The official explanation is that it's essentially a lost art, and that the existing blueprints are insufficiently detailed to actually build them again.
An analogy that I've read is "staring a fire with a bunch of sticks gets harder once you've invented lighters." It makes sense to me that older technologies would be lost to the ages once advances make them obsolete, but in this case the F-1 engines remain to this date the most advanced and powerful piece of rocket technology ever put into operational status. It's as if NASA forgot how to make lighters because they were content with using sticks.
Rocket
Year
Thrust (MN)
Saturn 1B
1966
7
Saturn V
1969
40
Falcon Heavy
2018
15
NASA SLS Block 1
Planned (Not Operational)
39
Edit: I was going to look up more info here but Google Translate no longer works on this page for me for some reason. Can any other comrade get it to work? It's fucking strange because I swear to god it used to work for me. Now it just says "oops! Technical difficulties." I can translate text excerpts but it won't do the whole web page.
Edit2: I got the translation working with a browser extension.
Your video says they did create an equivalently powerful liquid fuel engine, though. Less "We couldn't re-make it" and more "We looked at this hand made hand fitted bespoke grandfather clock manufactured by a guildmaster in Prague in 1845 and we built something that works the exact same way but uses modern construction and design principles."
Like, if you wanted to build a 1953 Chevy Corvette obviously the old tools and dies and assembly lines are gone, but you could build a frame and an engine and body and so on using modern techniques and it would look the same and do the same thing.
Your video says they did create an equivalently powerful liquid fuel engine
That would be the F-1B engines for the SLS rocket that I included in my table. They have never been built or tested, much less used.
The Soviets built and tested an equivalently powerful engine for their N1 rocket in the 1960s, but it failed. Creating a design is no guarantee of success.
The official explanation is that it's essentially a lost art, and that the existing blueprints are insufficiently detailed to actually build them again.
An analogy that I've read is "staring a fire with a bunch of sticks gets harder once you've invented lighters." It makes sense to me that older technologies would be lost to the ages once advances make them obsolete, but in this case the F-1 engines remain to this date the most advanced and powerful piece of rocket technology ever put into operational status. It's as if NASA forgot how to make lighters because they were content with using sticks.
Edit: I was going to look up more info here but Google Translate no longer works on this page for me for some reason. Can any other comrade get it to work? It's fucking strange because I swear to god it used to work for me. Now it just says "oops! Technical difficulties." I can translate text excerpts but it won't do the whole web page.
Edit2: I got the translation working with a browser extension.
Your video says they did create an equivalently powerful liquid fuel engine, though. Less "We couldn't re-make it" and more "We looked at this hand made hand fitted bespoke grandfather clock manufactured by a guildmaster in Prague in 1845 and we built something that works the exact same way but uses modern construction and design principles."
Like, if you wanted to build a 1953 Chevy Corvette obviously the old tools and dies and assembly lines are gone, but you could build a frame and an engine and body and so on using modern techniques and it would look the same and do the same thing.
That would be the F-1B engines for the SLS rocket that I included in my table. They have never been built or tested, much less used.
The Soviets built and tested an equivalently powerful engine for their N1 rocket in the 1960s, but it failed. Creating a design is no guarantee of success.