The Engines That Came In From The Cold - And how The NK-33/RD-180 Came To The USA
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it as a fascinating history of Soviet staged-combustion engines and why they stayed in use in American rockets.
What it is
A Channel 4 Equinox documentary on the NK-33 engines built for the Soviet N1 moon rocket and how they ended up in the USA. It includes rare footage and interviews with veterans of the early Soviet space program.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2014 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Recommends ianstallings · 2014-10 · on “Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes after liftoff”
These engines were talked about in the documentary *The Engines That Came In From The Cold" [this video] I watched it on netflix myself. Fascinating stuff.
Recommends cartoonworld · 2021-06 · on “U.S. senators propose 25% tax credit for semiconductor manufacturing”
Its interesting to me that while in the US, we were spearheading the computer revolution with our cutting edge semiconductor industry, Soviet rocket designs remain pretty much unsurpassed to this day.[0] There's a cool documentary called "The Engines That Came In From The Cold" (available on youtube[1]) and if you have a Netflix subscription, I recommend the documentary "Cosmodrome" (2008)[2] which is about the history of the Soviet space program and these engines. I'm sure you're aware that the US Space program has been reliant on ex-Soviet heavy lift vehicles for decades more or less. Especially, since the Space Shuttle program was canned, if it weren't for SpaceX, the Russian lift would b
Cites hindsightbias · 2014-10 · on “Antares rocket explosion: The question of using decades-old Soviet engines”
The NK-33 may be old, but it offers equal or superior performance to anything made in the US. Another engine, the RD-180 is used in the Atlas. US industries have the rights to manufacture, but want $800M and 4 years to build it or create a new engine. That tells you the state of US tech. [LINK] Video on Russian/Ukranian engines: [this video]
Cites jcun4128 · 2020-08 · on “SpaceX test flight of Starship SN-5 [video]”
yeah that's possible those are the ones, I just remember seeing some documentary about finding these Russian rocket engines that were hidden away to protect them from being destroyed I think edit: oh it's NK33/RD180 [0] [0] [this video]