NASA's Baffling Engine Problem

After President Kennedy committed to landing a man on the Moon, NASA had to start building rockets and engines much larger than anything that had ever been made before. This video looks at the combustion instability challenges that plagued the Saturn V’s F-1 engine. It also looks at how the engineers fixed this issue and the unique way it was put to the test.

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Music used in this video:
» Voyager - Ewan Cunningham
» Oceans - Bobby Renz
» Stuck In The Air - The Tower Of Light
» Marianas - Quincas Moreira
» Key To Your Heart - The Mini Vandals

Credits:
Edited by: Ewan Cunningham
Narrated by: Beau Stucki

[froschreiniger]

Placing a bomb inside a huge rocket engine and blowing it up while its on to check for instability is such a kerbal solution :D

[Argosh]

By "looked back to the v2" I assume you mean they went upstairs and asked von Braun, right?

[Fred_the_]

Engines: "explode"
USSR: Well, add a more powerful turbo-pump and use 4 combustion chambers...
USA: *B O M B*

[citizenblue]

I have heard about this combustion instability for quite a while, but never really fully understood it. This video was very insightful.

[zakariyamohamed]

The world should be humbled by how they found and solve the problem with no CAD help nor simulations

[neronim]

Air Force: "We want an engine with 1, 5 mil pounds of thrust!!!"
Rocketdyne: "We did it, here you have it"
Air Force: "So guys, what are we gonna use it for???"
Also Air Force: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[EarlHare]

BAFFLING engine problem, ah man i missed that, that was sneaky.

[ThePandaKingFTW]

Wait so the airforce just randomly commissioned a really big engine and said "Yeah we'll just find something we can do with this later" and then just scrapped it? Quality use of funding right there

[nomad]

It's amazing to imagine that only 20 years separate the 1940's and the 1960's. We tend to think that we live in times of rapid change and that it is only accelerating. But - in the time it took us to go from ICQ to WhatsApp, from home PCs to ipads and smartphones, mid 20'th century went from inventing the first long range missile to putting a man on the moon. From fighting WW2 with tanks and very basic airplanes to (relatively) affordable worldwide commercial flights on Boeing 737-100's (1964).

[zihan_a_yu]

Summary: engine unstable so they put an giant apple cutter on it.

[Tordogor]

Best technical explanation of the F1 chamber combustion instability I have ever seen.
I found this channel recently. It is a really good, no hype source of astro info!! 👍👍👍

[TristanVeerbeek]

American engineers: "Hey, can I copy your homework?"
German engineers: "Yeah, just don't make it too obvious."

[RetroPlus]

Those Germans were pretty knowledgeable when it comes to gas nozzles

[CarlosGomez-vtpk]

100% success rate! I was looking for this *exact* video. I knew about the "bomblet" testing, but I didn't know about the V2 design solution. I know the injector holes were hand drilled. Master craftsman of their age!

[grzegorzkapica]

I remember the time, when I was one of 500 people watching. Congrats man!
I find your vids to have a lot of insight. Like; I saw this vid on releas. Now I got new things out of it. Thank you!
The thing is; how genius were these engineers; they had to do most job at gut feeling. No simulations available.

[StillAliveAndKicking_]

The American moon programme was incredible. So many pieces of complex hardware had to execute flawlessly. Phenomenal numbers of people contributed to it. And yet it worked. Three men on top of a giant banger, two sent to the moon’s surface, and all returned safely.

[rodanderson]

I'm surprised that Vauhn Braun was not given credit for the "fix". Since he was then the head of Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, and had led the development of the German V2 rocket program in WWII, it seems pretty obvious who was the genius behind the design and development of the Saturn V for NASA.

[TheHelghast]

I'm an engineering student who plans to work in the private space sector, and I just discovered your channel and I just wanted to say that I love it!

[Tea_N_Crumpets]

4:09 “but the engineers weren’t fully convinced that the problem was fully fixed.”

Engineering in a nutshell.

[binaryalgorithm]

"we're going to create an explosion inside of our other explosion to test the engine stability"