I find it hilarious that in the West, they have relentlessly ridiculed the Soviet N-1 for having too many engines and needing to perform what was essentially destructive testing in order to develop the N-1 stack, ie 1960s computational resources could not model the complexities of the engines, fluid dynamics or vibrational modes of the stack in flight, or the hydraulic hammer loadings on its complex piping systems.

They held up this approach as evidence of Soviet backwardness and technological inferiorty, but now that US exceptionalism is personified in the form of SpaceX, these assessments have been dumped and SpaceX does exactly the same except its all presented to the braindead public as a new and "innovative" methodology that breaks with the "old fashioned" and "inefficient" and "bureaucratic culture" of government agencies like NASA.  

#info #industry