F-1 Rocket engine

qnetjoe · 2007-07-13 18:42:33

I was wondering what ever happened to the F-1/F-1A rocket engine designs? Why are they no longer used? Is it due to a policital or environmental concerns? Or just a economic or engineering concerns?

I was also wondering if anybody knew were I could find the complete F-1A rocket engine specifications? And is there any reason why 4 F-1A rocket engines could not be combined using a single turbo pump similar to that of the RD-170?

cIclops · 2007-07-14 00:08:02

The F-1 of course was the main first stage engine for the Saturn V, its enormous thrust is only useful for a vehicle of that mass. Five of them were used and they required vast quantities of LO2 and RP-1 fuel. The Saturn V weighed over 3000 mT and lifted about 118 mT to LEO. When the Apollo program was canceled there was no need for the Saturn V or the F-1.

The new Ares V launch vehicle will replace Saturn V for heavy lift to the Moon, Mars and beyond. Ares V uses the more efficient RS-68B engine that burns LH2 with LO2. Ares V will weigh about 3300 mT and put about 131 mT into LEO. The F-1 engine had a sea level Isp of 265 secs, the RS-68B is 364.

publiusr · 2007-11-09 11:45:45

RD-170 has somewhat greater thrust and is used for Zenit (the Energiya strap-on).

SpaceNut · 2012-04-20 20:34:21

Industry group resurrects 6,000kN F-1 engine for NASA proposal....
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl … al-370920/

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne and Dynetics have announced a resurrected F-1 engine as their entry into the advanced booster engineering demonstration and/or risk reduction (ABEDRR) programme, a precursor to selecting advanced boosters for the Space Launch System (SLS).
Resurrection of the F-1, the most powerful engine built by a United States company (only the Russian RD-170 is slightly more powerful) has long been a topic of wistful discussion amongst rocketry circles.

GW Johnson · 2012-04-28 17:26:49

Why would we want to resurrect an ancient 1960-vintage kerosene-LOX technology when we already have a better one? The F-1's were in the neighborhood of 265 sec Isp at sea level. Newer kerolox engines are approaching 290 sec Isp for sea level performance. Thrust depends only upon size, once you hit the chamber pressure regime needed for better Isp.

Admittedly, for a first stage, thrust is way more important than Isp. But that barrier's already been breached with the newer, higher chamber-pressure, engines that yield the same thrust per unit size, for better Isp.

It would be more fruitful to scale those newer engines up, or just stack up more of them.

GW

SpaceNut · 2014-03-24 18:50:29

justa repost from http://www.newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7041 to a better place

SpaceNut wrote:

Welcome back what took so long Commodore
While Pratt N Whitney would love to have the business to make the clone I would rather have the F1 engine of Saturn for use going forward for a Kerosene LOX system. Then throw a pair of SRB's onto it and we could put in one shot to orbit the whole thing.

SpaceNut wrote:

Here is the last news of the F1 engine. Rocket companies hope to repurpose Saturn 5 engines Posted: April 18, 2012 BY STEPHEN CLARK
Dynetics and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne announced Wednesday they are teaming up to resurrect the Saturn 5 rocket's mighty F-1 engine to power NASA's planned heavy-lift launch vehicle, saying the Apollo-era engine will offer significantly more performance than solid-fueled boosters currently under development.
"The ability to come back and offer NASA a resurrection of probably one of the most venerated successful engines ever, the F-1, is very neat," said Steve Cook, director of space technologies at Dynetics Inc. "The cool factor on this is very high."
NASA plans to award $200 million to multiple companies later this year for 30 months of design and risk reduction work on advanced booster concepts for the agency's Space Launch System, a powerful heavy-lifting rocket designed to dispatch astronaut crews to deep space destinations, including asteroids, Mars, and the moon.
The 30-month performance period is expected to begin Oct. 1 and run through early 2015. The first two flights of the Space Launch System will be boosted off the launch pad by five-segment solid rocket motors built by ATK and derived from the space shuttle program.
So has anyone heard any thing on this or has the budgets caused this to not even get started.....

SpaceNut · 2015-01-21 20:22:20

NASA Engine Test Reignites F1 Motor Built For Apollo Missions To Moon

NASA is reigniting its mighty moon rocket engine using parts retrieved from museums and displays. Engineers working this month at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., are completing a series of test firings using recovered components from 40-year-old F-1 engines. The team decided to take apart the gas generator, the part of the engine responsible for supplying power to drive the giant F-1's turbopump, because its component parts were small enough to be tested in Marshall's laboratories. The gas generator is often one of the first pieces designed on a new engine because it is a key part for determining the size of the final engine assembly. Once they had the artifacts-turned-test-samples in hand, Marshall's team used a novel technique called structured light 3D scanning to produce three-dimensional computer-aided design drawings of the gas generator.

New F-1B rocket engine upgrades Apollo-era design with 1.8M lbs of thrust, Dynetics and Pratt Whitney Rocketdyne rebuild the F-1 for the "Pyrios" booster.

SLS could instead use liquid-fueled rocket motors, which would make it the United States' first human-rated rocket in more than 30 years not to use solid-fuel boosters.

With most recent Russia not wanting the US to use them on military missions on the Atlas V launcher there was a renewed effort to make this happen.

Updated F-1 Could Replace RD-180 Rocket Engine

Impaler · 2015-01-21 21:31:41

Didn't the F-1 also have some TERRIBLE jack-hammering issue that came close to destroying some of the Saturn V rockets???

Like GW said earlier, these rockets are absolutely obsolete, the fact that anyone is even THINKING about this and offering it up for use shows the complete failure of LM/Boeing rocket engineers to match the Russian Kero/Lox performance.

GW Johnson · 2015-01-22 20:21:39

I have nothing against using obsolete equipments or technologies if they serve well. (I'd just as soon still use steam locomotives for heavy loads on hills, for example.) I think it's sad we in the US must buy big kerolox engines from the Russians. "Business decisions" have really failed us in that area.

Experience shows that the best workhorse two-stage boosters use kerolox in the first stage core, and LOX-LH2 in the smaller second stage, where the lower density of LH2 doesn't hurt you, up to a stage diameter equal to the first stage. I temper that design advice with solid strap-ons, that stage off before the first stage liquid core burns out. There I went and described Atlas-5. Surprise, surprise.

The old F-1 is a bit big for that application, at 1.5-1.7 million pounds of thrust each. Maybe not too big for a real heavy lifter. It could use a little modernization in its equipment and controls, that's for sure. Although there is not much you can do about chamber pressure (the real driver for Isp). Modern kerolox chamber pressures are just higher than F-1.

GW

SpaceNut · 2015-03-22 11:37:30

Update on AR1 engine: by Aerojet Rocktdyne

3D printed components for AR1 rocket engine undergo hot-fire testing

According to Aerojet Rocketdyne, the AR1 is a 500,000 lbf (2.2 MN) thrust-class liquid oxygen/kerosene booster engine, one being developed to provide the US market with an additional rocket engine. With the political issues that surround the Russian-made RD-180, having domestically-produced engines is considered a requirement.
The injector was hot fire tested at pressures in excess of 2,000 psi (13.8 MPa), the company has stated that this represents the highest pressure hot-fire test conducted to date, especially one that was conducted during an exercise that the engine would encounter during an actual mission.
“Aerojet Rocketdyne is committed to delivering an RD-180 replacement by 2019, which is why the company is investing in the engine and inviting the Air Force, ULA, and other key stakeholders to all major reviews so that engine certification can occur in parallel,” added Cova. The company has made progress toward utilizing this technology to “print” rocket engines. Some milestones the company has met include the following:
Completion of System Requirements Review;
Full-scale single-element main injector hot-fire testing;
Subscale preburner testing;
Turbopump inducer testing.
The AR1 will serve as a backup for Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine, which is planned for use on United Launch Alliance’s Next Generation Launch Vehicle or “NGLS”.

Aerojet-Rocketdyne-AR1-rocket-engine-image-credit-Aerojet-Rocketdyne.jpg

SpaceNut · 2015-03-22 12:44:46

Reusable rocket elements will likely be part of the Next Generation Launch System (NGLS) being unveiled by United Launch Alliance

•The methane/oxygen powered 550,000 lb. thrust BE-4 developed by Blue Origin for replacement of the single Russian RD-180 in the Atlas V. Twin BE-4s will be used in the Atlas.
•A new Aerojet Rocketdyne liquid propellant engine called the AR-1 being developed as a backup to the BE-4 as well as other potential propulsion needs. It will have somewhat less thrust than a BE-4. NASA has contributed about $50 million for this engine development to help reinvigorate the sagging U. S. liquid rocket propulsion development capability.
•ULA is also leading development of the new high energy upper stage to replace the RL-10 oxygen/hydrogen line pioneered in the 1960s.

“We are going to make space so much more accessible than it ever has been before,” he said. The current cost of an Atlas-V launch is $164 million, while a Delta-IV Heavy costs $389 million.

SpaceNut · 2016-06-18 16:51:57

AR1 engine that is being designed to end use of Russian engines for national security space launches.
AR1 engine Testing Underway at NASA's Stennis Space Center focused on the delivery of an AR1 engine in 2019.
Preburner testing is the latest AR1 program milestone achieved on the AR1 program and further demonstrates that the company has consistently met every milestone laid out in its plan since the program began in 2014.

kbd512 · 2016-06-19 18:06:36

There are three primary reason the F-1B engines were not selected by NASA for use in the core stage of our new mega rocket:

Politics:

People who know nothing about rockets and everything about lining the pockets of their constituency (aka Congress) decided to reuse the hardware from the previous most unaffordable space launch vehicle (aka STS) in the next most unaffordable space launch vehicle (aka SLS). To help ensure the un-affordability of the program and drag out development for as long as possible, Congress directed NASA to completely redesign all of that STS program hardware for use in the SLS program.

NASA tried and failed at least four times (Shuttle-C, ALS, NLS, Ares V) to develop a super heavy lift rocket cargo rocket for various political and technological reasons. SLS (Ares V rehash) is merely the latest incarnation of their solution searching for a problem to solve.

Environmentalists:

The environmentalists note that LOX/LH2 is clean burning (produces water vapor), but apparently don't understand that LOX/LH2 won't get a rocket of any reasonable size off the pad without the massive thrust that the decidedly environmentally-unfriendly APCP burning boosters provide. I chalk that up to their pseudo-intellectualism (those claiming to advocate for mitigating environmental impacts from fossil fuel use who know or should know what is or is not practical, but propose impractical solutions anyway) or stunning ignorance (yapping heads who aren't qualified to fart in the presence of a real rocket scientist). The "evil" hydrocarbons, such as RP-1, give us the biggest bang for our buck when it comes to first stages for space launch vehicles.

Perfectionism:

Although the STS design was politically motivated, and that is why we used solid rocket boosters instead of LOX / RP-1 first stages (which is what NASA actually wanted to use for STS), there is another pervasive problem that drives up the cost and complexity of our launch vehicles. For whatever reason, NASA engineers constantly try to prove how clever their designs are, rather than how practical and affordable their designs are. If there's ever a simple and affordable solution to a problem that actually works, you can bet your last dollar that NASA will fund two competing designs that are neither practical nor affordable, try to make all three designs function as intended even after it's clear that some of those designs won't work, and then wind up with nothing to show for all the effort after the program is cancelled for lack of progress and/or out-of-control costs.

If SLS is not outright cancelled by the next President, it'll be a minor miracle. If it ever hits its ultimate lift capability target, that'll be a miracle without parallel.

SpaceNut · 2016-06-19 20:33:23

Rocketdyne F-1 and J-2 Rocket Engine Development and Testing Published: July 15, 2009

Five J-2 engines, with approximately 225,000 pounds of thrust each, were on the second stage of the Saturn V. A single J-2, with restart capability was on the S-IVB stage for trans lunar injection (TLI). Liquid Hydrogen was used as a fuel for its improved Specific Impulse.

And yet Nasa cancels the use of the J-2X engine, after tons of design work and testing was done....in favor of the RL-10 I think....

NASA Engine Test Reignites F1 Motor Built For Apollo Missions To Moon Published: 01/23/2013 07:18 AM EST on SPACE.com

Engineers working this month at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., are completing a series of test firings using recovered components from 40-year-old F-1 engines. The 19-foot-tall (5.8 meter) by 12-foot-wide (3.8 meter) Apollo powerhouses launched the space agency's Saturn V rockets on voyages to Earth orbit and to the moon. engineers are dissecting, refurbishing and re-firing components from the remaining F-1s to gain a better understanding of how the engine was designed and worked.

NASA Engineers Resurrect And Test Mighty F-1 Engine Gas Generator: Testing Will Aid NASA's Space Launch System Advanced Development
Jan. 14, 2013

RobertDyck · 2016-06-19 23:50:58

Apollo F-1 engine test stand demolished at Marshall Space Flight Center

A concrete and metal gantry used to test the first stage engines of the Apollo Saturn V moon rocket was demolished Friday afternoon (Nov. 30, 2012) at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

Explosive charges were used to demolish the test stand's concrete towers. Test stand 4696, located in the Marshall Space Flight Center West Test Area, had been inactive since 1969. It was used to fire single F-1 engines, and was officially known as the F-1 engine static test stand. It was much smaller than the 405 foot tall S-IC static stand that was used to test entire Saturn V rocket stages, including multiple F-1 engines.
Last year, after historic preservation activities were complete, the deconstruction of the test stand began. The Marshall Space Flight Center removed the test stand to eliminate maintenance costs and provide space in the test area for modern test facilities.

After keeping the test stand, and paying maintenance for decades, they finally demolish it. Then there's justification to use it just one year after it was demolished. I'm sure some Congressmen don't like that.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2016-06-19 23:52:58)

GW Johnson · 2016-06-20 14:08:11

Remember what I said about engineering being 40% science (that was written down), 50% art (never written down but passed-on face-to-face on the job), and 10% blind dumb luck? In production? And the art and luck factors being higher in development work?

That is exactly why this is necessary (quoted from stuff posted just above, next to last paragraph, post 13): "engineers are dissecting, refurbishing and re-firing components from the remaining F-1s to gain a better understanding of how the engine was designed and worked."

It is quite apparent that there is no one left at NASA who knows how that was done. They'd have better luck getting help at Aerojet Rocketdyne (Canoga Park, CA, I've been there several times), which is where the real smarts was located back when the F-1's were developed, and which is where the real design work was done.

Except, I bet the oldsters were fired, retired, or died before passing on their art at the end of Apollo-Soyuz Test Project at the very latest. The written records are there to learn from, but it's less than half what you need to recreate anything.

As for demolishing a facility just as a need for it surfaces, you did not expect rational thought from a super-compartmentalized government operation, did you? If you do, you will always be terribly disappointed.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-06-20 14:09:51)

SpaceNut · 2016-06-20 16:39:38

Ya about the same as paving a poor condition road to only a short time later tare it up to fix the plumbing running underground making it in an even poorer condition than when the entire process started.

Sure they played with a few pieces but the direction that they still went was toward LH2/ Lox........

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#1 2007-07-13 18:42:33

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#2 2007-07-14 00:08:02

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#3 2007-11-09 11:45:45

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#4 2012-04-20 20:34:21

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#5 2012-04-28 17:26:49

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#6 2014-03-24 18:50:29

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#7 2015-01-21 20:22:20

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#8 2015-01-21 21:31:41

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#9 2015-01-22 20:21:39

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#10 2015-03-22 11:37:30

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#11 2015-03-22 12:44:46

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#12 2016-06-18 16:51:57

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#13 2016-06-19 18:06:36

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#14 2016-06-19 20:33:23

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#15 2016-06-19 23:50:58

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#16 2016-06-20 14:08:11

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

#17 2016-06-20 16:39:38

Re: F-1 Rocket engine

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