The Engines That Came In From The Cold - And how The NK-33/RD-180 Came To The USA
Matthew Travis2 HN recommenders · 2014–2021
458K views · documentary · evergreen · Uploaded 2014-05-07
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.
HN recommends it as a fascinating history of Soviet staged-combustion engines and why they stayed in use in American rockets.
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4 comments from Hacker News
These engines were talked about in the documentary *The Engines That Came In From The Cold" [VIDEO] I watched it on netflix myself. Fascinating stuff.
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: [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] [VIDEO]
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 be the only bus on the route, aside from NRO launches and other um..stuff Indeed, the Soviets had a completely parallel semiconductor and electronics industry as well. I don't know for certain but it was undoubtedly lagging western developments by a large margin. Nonetheless, the Soviets had some very interesting developments of their own, such as the Kola superdeep borehole. It is all terribly fascinating. [0] [LINK] [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]