mlorrey - 5/6/2006 4:22 PMKeep in mind that the US was perpetually a decade ahead of Russia on computer design, and until the 1980's, US chip makers didn't produce significant quantities overseas. I recall seeing articles in Aviation Leak of captured Soviet I/Cs with photos of the chip design. If Glushko was a decade behind NASA in 1965 in computing power, there is no way they had the computing power to do the necessary CFD and thermodynamic calcs.
Propforce - 7/6/2006 7:01 PMBut one thing they were not able to solve was the issue of combustion instability. But why? Their mathematicians were just as good, if not better, than ours. Their budget for hardware testing, blow-up, and re-test was far more than ours. So why couldn't they solve the issue of HC combustion instability issue whereas we could?
It is a good question, could the RD-17x and RD-180 be downrated for significantly cheaper manufacturing techniques and better reliability?
The main reason why the N1 failed to do the same job as the Saturn V is because literally ten times as much was spent on the Saturn V to ground test and analyse the daylights out of it.
aftercolumbia - 9/6/2006 12:39 AMBlow up four times in a row was a single bogey back in the late fifties for both sides. Atlas has its share of explosions, and there is one other booster to fail four launches in a row: the Atlas-Able Star