Why Can't we Remake the Rocketdyne F1 Engine? 

The difference between knowing a recipe and knowing how to cook....

Understanding it was basically all hand built makes it even more beautiful when it lifts off.

I was at the Kennedy Space Center in the 1990's and looked over an F1 on static display. If the impeccable workmanship wasn't impressive enough, the fact that being placed outside in all the weather over the decades, the engine showed no signs of corrosion. A testament to the quality of the alloys used in its construction.

Can't believe I'm just coming across this video. Enjoyed the comments from those whose fathers worked on this remarkable engine. My Dad designed the main oxidizer valve from a blank sheet of drafting paper. It was a topic of discussion many evenings around our dinner table. We lived about a mile from the Rocketdyne facility in Canoga Park CA. He took me to an open house there once. Needless to say, I was impressed. Often he would be woken up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning by a call from the test site in Huntsville AL as questions came up about his valve. All his calculations were done with a slide rule. He didn't trust those early hand-held calculators. Lol. I have all his slide rules and technical books. He graduated high school but never went to a single day of college. Too poor. He died in May of 2012. Like this video touched on, think of all the knowledge and wisdom that was lost when this generation of rocket men and women passed away. Even though we didn't see eye to eye when I was a youth his work on the F-1 always made me proud.

I'm sure they could re-learn these skills, it's not rocket science.

I worked at Rocketdyne as a journeyman machinist, and did a lot of work on the F1, J2, & Aerospike engines. One day I was struck with the enormity of what we were doing. Rather than being just another worker drone punching the clock - I REALLY worked hard to make every part as perfect as possible and truly enjoyed every minute that I worked on these pieces of history. The F1 was, and is, a magnificent piece of equipment. A memory that I cherish to this day is when I walked into one of the large buildings - turned a corner and there before me were 21 F1 engines fully assembled, ready for shipment to Kennedy Space Center. Without a doubt, one of the most amazing sites I have ever seen. All I can say today is Go SpaceX - I still get chills watching a launch. Thank you for this video.

Btw after taking a moment to read, a lot of the comments here are amazing and inspiring, coming from the people who worked with rockets and even the Saturn 5. Thanks for all you guys did and do, truly amazing stuff!

I was amazed at the sheer scale of the rockets on the Saturn V at the Kennedy Space Centre and was in awe of the courage it would take to sit on the top of one of these things. This video gives me even more respect for the engineers who actually made this machine actually work.

I'm engineer at a swiss machine-tool manufacturer. We face the very same issue while producing spare-parts for old machines. Drawings don't tell you everything.

I lived 20 miles for the F-1 engine test stands in Huntsville, AL. A single engine test would rattle our windows 20 miles away.

It gives me great pride in knowing that my family had taken part in making the F1 engines. My mother told me she was so happy watching Grandpa and his cousin attend school and be brought forth in front of everyone as working for "NASA" and showed diagrams and the engines they worked on.

Paul: to me, one of the stunning capabilities of the old F1’s was the steerability of them. To be able to tilt and control those things to gimbal the rocket is almost beyond belief! Cheers to you and your excellent channel. 💛🙏🏼

I think its the lack of tobacco products. In every old picture of NASA you would see someone smoking or an ashtray

my buddy got hold of the blueprints of an F-1 engine and built one in his garage. Fitted it to his Chevy. We're still looking for him,

Love the new format. Quick. Simple. Idea presented is solid and well taken. As for old and handcrafted-skills lost-well-it is not surprising. However, the 40-part new version vs the 5600 complex version is still stunning. Nevertheless-it is amazing to me how smart our fathers and grandfathers are and were. We do not give them the appropriate credit and kudos and generally think far too highly of ourselves compared to them!

I had the privilege of working at Rocketdyne in the 1980’s while the SSME program was underway. Everyday I walked by the F1 engine on display outside the main entrance. A marvel to behold. Huge! Standing next to the flame bucket made you feel pretty small and to think there were 5 of those babies going off at once!

I had designed and built the machine for making the 26" Volumetric Compensators used on this Engine and I was thrilled to see them this video...

I remember my Dad working on projects for the Mercury and the Gemini programs. He was involved in in radar and guidance systems for the Agena project which was the precursor to the moon landings. He had a shop at home where he would sometimes at night fabricate rough,many times with wood, copies of different parts for some of the engineers in his group so they actually see and hold some of the parts they were designing to allow them a way to brainstorm with others on ideas on placement positions and fit to other parts. I guess today he would be considered a 3D printer!

My grandfather worked and North American Rockwall in California and also trained a few people that went to the Rocketdyne plant in Canoga Park in California as he was an engineer.

Love the short video format! Thanks for the great information and easily understandable presentation.

My father was an engineer for Rocketdyne. I remember the stories of going to the shop floor to communicate with the welders, machinists and assemblers to explain what they really needed done. Years after my father passed we found a box full of notes and drawings and communications to the people on the floor in regards to the F1...

I aim for the moon but keep hitting London -Werner von Braun

I like this new "Short Video" Format... I just wish it were longer 🤣

Very interesting, captivating and informative . I like the short quick format.

I met one of these old timers, although he worked on a stealth bomber among other things, really cool dude. It really was a different era. We're certainly improving the precision on what we produce but I doubt we're improving the people making it. He passed away last year, sad to see that generation disappearing.

One of those engineers would had been my dad. He has left us, but his memory of his achievements live on in the program. He to me was the most interesting man I ever met. After his death so many other people said the same.

It's no surprise that the missing ingredient is skilled engineers. Anymore, you can tell that we rely too heavily on technology, instead of really immersing in all aspects of design and build. I'm an aviation mechanic, and it's quite obvious the difference a generation or two has made. Even the manuals for legacy design are of a much higher quality than newer resources. The thinking that went into writing maintenance documentation was so much more thorough and I appreciate the older stuff. We were better back in those days. All around.

My dad worked at Rocketdyne as an Industrial Engineer. He worked there 29 years, starting his employment in 1955 and retiring in 1984. He passed away in 2017 at 91 years of age. My family lived in Winnetka (we called it Canoga Park back then), probably about 2 1/2 to 3 miles from the Rocketdyne facility as the crow flies. My brother and I attended Los Angeles City public schools and my mom taught English in a LAUSD middle school. Many of the men in the neighborhood I grew up in worked for Rocketdyne. It was a huge employer back in the ‘50’s and 60’s. The pay and benefits were really good and my family lived a very comfortable middle class lifestyle. The pressure on the Rocketdyne employees was pretty intense as they worked to meet the schedule that President Kennedy set to land a man on the moon and return him safely to earth by the end of the ‘60’s. My dad had to frequently work overtime and came home pretty tired and worn out most days. My dad never attended my school graduation ceremonies because it was very difficult to get time off for events like that. It didn’t bother me because that was the case for many of the dads who worked at Rocketdyne. Working in aerospace back when my dad did was the in-place to work during the space race, kind of like Silicon Valley is today. While my dad was very proud to be a part of the space program, the constant stress really got to him at times. While he wasn’t an alcoholic he probably drank more than he should have to cope with the stress. The main Rocketdyne facility where the F1 engines were built is no longer there. It was torn down about 12 years ago and is still a large vacant lot today. There have been various plans for the former Rocketdyne site such as mixed use retail and residential but nothing has happened yet. Many of the kids I grew up with had fathers who were Engineers and Scientists at Rocketdyne and were really smart themselves. I had to study pretty hard in order to keep up with these kids which was a good thing. Also with my mom being a teacher if my grades slipped there were definitely negative consequences for me.

Can I say it, can I? Can I?! "Don't make 'em like the used to."

Surely China could copy them and sell them as originals for $199.99

Brilliant format! Informative and something to think about all day in my breaks!

Rocketdyne engineer: “I’m just gonna write everything down in a bunch of comp books and stuff them into my closet, it’s not like they’re gonna need these in 60 years.” NASA engineers 60 years later:

Remember these guys were still in WWII production mode; many came from that era, it had only been 10-12 years. They brought with them the skill, the drive, and confidence.

I'm really glad you made this video. I've been asking that very question for a while now. Thanks.

There was apparently an M-1 engine developed but never used. There's one on display at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in Oregon. I'd love to see an episode about that engine.

One of the reasons for trying this shorter video format apart from being quicker to make, so i can get more videos done is that on quite a few stories there is a distinct lack of appropriate footage. This particular subject is one of them, I was going to do a longer more detailed video but when checking there was very little on the subject in a visual format, so i thought that it would be a good tryout to see how it goes for other subjects that are equally lacking in the image front and so you dont see me for minutes at a time on camera :-)

Staring a fire with bunch of sticks gets harder once you've invented matches.

I am new to your channel, i found the short length to be quite refreshing! the video was informative too, thank you!

Totally agreed, it's better just redesign from scratch. Wonderful information video, thank you!

They basically were building race cars for space. Hand made one offs. I make custom knives, we do this all the time. The process changes as we move forward because we constantly are learning to refine it.

So the rocket science industry is basically a giant computer program that no one bothered to add comments to.

Love the short format. As far as manufacturing. We manufacture a product that is from the same era. We use very different processes and techniques to do it more efficiently. I don’t necessarily think the loss of the method notes are as critical as you make it out to be. Probably the bigger problem is the lack of the why notes. When we reevaluate how a part is made we often make small design changes. Without know why certain details were made the way they were we are doomed to repeat some of the old failures.

This format length, was excellent, and the content and explanation's we're awesome 👍😎!!!

Reminds me of what I did at my first job out of university. We had to re-implement a system that used loads of custom made parts on new off-the-shelf hardware, which meant we had to do a total reverse engineering. The source code was intact, but there wasn't any documentation and the engineer who wrote almost all of it, on his own, had died a few years prior. My first job there was deciphering the main operational logic function containing a several thousand line long mess of if-then-else statements. Only way to make any sense of it was just to create a massive flow chart and a few "sub charts" to keep it from becoming too big to get comprehend. Thankfully my boss really liked it and when the company went belly up a little more than a year after I joined he gave me a good reference for my next job (had a signed contract after less than a month of looking).

Just because the Knowledge Pool for building an F-1 is gone, does not mean it could not be recreated in the same manner as it was first accomplished, by actually building one. There is no Secret Smoke lost to time forever, it's a matter of reestablishing the knowledge pool through experience. The real issue is, just how much do you want to pay to do it.

this reminds me a lot of my old job building equipment for a NASA sub contractor. I could hand someone all of the blueprints but every one of those units was unique and I had a laundry list of tips and tricks to actually make them work. it would take an enormous amount of trial and error to get one working with no help from existing staff. it really would have been easier to just give you a list of requirements and ask you to start from scratch

Like the format and the info provided. Hope you're feeling well.

Interesting that is people skills that are the missing link. Same seems to apply in other areas of life , I dabble in car restoration and finding people with the old skills to fix engines and panel beat is getting harder and harder and you basically need to teach yourself

When the first Saturn 5 rocket was launched from Cape Kennedy I was standing on top of a hangar about a mile away. BIG mistake. No one was prepared for the colossal rocket that was launched on that day. I was lucky the hangar didn't collapse. The subsequent fall-back zone for Saturn 5 launches was raised to 3 miles and the cape was absolutely out of bounds for gawkers of any stripe. The development cycle for the F-1 engine was done at a Rocketdyne facility up on top of the Santa Susanna mountains to the North of the San Fernando Valley. That development facility no longer exists and it would be extremely difficult to recreate it or even a semblance of what that place was and what it did. The container they had to keep the fuel for that engine was a giant metal ball easily 100 ft or more across. I would think it would be impossible to get a permit to even have something like that in this day and age. If that ball had ever exploded it would have taken the top of that mountain off and would have seriously impacted large chunks of greater LA. The Saturn 5 rocket was a monster never seen before or since. Good times were had by all.

5,600 parts, to 40 with the F1-B. That is an insane leap in technological progress and simplicity

Love the format, great video!

The equivalent of missing comments from software code

I use to live in Simi Valley, rocketdyne was up in the hills a few miles away. They use to always test their engines & shake the whole town. It was pretty cool. You hear the rumbling start, all the windows would shake, and a big plume if white smoke going up into the sky. Never actually saw a test. But heard n felt a lot of them. They stoped doing those tests and I miss them.

The newer F-1B is the way to go. Far less moving parts, means less could go wrong. Someone once said that, "Simplicity is the ultimate technology." Brief, but very informative video.

Very concise and informative, thank you. It also makes clear the big difference between designing and actually producing a complex system. The world over, legions of skilled labourers make it possible to bridge the gap between theory and its practical implementation. Their contribution - a precious mix of observation and clever embodiment of remedial strategies never considered during the design phase but devised on the spot while respecting the design - is rarely acknowledged, but it is crucial. Luckily, it remains preserved in the peculiar structure of - e.g. - a perfect and perfectly functional welding, like a well-preserved fossil. Exactly like the latter, it is very hard to reproduce, but it keeps telling a very interesting tale.

Here's to good welders and manual machinist and fitters who take what engineers design and help bring it to life.

I was a Project Manager / Senior Estimator for a company that produced many different mock-ups, test models, and static displays for NASA and multiple aerospace / aviation companies. I can tell you that the F-1 rocket engine was a Big Beautiful BEAST to behold. We produced several static display models of the Saturn 5 with Apollo capsule, full size, complete, and accurate to the last rivet and paint detail, with F-1 motors. One of them is at US Space and Rocket Center, Huntsville, Alabama, 367 ft tall, free standing.

Thanks for keeping it short and very informative

I enjoyed this very much. I am very good friends with one of those "old school, slide rule" engineers who actually worked on that beast from the Apollo missions and I guarantee he would wholeheartedly agree with nearly all of your comments.

An interesting outcome of all this handfitting can be seen in the steam locomotives of the warly to mid 20th century, each one (not each model, but each individual locomotive) had it's own "personality" as they were all slightly different, and parts from one couldn't just be stitched to another to make it go, they too had to be customized to fit. These personaities gave railroad engineers (operators) preferences over which locomotive they liked or didn't like.

Funny, I still have all my “Will books” from all the aircraft I worked on in Navy... all the tricks to back door the software and adjust things to make them perfect. I also worked with some Apollo era engineers that had so much knowledge, Endless stories of how things worked and the pride they had for the moon landings. Passing on your knowledge was always my greatest gift. I miss solving the impossible issues..... Fun to watch the Spacex guys barnstorming a rocket on the beach.... no fear of failure, just keep pushing ahead.

One of the best videos on youtube about the space program. Answers A question I've often thought about. Thanks!

Awesome video...thank you for making it

Skilled builders and craftsmen are a dying breed. When it comes to rocket engines it's even more so. Re-engineering the F-1 to make it simpler and likely lighter is not a bad idea. What happens next is hard to say.

Quality format: I got explanation of a known fact, applied to the way forward with SLS; quick and fact rich. I subscribed.

I much prefer the redesign. The original F1 had only one qualified welder for the nozzle getting all the bits together with consistant heat distortion. Even the original design would have been modified a few times so that the shrinkage from his welds produced the correct final bell shape. On a meter long bit of thin tubing, a continuous weld might shink it's length 8mm with one welder but 7 or 9 with someone else, or just having an off day. All helium leak free without any flaw that might crack going from liquid O2 to glowing hot in seconds. The F1 was high-end industrial art with a very select group of artists, Roketdyne's old masters if you will. Preferable to have something much less artist dependent and Rocketdyne was working that problem even then.

What fascinated me the most besides the solid rocket boosters was the turbo pumps for the main engines, the temperatures were excessive and yet these pumps work so efficiently, it was incredible sight to see an experience that we're able to pump this much fuel with the high specific impulse ratios that were needed, safely and efficiently, the srbs is another thing one mistake with the srbs it can't be solved, in some cases and Challenger God bless her crew had experienced this but it never happened with our rocket engines

Love the short video! Not for everything, but I needed a 5 minute video and this delivered.

Where I work, many very large machines and systems are still in use, continuously operational since just after 1970. We face the same problems sometimes. The men that created them are dead, and the documentation is partial or incomplete. Great video!

Personally I prefer the longer length videos 👍

I was thinking of replicating an F1 engine but now that I have watched this video I think I will just redesign it from scratch. Thanks for the info.

This term in Manufacturing is typically referred to as tribal knowledge.

My Dad was one of those craftsmen, working for Coors Porcelain company. He machined ceramic parts for all three of the NASA projects as well as other government contracts. He described the painstaking process involved in making components from rough alumina porcelain blanks. He used mechanical micrometers and had developed a "touch" with his tools so he could hold incredible tolerances. He was also very nearsighted and read his mics with his unaided eyes. I'm talking mere thousandths of an inch. Like said in this video, every part was a uniquely crafted component. It is more than just notes but rather the skill that he developed over years of experience.

Marvellous I can remember that period like yesterday hence my going into engineering, keep it going

Keep the long format for most things. The short format is cool for some things, perhaps as a brief like a side project. It seems like people are losing their attention spans. But speaking for myself I enjoy getting the most out of a documentary and you do a good job of informing your audience. Keep up the good work!

Love it! As a Fabricator/Welder I can appreciate the interaction between Engineers and craftsmen. I've run into those scenarios were what's on the print will work but it needs a bit of tweaking to really work well. Most of the time we just come up with a solution in our head and get it done. Things haven't changed, things still get done the same!

I'm a welder fabricator, I worked for the same company since I was an apprentice and i knew every job as well as the tricks i used to put jobs together bringing good old paper drawings into reality, once I'd had enough of that place I got a new job but on several occasions my old bosses called me asking questions and asking if I could come and show the current guys how to do things, I thought id push my luck a little and ask for a weeks worth of cash at my old rate just for an hour of my time and they actually paid it each time!! lol I was flush for weeks with double wages coming in.

My Grandpa worked for Rocketdyne on "The Hill" in the Santa Susana Mountains in the 50s and 60s.. He taught my dad and I everything he knew..

I took a photo of my dad next to the engine in the thumbnail!!! We stayed at my aunt’s during a short trip to Houston and we saw the Saturn V in person (in the garage, this was only like a year ago), it was breathtaking. The F1 is colossal.

I was about to comment “Just make an F-2 engine then” when you said that they made the F1B and had enough information to do so. *Sigh of relief*

When the principle is understood, it's obvious that it's easier to make a new design from scratch with modern manufacturing facilities and new materials.

Actually, we can. It's called the F-1B. Dynetics will be happy to build one for you. They did scans of NASA's museum F-1. They built a new turbo-boost pump to confirm that it was capable of 1.8 million lbs of thrust.

Very well explained, thank you!

My dad worked on these engines. Testing literally day and night for a couple years. He. Loved the job. Everyone in town worked for Rocketdyne😎 Great video!

Short video is snappy and to the point. You got all your points across and explained it concisely. Top marks and respect!👍

at 2:18 it is a myth that everything was done with slide rules. there was a lot of computer work used for the apollo but those computers (IBM 1401 and 7000 series that were the side of a room) where only used where needed. I'm sure there was some aspects of the physics that were calculated using a computer considering the highly non-linear nature of the fluid dynamics in a rocket engine

Fab video, great topic and groovy shirt.✌

When they shut down the Apollo program, I remember the astronauts talking about losing all the vendors who made the parts.

I was near Titusville, FL along the Indian River on May 14, 1973 to watch that beast launch Skylab. The power of that Saturn V first-stage was unbelievable. We were about 8 miles from the pad. Even at that distance....the sound was incredible.

Well explained and understood. I did my Apprenticeship in the 60's.

As touched on in this video, there is little point trying to build the same F1s they used back in the 60s when we can update the designs to create a more powerful and cheaper to manufacture version. It's not that we can't build one today it's that there is little point. The skills in machining and fabrication are still there but significantly enhanced with newer technologies and methods.

This reminds me of an old joke I read 20 some odd years ago. A programmer was nearing the end of his life and decided to be placed in cryo-freeze. 500 years later he is revived and the first thing he hears is, "Hi! Do you know COBOL?"

Thank you for doing this. My dad was one of those engineers : ) We still have his slide rules etc.

Gun designer here. I know the scale is a bit smaller but the same reasons apply for when people ask why can't we just make classic firearms for the people that want historical style guns. The trouble is the methods and techniques and machines and costs. Since they didn't have CNC when they needed to make a bunch of something they would make fixtures to do a particular cut or hole, basically a different vice for every operation that fit the part just right. We do this today too but the difference is because they didn't have CNC is was one op instead of now where we will use the computer to cut everything we can from a single holding of the part to reduce the fixtures. In the old days they might have 20-30 fixtures, and if it was a big factory they would even have 20-30 mills and the parts would go from mill to mill to mill with a machinist at each one or every other one and do it that way. Since the parts were able to be held differently every cut they could easily use different angles for every cut. For us that means using a 5 axis machine (half a million dollars for a good one) or making more fixtures so from maybe 3 to 4 or 5 or more, drastically increasing the setup costs. Then there is the issue of labor. The labor was much better skilled in most cases and labor was also the cheap part of manufacturing, material and machining were the expensive parts, the exact opposite of today. So a lot of guns have a bunch of tricky welds to make parts that are unable or impractical to machine, or parts need to be filed and shaped in ways a mill can't practically do to get sharp interior corners and perfect fits. Something like an M1 Garand that can be purchased surplus from most gun shops in the country that for decades was being sold off for under 50 dollars would cost about 2-2.5k new today and it would be made of inferior material with inferior craftsmanship.

"Lost the notes they took during design." That sounds a lot like the "we lost the plans" answer you hear all the time to me.

I worked in the aerospace industry for 40 years making fighter aircraft and watched as the old guys retired and took their skills with them. By the time I retired in 2012 we didn't have a single craftsman left who could form sheet metal into a complex form. Thank goodness for the custom car trade. As I watch some of those guys on TV on various car shows I am thankful that the trade is not completely dead.

Hollywood could learn a bit from this, stop re-making old movies.. lol

This to me was as amazing as actually walking on the moon itself, thanks Fran

My dad did engineering work back round that time and he said stuff made in America was "file to fit". basically you had to manually modify every part before it could be installed.

To be honest, I'd love more content from you guys, but I realize that going into every single (relevant) detail of every topic takes a lot of research. This video feels like it missed something, so I guess in other words I prefer the longer videos! Anyway thank you, and keep up the good work!