>>10849606>>10849574Interesting to think about what could have been if America continued with the bigger engine = better rocket philosophy. A single M1 on the Saturn IV 2nd stage would produce 130% the thrust of the cluster of 5 J-2 engines used on the actual stage. That means they could have stretched the tanks by that 30% to get the same initial TWR, resulting in a much bigger 2nd stage that also had slightly better Isp (428 vs 421). Adjust the first stage to have 6 F-1 engines instead of 5, or go full Nova and jack it up to 8 F-1 engines, and you'd have a rocket comfortably capable of direct-ascent Moon missions. Hell, why not go full retard and have a 16 meter wide core stage with 2 M-1 engines assisted by two liquid fuel strap-on boosters with 5 F-1 engines on each booster?
Also, when the iron curtain came down and American scientists were able to have a look at the oxygen rich staged combustion engines Russia had developed, they should have taken that technology and married it to their giant-as-fuck engine experience and made a single-chamber version of the RD-170, and to add to that they should have done a huge oxygen-rich staged combustion hydrolox engine, too. Call them the F-2 and M-2 engines and build a fuckoff LARGE rocket for NASA, and a couple smaller rockets for the commercial sector (like Atlas V and Delta IV, but thiccer).
