Comments by "Scott Tovey" (@scotttovey) on "Curious Droid"
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The description you gave on the building of those rocket engines matches precisely the same technique that watchmakers used to use before Eli Terry, an American clock maker applied ingenuity and developed techniques for mass producing clocks at an affordable rate. He pretty much laid the foundations of modern day clock making. Here's a wiki page on the subject.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Terry
The old adage: if you forget history, you're bound to repeat the same mistakes applies to this engine. While it is understandable that the builders had to use specialized skills to get the engines running, the fact that no one followed through and made jigs and aids to build repeatable interchangeable parts shows the idiocy of the egalitarian mindset of the rocket scientists of the day.
While NASA engineers may not be able to build the Rocketdyne F1 Engine, a man with both the skill set of the 190's engineers and the skill set that Eli Terry had, could not only remake the engine, he would also figure out how to make repeatable mass produced parts that are interchangeable bring the cost of the production down further than it's original forbear.
It's not that they cannot remake it; it's that they don't want to put the time, money and expense into building a single engine that would be learned from, and from which successive engines could then be mass produced.
Fortunately for the clock industry, they were blessed with a forward thinking clock maker that could envision lower cost, mass produced clocks that had interchangeable parts that did not need the skills of a master clock maker to repair.
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