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Russell Borogove
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According to Henry Spencer on this yarchive.net posting:

almost any regeneratively-cooled liquid rocket engine is reusable, even if it was built for expendable vehicles. The design requirement for the F-1 was 20 starts and 2250s of firing; as part of the test program, six of them accumulated over 5000s each.

That design requirement would allow for 15 full-length Saturn V first-stage burns. Between-flight cleanup might be more difficult and expensive than the Merlin since it wasn't designed specifically for reuse, and the engines are individually much larger and thus more expensive to handle, but it would have been feasible.

I can't find a reference now, but there was a proposal for a Saturn V derived booster to have the four outer engines of the first stage drop off partway through the first-stage burn to reduce weight once enough fuel had burned off. Those could have been parachute-recovered, refurbished, and reused.

According to Henry Spencer on this yarchive.net posting:

almost any regeneratively-cooled liquid rocket engine is reusable, even if it was built for expendable vehicles. The design requirement for the F-1 was 20 starts and 2250s of firing; as part of the test program, six of them accumulated over 5000s each.

That design requirement would allow for 15 full-length Saturn V first-stage burns. Between-flight cleanup might be more difficult and expensive than the Merlin since it wasn't designed specifically for reuse, and the engines are individually much larger and thus more expensive to handle, but it would have been feasible.

According to Henry Spencer on this yarchive.net posting:

almost any regeneratively-cooled liquid rocket engine is reusable, even if it was built for expendable vehicles. The design requirement for the F-1 was 20 starts and 2250s of firing; as part of the test program, six of them accumulated over 5000s each.

That design requirement would allow for 15 full-length Saturn V first-stage burns. Between-flight cleanup might be more difficult and expensive than the Merlin since it wasn't designed specifically for reuse, and the engines are individually much larger and thus more expensive to handle, but it would have been feasible.

I can't find a reference now, but there was a proposal for a Saturn V derived booster to have the four outer engines of the first stage drop off partway through the first-stage burn to reduce weight once enough fuel had burned off. Those could have been parachute-recovered, refurbished, and reused.

Source Link
Russell Borogove
  • 171.9k
  • 14
  • 606
  • 714

According to Henry Spencer on this yarchive.net posting:

almost any regeneratively-cooled liquid rocket engine is reusable, even if it was built for expendable vehicles. The design requirement for the F-1 was 20 starts and 2250s of firing; as part of the test program, six of them accumulated over 5000s each.

That design requirement would allow for 15 full-length Saturn V first-stage burns. Between-flight cleanup might be more difficult and expensive than the Merlin since it wasn't designed specifically for reuse, and the engines are individually much larger and thus more expensive to handle, but it would have been feasible.