[sbradford26]

Yes those benefits can now be realized now with modern controls. Back when the Saturn V was designed the control systems necessary to manage 30 engines didn't really exist. Digital control was in it infancy and was only really implemented with a backup on the whole Apollo stack.

Trying to manage that many engines while technically possible with controls of the era (check out the N1) means your control system would be introducing reliability issues instead of adding fault tolerance through redundancy.

[capitainenemo]

Didn't the soviets give it a try? I'd swear they had a large number of engine design way back when also for fault tolerance. Ok, they didn't get it working but I'm pretty sure it wasn't due to lack of digital control... Surely they wouldn'tve even attempted it if it was impossible :)

[edit] ah. That was the N1 you referred to. Ok. So you're saying it was possible, but it introduced more failure points.. So is that why it failed...

[dotnet00]

N1 had a bunch of problems, the engines could not be fired several times, so they tested them by producing them in batches, then test firing one from the batch and assuming all engines in the batch were the same as that one. This obviously isn't how things work, so engines could just be defective from the start.

The second was, as mentioned, that the control systems of the time were not that great, so they had issues properly compensating for engine failures, causing them to cascade until too many engines were lost to get to orbit.

[ElFitz]

You also need strict QA and minimal deviation both from specs and between engines.

That was another issue the Soviets had a hard time dealing with.