Why Can't we Remake the Rocketdyne F1 Engine?

As we advance our technology ever forward you would think that remaking a
50-year old design should be easy but things are not quite as simple as they
first seem.

When the Space Launch System or the SLS was in development NASA ran the advanced booster competition to find a new booster system and two of the three entries used liquid fuel engines. 





Liquid fuel boosters would be safer and could be shut down in the event of a problem unlike  the solid rocket boosters which cant. However unlike the space shuttle the new boosters  would be single-use only and would burn up when they fell back to earth but which liquid fuel engines would be powerful enough there really aren't any massive engines in use today. 



The boosters could use four same modified RS-25D the engines those left
over from a space shuttle program which would also be used the SLS's main core stage but that will be very wasteful of a complex expensive and yet highly
efficient engine. 
Now we've already had an engine capable of doing the job, the mighty Rocketdyne F-1  the huge engines which took men to the moon with the Apollo program but they haven't  been built since the 1960s. 

(Left )Russian made RD-170,the world's most powerful multi-combustion chambered liquid-fuel rocket engine. (Right) Wernher von Braun with the F-1 engines of the Saturn V first stage at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center.
The F-1 engines were not only extremely powerful but they were also simple which
meant they were cheap enough to be disposable so why don't we just remake them. Now there is a common myth which says NASA lost or threw away the blueprints which of course is complete rubbish every design document ever created for the Apollo program is still available but if it was just a case of wheeling out old designs they would have done that years ago.
F-1 rocket engine components.
No the problem is not the design but it's for way in which the world has moved on since the engineers first created those F-1 engines back in the 1960s. 
When a group of present-day rocket engineers looked at how they could recreate the iconic  F-1 engines they soon realized just how differently things were done some 50 years ago when there was no computer-aided design just slide rules and trial and error testing. 
F-1 engines being stored in the F-1 Engine Preparation Shop.
Components were designed, built and then tested and then often modified before being used. Complex engines sub assemblies were welded together from sometimes hundreds of smaller parts with skilled welders taking sometimes a day to complete one complex world. 
Although they had the original blueprints what they found that
was missing was the notes made by the engineers as they effectively
handcrafted every engine, each one slightly different with its own quirks
and foibles. 

Test firing of an F-1 engine at Edwards Air Force Base.
The original builders of the F-1 engines were highly skilled engineers,
welders and fitters they did almost everything by hand because often that
was the only way to do it back then and in the rush to meet deadlines they kept
many of the tricks that they used to get things to work and go together in their
heads or scribbled down on scraps of paper long since lost. 
Roll on 50 years and all of those skilled people have long since retired and many have passed away taking their skills and knowledge with them. With the advent of modern manufacturing techniques many of those skills are no longer in use and few people today have them so faced with 50-year old blueprints we find we just don't have the people with the skills that can make them in the same way anymore.
Saturn V was powered by five Rocketdyne F-1 engines during its first stage.
As of 2019, the Saturn V remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful (highest total impulse) rocket ever brought to operational status, and holds records for the heaviest payload launched and largest payload capacity to low Earth orbit (LEO) of 140,000 kg
By detailed examination of the remaining F-1 engines from museums and storage
our new  engineers did discover enough to create a new F-1B engine should it ever be built. 
The chart Dynetics had on hand at the gas generator test, showing major differences between the F-1 and the proposed F-1B.


Using modern computer modeling and manufacturing techniques the new engine could not only be more efficient it would be just as powerful as the uprated but unflown F-1A at 1.8 million pounds of thrust but more importantly it would reduce the number of manufactured parts from some 5,600 to just 40 and increase its reliability and decrease costs in the process. 
Although in the end NASA selected the solid rocket boosters for the SLS, this
exercise  proved that it's sometimes easier to redesign something from scratch than it is to try and remake the past. So what do you think of remaking the F-1 engines? Leave a comment below.

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