten it right given the record of the Atlas V and the RD-180; and given a few of the accidents with the RD 170/171 in the 1990s and 2000s.
5:28 It's vodka.
V M v
V M No that's the A4/V2 fuel.
Cuz the commies made some damn fine engines.
Cuz if we don't buy them they'll sell to someone else. That someone else will have them pointed at us too. Which would cost us a whole lot to deal with.
Too bad their leaders aren't as fine.
They also strapped together dozens of WWII-era rotary Diesel aircraft engines to power their patrol boats. Engineering by necessity since they never had the kind of money the US throws around.
Neither the RD-180 nor the RD-181 are actually Soviet-era, both having been developed after 1990, although they are heavily based on the RD-170 which was a Soviet engine.
When they had food to eat
In "Energia" the stress is on the second "e" and the "g" is pronounced as in "go"
I’ll get it right one day. Literally started watching videos on learning Russian.
@@scottmanley good luck!
It's a beautiful language, but takes time to open itself before you. What may will be hard for you (next to grammar) is the intonation. For example зАмок (zAmok) means fortress/castle, but замОк (zamOk) means lock. Another tip! In Russian everything which is connected to beauty, is described with the root of the color RED (красная f/красный m/красное n) for example beautiful is красивая (kraci/y/vaya). And in the Russian alphabet there are some letters which counterpart you can't find in English. These are the Ч (~ts), Ж (~zh) and Ы (it's a weird kind of "I" like in the word "index", but you have to elevate the rear of your tongue. For me as a Hungarian is/was a bit hard, as I'm learning it by myself, but I believe you can do it too.
@SüdAntares Cosmonautics A correction: ч = ch, ц = ts. Speaking of ы, it's historically a digraph of ъ (hard sign) + i. Whereas the hard sign itself can be seen as very short o, the sound you make when starting pronouncing the usual o. Cyrillic alphabet is perfect in every way! We even can write борщ just as it is.
@@lake258 спасибо за коррекцию. Yes, it was hard for me how to pronounce the letter "ы". But after a week or so I already felt the difference between и and ы. Also, I had to train myself to find the difference between the hard and soft л, so I know it now. Anyway, Russian language is beautiful in it's own way. And I don't find it so hard anymore as I found it earlier.
So it has to be pronounced as engorgoia?
And now we know... United Launch Alliance today has announced that they have chosen the BE-4 as the main engine for their next generation Vulcan rocket.
A few years on from that decision, I wonder if they're regretting it. Development of the AR1 engine may have been slow, but progress on the BE-4 hasn't exactly been speedy either. And perhaps if they'd not distracted themselves with trying to adapt the BE-4 to ULA's needs, Blue Origin might be a little closer to putting their own rockets into orbit...
@@simongeard4824 Aerojet Rocketdyne wanted more money, had no hardware to speak of, and they effectively gave up nearly all work on AR1 when the Space Force funding ended, much as Northrup Grumman did with their OmegA rocket when they didn't get the NSSL 2 contract.
Based on the single complete engine they finished last year, it'd have taken AJR way longer than it's taken Blue Origin.
@@mikedicenso2778 Yeah, neither of the options look great in hindsight, but I suppose Blue Origin hadn't had such a chance to disappoint yet.
@@simongeard4824 Slow? it was virtually non-existent. After all these years and the government $$$, they managed to eke out a single prototype engine for testing.
Blue Origin, on the other hand, invested a lot of their own money before the ULA deal, got hardware built, tested it, and then a year after the deal was inked had several BE-4s ready to go to the stands for testing.
And they've not been all that slow. It's only been a little more than three years since they got selected over AJR.
The metallurgists during the Soviet era were wizards and way ahead of what the west was doing during that time period.
Thanks old man, want a medal?
@@m2heavyindustries378 No, no. He's got a point.
@@jkerman5113 Well.. no. It's more than the Soviets tended to keep on refining their recipes, while the Americans were always in search of the next breakthrough. The American approach allowed them to have the F1 engines when the Soviets didn't have anything similar, but led to the demise of the same F1 engines as soon as the Saturn program was cancelled, and well before that design had been fully developed, to search for something else.
Weirdly, the "Soviet" approach is the one typical of the automotive industry, when engines trend to be refined, not revolutionised.
it is amazing how slowly space technology advances. i hear today’s solar panels are only 10 percent more efficient than those used in the early 60s. amazing how rockets from the 80s are still the best around.
Many technologies require fine methods of production, but not that complexed by themselves. Compare gas and electric car. Electric car is much more simple.
Спасибо за видео, крайне интересно!
Likes looking the images?
Probably inconel; nickel/chrome alloy. Very popular in high temperature turbines, and Russia has lots of nickel. There are surface coatings that can drastically increase performance in high temperatures, but given the pressure and temperature, I'm guessing you'd want to stick with a single homogeneous material.
Does that mean that old engines will become available? Some fuel tanks and I could go into orbit.
Scott mentioned the secret soviet metallurgy became immune to oxidation but I remember from somewhere that the turbopumps and some pipes do suffer some horrific oxidation. I remember that when the engine shuts down after it has done its job, it's pretty much a wreck and that some of its parts are "evaporated" in a hot oxygen environment, making the engine lighter than it was before launch. As opposed to many other engine types that get heavier as they run due to accumulating soot. I also remember that it was also attributed to the genius of the Soviet engineers that while the engine does not only burn fuel, it is also itself "burning" (some of the metal components) while it is running, it manages to be ok in the reliability department.
So my impression so far has been that the metallurgy was not immune to oxidation, but the engine was designed to handle the rapid loss of metal in some of its parts. In addition to that, I'm sure exotic metallurgy was indeed required so as to not lose metal too rapidly, blow up as a result.
This comment may be regarded as a nitpicking, or simply misinformed (might be) but it matters when thinking of possible reusability. This particular engine line has no reusable models, but if I'm correct, it is also the case that however much it will be further developed, reusability is something that simply can not be achieved with that type of combustion cycle. Unless the Soviets really developed a metal that is immune to oxidation in a hot oxygen-rich environment.
Thanks to Scott for another great video that sparked a little thought concerning rockets and their awesome engines (even while I know little about them) :)
The sources I read describe recovery of the rd-170 engines used on Energia for inspection, and an estimate that they could be reused at least 10 times.
Thanks for correcting me. I am a little bit embarrassed for not googling this before writing the comment.
Amazing how light the Merlin is.
well explained Scott and note it was the failure of a turbo pump that destroyed Cygnus 3.
RD-180 the king of chamber pressure
Well if the Raptor can make 300 bar like Elon said then it's the new winner. IF...
Since it is Elon that is a mighty big IF
@@TheEvilmooseofdoom raptor uses methane/lox mixture. So as aspected it has higher chamber pressure. Rd-180 defenly is one of the best engines in theyr class
.
@@MarkAlea The fuel makes no difference to the chamber pressure. That's pretty much the job of the pumps. The Rd-180 is a beast of an engine!
Lensflare Deviant raptor already passed rd180, it reached 270 bar
At 2:24 I thought of something I saw in the library. I had some time to kill & picked up a US Patent book. Glancing through it I came across a water injector for a steam boiler. As I remember it didn't use this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injector but it used heat from the boiler to turn some water into steam which then would push water into the boiler. It was 1 pipe of varied sizes to make the water turn into steam & provide a wall so the water/steam being forced towards wouldn't back up away from the boiler.
I'm naming my new CCCP choir "Secret Soviet Sauce"
although I was hoping for a video about #dearMoon and JAXAs rovers. But this topic is exactly what I need for my presentation on rockets and the cold war. great - thanks a lot.
Just came from TMRO's Livestream
Just love Scott's rocket science lessons.
I'm sad the Proton is being killed off. There are probably thousands of three eyed people in Altai who would disagree with me, which they have every right to do. There is something about a staged N2O4/UDMH engine that just makes THE BEST mach diamonds I've ever seen. Literally makes me sexually excited.
I feel the opposite. I'm glad it's soon to be gone.
That is a perfectly valid opinion. I feel terrible for all those poor people that have had the not so empty 1st stages falling in their fields. I wouldn't drive through that region without a spacesuit on.
My mum went hiking and camping there :) About a decade ago. She is still fine. To be fair, there are not that many roads to drive on. And I think we still have few pics of few rocket remains in in the mountains.
I'd actually love to see it there. I watched Long Way Round when Ewan and Charley rode through, it looked like paradise.
If you love Mach diamonds, you'll really get it off when Raptor flies.
Ok, I know this isn’t remotely the point of anything here, but wow that N1 launch looks sweet with those three vents on the launchpad
which will be better? the Raptor engine or the Blue Origin BE-4? i havent seen anyone directly compare them even though they will compete against each other
Frothar My moneys on the raptor
raptor engine is hands down much better, 30,000 vs 13,400 kpa of chamber pressure
I think there haven't been any comparisons because both are still in development (as far as I know), so all of the parameters are still subject to change or not published.
Hard to compare when the numbers keep changing. Probably raptor if Elon is to be believed about it's performance though.
Hard to say since they're two different types of closed cycle engines.
Great informative presentation - thanks
0:20 the stage and a half was used on atlas II not 3
Stage*
It really makes RocketLabs decision to go with Li-Ion battery powered pumps look all the more genius in their particular case
Hey, can you do one on grounding electric circuits in space?
I'm no electrical engineer, but I can't see it being that much different that grounding an electrical circuit in a car. in a closed electrical system you just ground back to the source.
@@iamzid that makes sense thanks. The car electronics are 12v or something though, so maybe there are more considerations to be made still
To illustrate, there is a fun experiment You can do, You need for example a low voltage lightbulb, a battery and some pieces of wire to connect it with, one part goes directly to the lightbulb, the other part You can fix on for example a wallradiator or something else that will lead electricity and then another piece of wire back to the lightbulb, if eweryting has good contact the lightbulb will still light up, despite of the massive resistance in the radiator.
Long extension lead.
Gee, I wonder how airplanes fly? For sure you're no electrical engineer.
This is why you never just forget what the opponents were working on. No shame in just saying "hey, you guys got something really good there! Can I take a look at your plans?"
I may never own one of these engines, so I guess I stick to my U.S.S.R made 13mm socket wrench.
Is best wrench for fixing broken Lada, tovarisch.
@@lsswappedcessna
Broken Lada... Redundant.
@@jshepard152 My uncle bought one (LADA) because he had a ranch in the south of Italy and it was dirt cheap. I can never forget the day we started for the first time the heater (it was a bit chilly, Italian chilly) We had to open immediately all the windows because we were suffocating by the monstrous heat blowing inside the car (It was engineered for Siberian winter...)
The first closed cycle engine flown in the ussr was the s1.5400 which first flew in...1961. It clearly wasn't meant for the N1.
Chemical rockets reached a price / performance plateau. The Koreliov closed cycle combustion system raised the bar and today chemical rockets have reached another plateau. Give the Russians credit, they were willing to blow up a lot of rockets to figure closed loop pumps while the Americans weren't. I think they did blow a lot of rockets up tho.
The gas laws state that one could potentially squeeze even more efficiency out of a rocket's exhaust, by choking it even more than just enough to bring the flow to sonic (internally). As thickening (pressurising) a gas will tend to heat it up, bumping the local speed of sound even higher.
youtube back at it again with the late notifications
The USSR develpoed a Full flow staged combustion engine the rd-270, a tri-proppelant engine rd-701 ,they also developed n204/udmh a rocket fuel and a fluorine engine rd-301
Why is no one willing to admit that the soviet engineers beat the US...
They were light years ahead of the US.
Esoecially with closed and full flow cycle
They beat the US in cost, they weren't light-years ahead because the US developed hydrogen engines instead, now the US produces re usable RP-1 rocket engines domestically.
I thought that ULA had already announced selection of the BE-4 for the Vulcan rocket and Tory Bruno had stated that they were going with methane in a 5.4 meter tank dimension. The kerosene Atlas V is 3.8 meter and the hydrogen Delta IV is 5 meter.
can you imagine how advance we would be if we all get along?
You're correct. Hard to do when everyone is competing with each other in the labor force. No one wants to loose their job.
Not very. Without competition, advancements are slow
It will be interesting to see, with all the different types of engines that are being developed, which one will come out on top.
TL;DR: "Secret Soviet Sauce"
Secret Soviet Sauce = Vodka
Hey thank you for the great great documentary
The BFR should be called the BFR 9000
Doom reference
What 9000?
its like the bfg 9000 in doom it was refered to as the Big f***ing gun
Id really like to see a hybrid version using the RD-170 plumbing and metallurgy and the F-1 combustion chamber/injection plate design.
Scott play Eve again. Stellaris is great but it's no Eve Online
Stellaris was great before they fixed it until it was broken much worse.
Stellaris is a vastly better game today than it was at launch.
Looking forward to dropping tiles in the next release.
I strongly disagree. I am glad that you are having fun with the game, Scott. But I am not. The strategic part of the game is much simpler and less interesting now in my opinion. Dramatic changes absolutely broke the game in serious ways, as numerous players complained about and even the devs themselves admitted. Only some of this was later fixed. Even rolling back to an old patch version isn't very satisfying as some balance issues and bugs remain in those versions. The game showed great promise and could have been something really special but it never quite got there.
The burritos I ate while watching this video were also made with Secret Soviet Sauce. The secret is ghost pepper. I may hate MY plumbing, but I love rocket plumbing! Thanks for the video.
Why don't you do KSP anymore?
I do KSP livestreams at twitch, KSP videos aren't having the success they once did.
Okay, I see.
Scott Manley could you post the unedited VODs on RUclips, as the time you stream isn’t convenient for me.
@@scottmanley If you get the BFS flappy wing thing to work you should definitely post that.
Scott Manley I don’t have a twitch channel?
the Electron rocket from Rocketlabs actually uses an engine with an electric pump using droppable batteries.
and once again, material science proves to be the most critical field ever.
05:20
You mean...Stalinium??😂😂
Stalinium is a more rare and pure version of chinesium, mined only at the finest of Gulags.
Thank you Scott, very cool!
"Secret Soviet sauce"
in ̶S̶o̶v̶i̶e̶t̶ Russia we call it "stalinium"
@@ПавелЩёголев-ж6щ Secret Soviet Sauce = водка ?
While one must give credit where credit is due, it must be noted that the decision to pursue the closed cycle virtually, and to incur its attendant long gestation period, virtually assured the USSR would lose the Moon Race, which it must be remembered, was the whole purpose of the exercise.
The US looked at the closed/open cycle question, as well as liquid hydrogen upper stage fuels, combustion instability (and its implications for an engine which could be used in a reliable Saturn-class booster) and chose the only combination of those 3 factors which could likely permit the attainment of Kennedy's goal.
Thus the Americans flew a Saturn V in January 1967, with only 5 large, open-cycle engines and a very large payload, and never had a booster failure in the entire program, while the Russians could only manage a very belated failure in 30 magnificently-engined N1, which never even made first stage cut-off, despite trying well into the 70's, and would have supported an extremely risky manned lunar landing at best.
Despite some stellar engineering on the cycle question, the Russians erred in all three of those important areas, and lost the Moon Race before it began.
could the bfg do a mission like apollo & land on the mon then come back?
yup, probably with 1 or 2 refuels in leo
Not sure if the big friendly giant would survive in space, but maybe.
And yeah, with orbital refuel BFS could definitely do a moon landing and return, probably wouldn't even take a full refuel.
BFR
Probably would need a refuel on the surface of the Moon. A free-return trajectory, Apollo 13 style, won't need refueling. Landing means having to propulsively shed all velocity and put it all back again. The Apollo LEM made it easy with paper-thin walls and an even smaller ascent stage. BFR/BFS would try to descend and ascend with everything including atmospheric reentry heat shielding and sea-level engines.
@@CarFreeSegnitz I'm pretty sure the delta V required to get to the moon, land, and come back is quite a bit less than getting to Mars and doing a propulsive landing there. If the BFS didn't refuel in Earth orbit you're right that it would need to refuel on the moon, actually I'm not sure it would even have enough fuel to land. But that would be a stupid way to do things until a fuel depo gets built.
I wonder if the alloy is fluorine passivated stainless? ie. an alloy that's been exposed (carefully!) to fluorine gas, which reacts on it to leave an even tougher more un-reactive surface
The soviet engines use vodka instead of rocket fuel. This lowers operation costs significantly therefore they are still being used
You say this jokingly. Did you know they filled the first Proton test article with Vodka for testing the tanks?
@@scottmanley And I suppose it all mysteriously "disappeared" after the conclusion of the test? :)
I think there were some issues with high numbers of staff reporting in `sick`
Scott Manley well then..
@@scottmanley
Did you know that the V2 rockets ran on fermented potato juice, so basically vodka :D.
Thank you!!! Always wondered this and wanted to know about this topic
Despite the ehh..current relations between the US and Russia currently,... why this is still a convention
Because NASA contractors are more interested in endless development money for tech that never sees the light of day.
True. For comparison new American and Russian spaceships for Moon. Both almost equal, but Russia develop it for $800 millions, while US for $15 billions (!!!). Near the same difference will be in cost of each ship.
They had the people to do the materials science work. These people succeeded.
Anybody else think scott dislikes every one of his videos? Why else would videos have exactly one dislike each?
It's Putin, not Scott.
It's a fantom dislike
First patented by clicksphilip
are you ever going back to ksp?
(its the reason i subscribed to this channel
Soviet and Russian mantra ringing true again: If not broken why replace it. The USA? Yay lets do something expensive - the hydrogen engine (was efficient sure but hellish expensive). So I ask do we use tried and tested systems as the Soviets did, or go for the $15,000 (gold plated) toilet seat (Independence Day) and something new.
the hydrogen engine are more risky. SST were some example of cryo risk.
the USSR did end up spending a lot of their own space shuttle program as well.... shame it never did more than a few test flights
The specific impulse of hydrogen is far too tempting to ignore. The Atlas V booster has only about half the thrust of Falcon 9, but thanks to its 60-year old technology Centaur upper stage, it can put more mass into geosynchronus orbit ... and that despite the woefully limited thrust of the RL-10 engine, which barely gets Cygnus into LEO. And no doubt you can't remember thay many Atlas-Centaurs failed in the early 1960's before they finally got it right.
And results for not using hydrogen? See N1. Because the soviet had no LH2 engine, that 4-stage monster had to use a full 4-stage kerosene configuration. And the result? LESS THAN HALF capacity than Saturn V.
So a single soviet lunar mission requires 2 N1 launch. One for the crew modules, one for an additional trans-lunar-injection rocket, which will be ASSEMBLED IN ORBIT. And the resulting crew module is much smaller, sporting 1-2 cosmonaut.
Now tell me which is the "tried and tested system" and which is the "fancy, expensive, unrealistic, and failed trick"?
Slow down there you will blow an O ring. Who is still launching the bulk of the missions to the ISS? That would be the Russians with to Soyuz rocket which is ancient. So yes tried and tested wins out while the Americans are scrambling around (although the private launchers also use Soviet tech)
Another advantage to oxidizer-rich kerolox and fuel-rich hydrolox. Lower average molecular weight of the exhaust.
Meanwhile, NASA still can't find the blueprints of Apollo and Saturn 5.
No, the blueprints exist, but much of the tooling was sold off as scrap by contractors.
Scott Manley so were the machinists that operated that machinery. That was the real loss. Because the blueprints alone do not fully describe how the components were made.
Андрей Желтяк
The F1 is not a very good design from a todays point of view, thats why noboy is reviving it.
The US brute-forced their way to this engine.
It was desinged and built by a massive testing and fine-tuning effort.
It is a very costly process to built an engine that only works if you test and tune it while building with the effort of hundresds of very skilled engineers.
The F1 is impressive and legendary but would never be built today.
Nit: Fairly certain most of the F-1's contemporaries were, or would have been built in such a manner as well. At least with their technology. I'm reminded of the reliability on the N-1 NK-33s
I'm guessing most of the old engines that are still flying received minor redesigns to work with more modern production methods and technology, but since nobody wanted it, the F-1 just sat in a drawer somewhere.
Though, if they do get around to building one or something like one, it'll be without a fair few of its iconic features, I'd say.
Secret Soviet Sauce is my next band name
This kills the arguments that communism doesn't create innovation.
cubey, in Soviet Russia, you innovate or they kill YOU!
in US you innovate or they starve you
Dahoon technically you starve yourself...
@@Orandu technically, all sides ate a lot of propaganda by the people for the people about how inhumane the people are on the other side. It is not the system (Nazi and alike who promote racial superiority are exceptions), it is the people.
Alb 92 you betcha dam skippy. “Do one to others before they do one to you!”
-the lead rule
You're just WRONG. The current US/NASA program has already developed the GEM-63 SRB. Successfully tested on an Atlas V last July (2019). The GEM-63 will also be employed as a 2nd stage booster pair w/ the HAPI-V launch system that's in pre-production. "High Altitude Platform Insertion Vehicle" is a revolutionary approach to putting things into space. GEM-63 SRBs are manufactured by AMERICAN companies Alliant Tech, Orbital ATK, & Northrop-Grumman. My father was William Gladden. NASA Project Manager for the original Space Shuttle SRB team. That was UTC/CSD/USBI-made SRBs & recovery ships. Going back to 1976. I was weaned on this shit, dude.
Typical Russian engineering. Simple (relatively), effective, and ingenious.
most importantly: long-lasting. that's like the key design feature the Soviets were working with.
you should try the trains in Russia everything is build from 1cm thick steel plates not plastic trim that snaps off!
Except they are *not* simple. Hence why the US scientist back in the day didn't believe such an engine could even exist when they heard about it. That Soviet tech was simple is a myth. Some where (like computers, cameras...) but at the same time they made remote controlled rovers when the US needed hands on to do the same work in space. In alloy, rockets, rovers, missiles they were far ahead. Russia is still making better missiles than anyone else today (though no American military fan would ever acknowledge it even if it had lasers up its ass).
+Dahoon
it is relatively simple. You can save your day by simplifying certain things so that you can make more complex components where it matters, improving reliability and making certain designs possible. It's similar to calculating tolerances on blueprints. By changing the way you measure them you can easily make your part a lot cheaper.
I worked for a guy named Mueller who told me these engines were way beyond their time. He knew wtf he was talking about
One Word:
*MONEY*
2 words
Money
Quality
More like "easy availabilty"
Keep your hands off my stack!
It is about money but that still does not make it simple. US money keeps Russian rocket engineers from seeking money elsewhere. Elsewhere would be what we like to call terrorist states these days. Russian techs do have to eat after all. We recognize this.
It also shows that politics ruins everything. It’s too bad we have so many people around the world. They feel they should rule it and not let everyone live in harmony.