Yes, latest Sport Rocketry has a great photo of a rocket with 52x Estes E motors. I believe there were a couple build photos on the forum somewhere as well. The record is much higher, though; I believe it was a boat load of Cs.
That is distressing to hear.
33 motors is amateur hour in the field of model rockets.
It seems to me, obviously a booster noob, that Elon Musk is pushing the envelope hard by launching a 33 engine booster for human payloads to the Moon, Mars and potentially beyond. Have rockets with human payloads ever had so many as 33 engines? What is the maximum to date?
The ill-fated N1 had 30 engines in the first stage, 8 in the second, and 4 in the third. It was intended to take humans to the moon, but never got (very far) off the launch pad. Of the much-smaller family of successful rockets, Soyuz has 20 main engines, but it also has a few extra smaller nozzles. I'm not sure if those are steering, propulsion, or what. If you counted them as propulsion, you get up to 32.
To be really pedantic about it, the RD-107 engine in the Soyuz has one set of pumps feeding four combustion chambers and nozzles (and two verniers in some cases.) So by some reckonings the Soyuz first stage only has five "engines". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RD-107
Well, maybe 33 is a magic or sacred Masonic number or something.
However, I'm dubious it's going work for 33 Raptor engines. But since the new Boeing heavy lift booster is so many years behind schedule, maybe Elon will get to the Moon first, manned or not. The Chinese are going for it, too. But I'm afraid the Moon is too dusty for spacesuits and equipment to operate without frequent and effective cleaning, according to Apollo results.
Why do the Russians have to be so weird?
Pedantry noted and appreciated. Note to self: start "engine vs. motor" style pedantry thread inviting arguments on whether it's the combustion chamber/nozzle that makes it an engine or the pump set. See if it can make it past one page before getting shut down due to namecalling. /threadjack
Whatever else happens, I think it's highly likely that they will make new, exciting, and somewhat explosive discoveries about operating that many engines close together. Noise, vibration, and resonance are extremely weird sciences that bite very hard when provoked.Well, maybe 33 is a magic or sacred Masonic number or something.
Interesting question. This single-pump multiple-nozzle configuration shows up many times (the RD-180 in the Atlas V is the same way, one pump/two nozzles) but I don't think any US engine design has ever done it. Having more pumps has potential redundancy advantages, but usually rockets don't have one-engine-out capability and if one pump fails, it often destroys the rocket anyway. So you can sort of see the Russian point of view.
This is not pedantic. The Soyuz rocket no more has twenty engines than a car with four wheels has four engines. The outputs are not the engines; the turbomachinery driving those outputs are the engines, therefore the Soyuz rocket has five engines.
