Elon Musk's Starship accidents - an analogue of the accidents of the Soviet H1 lunar rocket?

[russiafareast1972]

Look at the old newsreel photos of the Soviet H1 rocket. Why didn't she go to the moon? Very poor launch pad - top right photo. Bad gas outlets. Conclusion: poor vertical thrust of the engines. A lot of engines at the bottom of the rocket. Inconsistency. Jet anarchy. Ideal launch pads at Baikonur and Cape Canaveral: large gas outlets, a huge tunnel for exhausting engine jet gases, good vertical thrust of the rocket at launch. Huge rockets need a huge launch pad and a huge exhaust gas tunnel. Look at the bottom photos. Starship. My opinion is an analogue of H1. Very small starting table. little gas outlet, looks like a stool. But - this is my opinion.

 

[Hobbes]

In English, it's known as the N-1.

The N-1 launch pad was fine. None of the launch failures were caused by the construction of the pad. As a rough approximation, the cross-section of the exhaust tunnels is 3 times that of the rocket, which is pretty similar to what's used at Cape Canaveral or Kourou.

Starship has no exhaust tunnels at all, so its exhaust cross-section is even bigger.
The accidents during tests are mostly due to the complex design of the engines: the timing during startup is critical. Having multiple engines to start makes it more difficult.

 

[russiafareast1972]

Thanks for the professional advice. Why did I raise the hypothesis of gas outlets? Our Russian books and scientific publications wrote about it. I read the memoirs of our Russian rocket scientists, they criticized the project leaders - Glushko and Mishin - for the poor design of the launch pad and especially for the gas outlets. Perhaps today the situation has changed.

 

[sferrin]

None of the Starship "accidents" were a result of the design of the launch pad.

 

[OldManJoe]

Remember that only the upper stage of the launch stack has been tested. The first stage is a different beast altogether. I can't begin to imagine how they're going to get all 33 (!) raptor engines running perfectly.

Fingers crossed...

 

[Dragon029]

None of the Starship "accidents" were a result of the design of the launch pad.

One minor exception being the time that the martyte coating of the suborbital test pad spalled / shattered and damaged SN8's engine bay.

Look at the old newsreel photos of the Soviet H1 rocket. Why didn't she go to the moon? Very poor launch pad - top right photo. Bad gas outlets. Conclusion: poor vertical thrust of the engines. A lot of engines at the bottom of the rocket. Inconsistency. Jet anarchy.

Starship / Super Heavy may share some similarities with N1, but unlike with N1, SpaceX are able perform static fire testing the Raptor engines on Starship and its booster, enabling them to identify plumbing, etc issues with the system before trying to launch a fully fueled vehicle. Plus there's the whole thing of having decades of lessons learned, 21st-century computer-aided engineering tools, etc.

 

[publiusr]

Musk embraces fail fast.
In the USSR…too many Chief Designers were pulling in all different directions. Outside of Houbolt, Von Braun had the power Glushko had after he, too became the sole power in charge..why both Saturn and Energia did well.

Elon is likewise “the man.”

SuperHeavy and N-1 just have a lot of engines—-apart from that, they have nothing in common.