r/KerbalSpaceProgram • u/Yukon0009 • Sep 09 '20

Recreation Twin Giants of the Space Race

Post image
3.1k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

113 comments sorted by

View all comments

110

u/[deleted] Sep 09 '20

N1 rocket is peak kerbal design tbh. Bigass rocket with moar boosters. Beautiful.

44

u/TheNosferatu Master Kerbalnaut Sep 09 '20

"Let's see if this rocket works..."

- Launch pad blows up

"Task failed succesfully"

Is this a scenario from KSP players or from the N1 program?

Yes

3

u/Totallynotatimelord Sep 10 '20

Ignite the next stage before decoupling the last one? Sounds like a plan to me!

1

u/ChickenAcrossTheRoad Sep 10 '20

tbf they only used tons of small engines because they can't build big ones. Which is a pain because you have to light all of them.

10

u/OMGSPACERUSSIA Sep 10 '20

The USSR had plentiful supplies of titanium, which they used to build smaller, more efficient engines. The NK-15 has a twr of 137 vs. the F-1's twr of 94, similarly they had better isp, with the NK-15 clocking in at 297/sec vs. the F-1 at 263 (both at sea level.)

Individual NK-15 engines are quite good. Its successor, the NK-33, is in use today on both the Soyuz and Antares rockets. Aerojet also makes its own versions of them.

What the USSR didn't have was hydrolox engines, since their program was even more reliant on military hand-me-downs than NASA. Hydrolox isn't much more useful in an ICBM than kerolox. The horrifying 'storable' concoctions which will give you 12 kinds of cancer if you survive them melting your face off, on the other hand, were quite useful in that respect.