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What's really dreading for me, is that the first launch showed, that the problem of synchronous work of many engines, which doomed N1[0], was not solved. SpaceX knew about it from the start and placed it's bet on 50 years of technological advances. I don't want to think about the scenario where that bet is lost.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket)



Falcon Heavy has 27 engines, Starship 33. Its not that different. And if anything Starship has a simpler engine configuration. This is not some unsolvable problem.


Falcon Heavy has 3 packs of 9 engines, each pack is thoroughly tested. They can treat the whole package as 3 sources of thrust, manipulating them as a one (which they actually do). Every booster has its own fuel tanks, lines and so on.

Also, I don't remember a single engine failure during Falcon Heavy launches. Today we had 8 (?) of them.


Falcon Heavy as complete system is still far more complex. You still need to coordinate all these cores. There is a reason every designer goes to single core as systems grow larger. SpaceX actually had initially planned to do a very large 3 core and then rejected it.

And Falcon Heavy was building on 10 years of Falcon 9 knowlage and an incredibly reliable engine.

Falcon Heavy was launching from a perfectly designed launch pad that didn't throw up huge chunks of debris everywhere.

Its incredibly that people are way to fast to jump to doomsday conclusion from one test.




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