Ye Olde Rocket Forum - View Single Post - Estes Space X Falcon 9 ad w/ price

Quote:

Originally Posted by tdracer

I went ahead and purchased one of the Estes Falcons - basically just to add to my 1/100th static display. It does help demonstrate just how big the Falcon 9 is - as tall as the Saturn 1B, and simply dwarfs the Gemini-Titan (that's a really cool thing about same-scale displays - it dramatically demonstrates how things have changed over the years). It is a fairly nice and detailed model (although - unlike the Saturn V and 1B - I'm not as up to speed on the intricacies of the Falcon 9 to readily spot scale errors).
The box the Falcon 9 comes in is serious overkill - probably added ~10% to the price - and yet isn't suitable for displaying the model.

Makes sense, since the Falcon 9 is basically a modern reincarnation of the Saturn I-B... if they had replaced the Saturn IB's "Cluster's last stand" of 8 Redstone size tanks surrounding a Jupiter size tank first stage with a 260 inch diameter stage using a single LOX and RP-1 tank similar to Saturn V, with the intertank, and kept using the S-IVB for the upper stage, it would have been rather similar to Falcon 9... only using 8 H-1 engines instead of 9 Merlins on the first stage, and a single hydrogen burning J-2S instead of the kerosene burning Merlin Vac engine on the Falcon 9. The liftoff thrust is similar and with a hydrogen powered upper stage the performance capability to orbit would be similar. BUT the Falcon 9 wasn't built for all-out maximum performance, it was designed for lowest-cost, particularly on the second stage which is thrown away, and for reuse on the first stage. Having a kerosene upper stage, while it hits the performance capability somewhat, is MUCH easier than messing with liquid hydrogen and reduces the size of the rocket, plus it greatly simplifies the GSE servicing the rocket and filling its propellant tanks. Plus if they wanted to switch to a hydrogen burning upper stage at some point it would give a nice performance increase due to the added specific impulse of hydrogen propellant over kerosene.