Didn't an N1 fail that way, just kept on shutting down engines to balance it until it could no longer lift itself over the lithosphere?
1. I addresses propellant issues before - this is an optimization issue - one of the affects of losing an engine is less efficient use of propellant, and you need to allocate margin for it. 2. And again - where is the counter-argument? This is still the same pattern of discussion. You're just shooting things down, but not bringing anything to the table to argue the other way.
...The vehicle is only design for nominal conditions (3 sigma)...
Quote from: Jim on 02/22/2011 08:34 pm...The vehicle is only design for nominal conditions (3 sigma)...Why do you equate nominal to three standard deviations? Is this a standard? As an econometrist this seems like a lot of variance. Unless you mean 99.7% reliability.
I'm thinking cost savings is the single major driver from SpaceX for combining the 2 COTS flights and potentially moving the CRS schedule slightly to the left is just a bonus at which NASA will or will not bite - we'll see.
<snip>Maybe SpaceX is concerned about ramping up their flight rate?<snip>
* Warning: speculation ahead *9+9+5 Merlin 1d engines should produce about 1230 tons liftoff thrust. So it could get off the ground, albeit slowly.
Also keep in mind that Falcon 9 Heavy will probably be migrating from 27 Merlin 1s to 3 Merlin 2s.