Does (/will) the Falcon Heavy count as a LEGO rocket?
Is SLS a "LEGO rocket"?
Quote from: Joffan on 07/10/2017 10:29 pmDoes (/will) the Falcon Heavy count as a LEGO rocket? I always thought Jim's LEGO analogy was meant to discourage the idea of taking existing rocket components (stages) that were not originally designed to go together and suggesting that one could use them together relatively easily and at lower cost. Most of the "Good LEGO rockets" had at least some idea that the parts could be combined as part of the design concept for at least one stage.Falcon Heavy has been a design concept from very early on, so undoubtedly many F9 engineering decisions were made with that goal in mind, so not really LEGOs as originally analogized. Putting an Agena or Centaur US on a FH would be... odd.
What if you used a Centaur upper stage on a Falcon 9. Would that improve the F9 capabilities? Maybe not to LEO, but GEO, or GSO?
Does (/will) the Falcon Heavy count as a LEGO rocket? As Jim observes, we're never talking about zero modifications to "clip the parts together", but it seems that SpaceX must be relatively close to that situation by using recovered first stages for the side boosters.
How does the Saturn 1B fit in here? Is it a LEGO rocket, what with the Saturn V bits in the second stage (S-IVB and Saturn V instrument unit, as well as Apollo CSM) and the Redstone and Jupiter tanks in the first stage?
Also instructive in this thread are earlier comments made over the years by NSF posters about adding solid and/or liquid boosters; different load and thrust paths, for which a core would have to be significantly redesigned, to the point of being a new rocket. Here horizontal processing also introduces new problems, as does any TLE-like interfaces which have to carry more load. Same goes for the core.Also, the type of ' why not cluster 2-3-4-5-6-7-8 boosters together' - without regard for the same load paths. Or, further away from the 'would it achieve lift-off' kind of questions, introducing impossibilities - or total rework - of all ground processing, erecting of the launcher, GSE / tower redesign, flame trench/ pad rework, etc.These, and the other examples of a thread, really drive home that a rocket can't be seen apart from it's associated GSE, processing, vertical/horizontal integration, launch pad, even company capabilities (SpaceX and SRB's, hello). It really is a system.Quote from: spacenut on 07/11/2017 11:40 amWhat if you used a Centaur upper stage on a Falcon 9. Would that improve the F9 capabilities? Maybe not to LEO, but GEO, or GSO? To pre-empt this sort of question is exactly why this thread is created. Rockets are not like LEGO elements.
Quote from: Jim on 07/10/2017 05:28 pmHere are examples of bad "LEGO rockets" (rockets pieced together out of other existing elements).I respectfully disagree. Thor-Delta was equally "bad" by this definition, since it consisted of stages cobbled together from Thor and Vanguard. The difference was simply that Thor-Delta was successful while Juno II and Thor-Able suffered multiple failures. Juno II also had its successes. It gave the U.S. its first heliocentric satellite (Pioneer 4), and orbited three additional Explorer satellites. I see it as a useful machine for its time. http://www.spacelaunchreport.com/jupiter5.html
Here are examples of bad "LEGO rockets" (rockets pieced together out of other existing elements).
Where would Scout fit in the "Good LEGO" or "Bad LEGO" philosophy?