Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ihlpl!knudsen
From: knudsen@ihlpl.ATT.COM (Knudsen)
Newsgroups: sci.space.shuttle
Subject: Re: Soviet shuttle
Summary: RUssian rockets all like that?
Message-ID: <7271@ihlpl.ATT.COM>
Date: 18 Oct 88 19:19:59 GMT
References: <1988Oct14.170639.1828@utzoo.uucp> <1127@cfa237.cfa250.harvard.edu>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories - Naperville, Illinois
Lines: 21

Seems to me that all the big Russian launchers have been built
as a bundle of 4 or 5 rockets tapered into a central core.
Whether that shape has anything to do with the tanking,
or whether it's just a more streamlined version of our Saturn
1st stage (where we had a solid cylindrical tank setup over
the motors), I don't know.

American esthetics have always favored a straight cylinder,
with short conical joints to narrower upper stages.
The Soviets have used a form-follows-function approach.

BTW, if those bundled Red rockets really did have separate tanks,
does that buy anything in reliability or weight?  Any advantage
in each engine sucking on a separate tank?  I can see some
structural advantages in the RUssian design.
Also simplicity if each section was really a stock small booster,
and they were just bolted together.
-- 
Mike Knudsen  Bell Labs(AT&T)   att!ihlpl!knudsen
"Lawyers are like handguns and nuclear bombs.  Nobody likes them,
but the other guy's got one, so I better get one too."