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A fully stacked Starship was rolled to the pad this week for testing. The byline caught my eye, though (emphasis mine)

SpaceX moves a massive rocket with 33 engines to its launch pad for tests
No rocket with this many engines has ever successfully launched.

The "successfully launched" part is a clear nod to the failed Soviet N1 rocket, which had 42 engines (30 + 8 + 4) and went 0 for 4 in launch attempts.

What craft currently holds the "most engines successfully launched" record as of now?

Machavity
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  • Do attitude control jets count as rocket engines? – Organic Marble Jun 28 '22 at 14:10
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    @OrganicMarble Vertical thrust engines only. I know the RCS could technically count, but the number of the engines on the bottom are the ones doing the actual work. – Machavity Jun 28 '22 at 14:18
  • @OrganicMarble in the spirit of the question I would say no. Engines that provide substantial on-axis thrust. A payload of 50 satellites capable of putting themselves into final orbit doesn't count for 50 either. – hobbs Jun 28 '22 at 14:18
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    My money is on Falcon Heavy, it has a moderately large number of engines on a moderately large number of simultaneously ignited boosters. There may be single boosters that have more than 9 engines and vehicle designs that have more than three boosters, but I think the combination of 27 engines simultaneously running (28 egnines in total if you count the second stage) is fairly high. – Jörg W Mittag Jun 28 '22 at 15:32
  • Possible duplicate of: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/5402/other-than-then-n-1-30-engines-has-there-been-a-single-stage-of-a-rocket-with – Dan Hanson Jun 30 '22 at 00:27
  • In short, if we sre counting side boosters, it would be Falcon Heavy with 27 engines going at once. If we are counting failed rockets, the Soviet N1 had a first stage with 30. On a single first stage with no boosters, The Falcon 9 and thr Electron rocket both have 9. – Dan Hanson Jun 30 '22 at 00:30
  • @DanHanson Close, but this is counting engines for all stages, not just one. – Machavity Jun 30 '22 at 01:07

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