Reskinned Engines and Real World Analogs

[Aegolius13]

So, as everybody probably knows, Squad reskinned the Spark, Terrier and Poodle engines in 1.6.  This seems to be part of an overall trend of making parts look more realistic, including larger engine bells for the vacuum engines (requiring the Poodle to be split into two bells).  

My question /speculation is -- are these new engine skins supposed to resemble particular real-life engines, as we've seen with the Vector, RAPIER and all the Making History engines?  Or are they just supposed to be generic, but more realistic-looking engines?  

I can't tell for sure, but a few ideas on possible identities:

Poodle -- this could be a dual RL10 cluster, as found in some Centaur upper stages.  That's the only real-life example i can think of that uses to smallish engines in this manner.  But the thrust seems too high.  KSP engines generally have less thrust than their real-life counterparts, but the poodle would have more than a pair of RL10s. 

Terrier - if the Poodle is not a pair of RL10s, the Terrier could be a single one. It's got about half the thrust of a real-life RL10, which is in line with some other examples, (e.g., Vector vs SSME).  There's also some piping on the side of the engine bell that might be expander cycle plumbing.  This could also be the Descent Propulsion System from the Apollo Lunar Module. 

Spark - my best guess for this one is the Lunar' Module's ascent engine.  The LEM-like lander can from Making History all but requires you to use a Spark if you want to do a staged ascent.  If true, this strongly suggests that the Terrier is the descent engine (an perhaps the reason that neither LEM engine was duplicated for Making History).

 

On a tangent, I would not mind seeing a few more of the original engines re-skinned.  For example, since the F-1 is represented by the Mastodon, the Mainsail has no real-life analog.  (After all the F-1 was the largest single combustion chamber engine ever flown).  The Mainsail design is just also a little blah, in my opinion.  It might spice things up for Squad to rejigger it into something like the Russian RD-170 engine, which had four combustion chambers and bells, but more total thrust than the F-1.

Similarly, the Rhino is kind of an odd outlier at the moment.  It has a few things in common with the J-2X concept for the Ares / SLS, but the J-2 is now represented by the much smaller Skiff.  And even more than with the Mainsail, the Rhino also seems too powerful for a single-combustion chamber engine.  Perhaps they could also turn this one into a compound engine.  One idea would be a Mammoth-like conglomeration of 4-5 Skiff-like engines, somewhat like the Saturn V second stage. 

Edited December 23, 2018 by Aegolius13

[Snark]

Moving to Suggestions.