No idea, but there are lots of regenerative cooling passages in those bells...
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HankLloydRight
No Roads
I was googling around yesterday and found a SpaceX video about FH from, I think 2012. It had a little demo video where the two side boosters had the nine merlin engines arranged in a 3x3 square grid pattern.
I wonder when and why they found the circular 8 pattern with one in the middle to be a better design.
The article also talked about how the side booster tanks were going to cross-feed the center booster to maximize the fuel in the center booster until it's needed (and the side boosters would run out faster and deploy earlier). They also obviously scrapped that design.
I wonder when and why they found the circular 8 pattern with one in the middle to be a better design.
The article also talked about how the side booster tanks were going to cross-feed the center booster to maximize the fuel in the center booster until it's needed (and the side boosters would run out faster and deploy earlier). They also obviously scrapped that design.
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destructure00
Active Member
Falcon 9 v1.1 - Wikipedia
"The v1.1 booster version arranges the engines in a structural form SpaceX calls Octaweb, aimed at streamlining the manufacturing process.[19] Later v1.1 vehicles include four extensible landing legs,[20] used in the controlled-descent test program.[21][22]
Following the first launch of the Falcon 9 v1.1 in September 2013..."
Scott was joking. Really.
The F9 first stage is about 44m tall, slightly taller than the imaginary sign that Scott showed in his video.
The 3x3 was the first Falcon 9 (v1.0) with Merlin 1C engines. SpaceX quickly determined that 3x3 design meant they had to have a number of different engine bays and make the engines in different patterns adding to cost and build time. The octaweb allowed for all the engines to be identical except (maybe) the center engine The engine bays are also an identical pie piece for the eight outer engines. Falcon 9 v1.0 had five launches, all for NASA. Falcon 9 v1.1 with the octaweb launched on September 29th 2013 on the first commercial launch for F9.
Elon is always thinking ahead. Which is why he was already envisioning a three core Falcon Heavy as early as 2004-2005. The rocket was first showcased in April 2011 after the first two F9 v1.0 launches. SpaceX sold a number of FH launches to customers back then. F9 v1.0 wasn't very powerful compared to the v1.1 with Merlin 1D engines. That is why FH was delayed for so many years and eventually the F9 improved so much (v1.2 Full Thrust with superchilled fuel) it exceeded the launch parameters of the original FH concept. So in 2017, SpaceX began launching those heavy GTO satellites originally intended for FH v1.0 on F9's in expendable mode. Block 5 F9's are now powerful enough to even recover the booster with super heavy GTO satellites. Arabsat opted to wait for the FH and gained a significantly improved boost to GTO over sticking with a F9.
The crossfeed was dropped early on because it was too complex and added potential issues. SpaceX figured out they could achieve the same results by throttling the various cores at various times during the launch. Which is what they do.
The only number spoken about for the price of a Merlin is a million each. That number was from years ago and lots of things have changed since then. I expect Merlins got cheaper with mass production but more complex. So I expect that the million dollar price is pretty accurate.
This is what I found about titanium corrosion:
Titanium - Corrosion by Water
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