SpaceX N-1 reenactment.

[Steve Fitton]

Anybody watch SpaceX pretty much recreate the first flight of the Soviet N1 moon rocket today?
I think so many engines eventually quit they lost roll control and then pitch too.  It was an epic explosion when range safety blew it up.

[Dan McEntee]

   I saw a video, and the one shot that showed the cold spots. I think the designs is intended to loose a certain number of engines and still attain orbit.  I have to wonder if Musk was just fooling around with this launch to gain some attention and publicity?? he made the statement that his expectations were pretty low for the flight, and wouldn't bee surprised if it blew up. It almost looked like they were driving it around upuntil they hit the destruct button. Was it all done on purpose as a test??
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[Dwayne Donnelly]

I watched, after the explosion the guy on youtube said it was "A rapid unscheduled disassembly"  that's one way of looking at it.   

[Brett Buck]

Anybody watch SpaceX pretty much recreate the first flight of the Soviet N1 moon rocket today?
I think so many engines eventually quit they lost roll control and then pitch too.  It was an epic explosion when range safety blew it up.

  We were just having a discussion of that here at work earlier, and the N1 analogy seems pretty apt.

    Brett

p.s. for those who don't know what Steve was referring to, the SpaceX "SuperHeavy" is quite reminiscent of the Soviet N-1 "Moon Rocket" booster that failed in all 4 attempts. The large number of small engines were used to control the attitude/angle by differential throttling - you want to tilt it one way, you reduce the thrust of the engines on the side you want to lean towards. If an engine fails, you turn off the engine on the other side that corresponds to it, to keep it balanced. Not surprisingly, using Soviet-era techniques, this didn't work, and was a causative factor in the failures, including a pad explosion that is claimed to be the largest non-nuclear explosion in human history.

    I am not entirely sure how SuperHeavy works, but it was very clear right from the launch that several of the engines never fired, and I am not sure if others were turned off on purpose, or failed later. It did manage to remain stable through the boost, but depending on who you talk to, failed to separate the second stage and tried to do the return maneuver with the upper stage attached. What was very surprising to me was that the stack seemed to survive going sideways a 7000 feet/second and 22 miles for a long time before range safety, an onboard abort, or it broke up and exploded. We did see what appeared to be a fuel leak from the second stage, presumably from buckling under the aerodynamic loads.

   I know people as SpaceX but they aren't working on boosters.

    Soviet N-1 "Moon Rocket":


   SpaceX SuperHeavy booster:

[M Spencer]

Couldnt afford a ticket , so I wasnt on it .