Eli5: why was the US the first to make it to the moon despite the USSR being first in nearly everything else in the Space Race?
In: 14546
The main reason is that russia didn’t have a facility with test chambers large enough to test really big engines. So they did not have the capability to develop massive engines like the 5 F-1s powering the Saturn V rocket first stage.
Lacking that infrastructure, and not likely to get such a facility built in the near future, the russian space program decided to go for a rocket using a very large number of smaller engines. Which was a really bad idea in retrospect. Putting 30 NK-15 engines on the first stage was honestly just asking for failure (given that you’re sitting on a slowly exploding bomb and everything has to work perfectly, rocket launches tend to fail often enough when just using a very small number of engines). The subsequent launch failures of the N1 rocket first stage, led to the russian space program falling behind to a degree that they couldn’t catch up.
The Nk-15 engine would be developed into the extremely powerful NK-33 engine (using a closed-cycle combustion that was decades ahead of US rocket design and leading to interest in the engine as late as the early 21st century). The thrust-to-weight ratio and specific impulse is disgustingly high for a rocket with its design origin in the 1960s, and when used in relatively small numbers it used to be a relatively reliable engine. Modern engines are better (like for example the merlin engine on the Falcon heavy), but modern engines are designed using tools and experience that the first rocket programs never had.
Latest Answers