Arca Space Makes Their EcoRocket 500 Times Bigger... And Wants To Mine Asteroids. 

If this rocket is never built, would it be…. Vaporware? I’ll see myself out

Lmao, looks like something you made in KSP. Even sounds like a challenge: “Building a rocket with 420 strap-on boosters!”

You know what a high pressure, controlled steam explosion needs? Hundreds of independent points of failure and the aerodynamic profile of a brick.

YES! Finally somebody is embracing the time honored KSP practice of just strapping on more rockets until the TWR gets high enough

I work in thermal tube boiler power stations that run at pressure of 2400psi, which means a boiling point of 350C, and when those water wall tubes blow and the water inside flashes to steam you can bet that does a hell of a lot of damage, i've seen 50kg sections of structural steel ripped off of the boiler wall and launched over a kilometre away from a 2.5 inch water tube blowout, having a multi ton tank of superheated water fail would be terrifying lol.

With an extensive knowledge of space (learnt from Kerbal Space Program) I believe that this is a wonderful idea and will work like a charm. Its perfectly logical due to Newtons little known 4th Law of Physics which states that the more the merrier.

A guaranteed non-scam. There's no drag problem to overcome with the multiple hundreds of strapped on boosters. It's not like trying to fly a wall sideways up to mach 1. The air has plenty of space to move into the gaps between the boosters. The mach numbers achieved within those spaces will not cause dynamic loadings that are too difficult to overcome. The structural issues are really not that big a deal. You have the outer ring of rockets with a seriously long lever-arm to the mass being lifted, so the structure has to deal with the moment and shear forces, but there are plenty of structural methods to accomplish that with carbon nano-tube composite matrix aluminum, etc. Then, staging. Oh, my. Hundreds of explosive(?) bolts have to trigger near simultaneously and there will be no aerodynamics that cause any of the spent boosters to crash into the continuing boosters. But, it is technologically imaginable, therefore feasible! Just buy this NFT and the scales will be lifted from your eyes. (In case anyone can't tell that all the above is me mocking this idea.)

When Scott Manley says, ..."so I went out and did the math......." you know he really did! Love it!

About the power of steam, power plants have a special pipe that conducts steam from the boiler to the turbine. This pipe is similar in thickness to a tank hull. However, fistulas are sometimes formed at the points of attachment of the sensors. In these places, a steam jet is formed. It is almost invisible due to the fact that the steam is superheated and does not immediately condense. They are also almost inaudible in the surrounding noise. However, if you accidentally pass your hand over such a fistula, the jet of steam will cut off your fingers like a lightsaber

6:20 The moment you mentioned crypto token I completely lost any confidence I had in this company. Crypto scams are getting more and more elaborate these days... Maybe once upon a time they had ambitions to make an actual working steam rocket but now we're getting to KSP levels of insanity. Over 500 rockets per launch!

Those clusters have got to be one of the most Kerbal ideas for real life I have seen. I can just imagine the staging going haywire and all those individual rockets shooting off in different direction and into each other and just causing hilarious carnage. I hope to heck they get to make it, but it looks ridiculous.

My immediate thought when I heard they're tacking asteroid mining onto their plans... I'm just like... Maybe focus on the mining part and leave the launch vehicle part alone lol. Take Super Heavy to orbit instead. Means you don't have to focus on developing the rocket and can focus on the even harder part of it all, the actual mining lol.

This video will be hilarious. Arca is just a big comedy show. How do they even get money?

I'm an aerospace engineer, and can say with some confidence that this idea is daft. The energy input is going to be far higher than a chemical rocket, because you need a fixed amount of energy to get payload into orbit but now have to also provide the energy to lift the absurd amount of extra mass from tanks, and overcome the massive drag of accelerating that first stage through the lower atmosphere, and the lower specific impulse of the fuel. If the energy stored in it is on the same order as that of a Falcon 9, then it doesn't have enough energy. It would need a LOT more. That said, it could technically work with enough design effort. What won't work, and really makes it daft, is the engineering. There's no way in hell you can feasibly bolt that many pressure vessels together and expect it all to work smoothly. How do you access one in the middle of the pack to repair it? If it springs a leak you can't just send Bob in with duct tape to fix it, you have to drain down hundreds of tonnes of superheated pressurised water from the entire thing to make it safe (into some kind of massive storage tank), and then wait for it to cool. Then repair it, pressure test that vessel, and then you can try again. And another one has a fault because you cycled the pressure. It would be a nightmare!

If they're using hydrocarbons to heat the first few stages it kind of sounds like they're building a rocket with extra steps.

They would be better off using the energy required to heat all that water, going into breaking the water into hydrogen and oxygen, then using that to for fuel. Thanks Scott!

Did someone model the aerodynamic drag of this thing? It might have the energy of a Falcon, but it has also several hundred times more surface area and must have a significantly worse drag coefficient.

H2O @ 250C and pressure to remain in liquid form, the pressure release and flash to steam can literally flay the flesh from your bones. I was a steam power plant mechanic in USN. 600psi steam leak can sever fingers. We used a broom to locate such a leak, when bristles fall off you've found it. In 1200psi plant, you use the handle of the broom.

Heating the water on the ground with a loop to a nuclear reactor might be the greenest option for the first stage. But the refined materials involved for all the pressure vessels need to be included in the total environmental impact.

Arthur C. Clarke, in his book 2061, had a spaceship that used water as a propellant. The ship used a nuclear reactor to flash heat the water to super critical steam. One benefit of using liquid water was the propellant tank did not need to built for high pressures. I think Arca Space is going to have trouble getting a reactor to power their proposed rocket.

Let's not forget about the amount of materials spent to HAVE all these boosters, no matter how they expend the energy, there are MORE of them, and that also has a footprint to consider in the equation. A chemical rocket has far fewer materials within their boosters to get a payload to space.

the concept render for the water rockets at 4:40 was the most kerbal thing I've seen in rocketry so far and it's fucking hilarious XD

Their complaint about you overestimating performance reminds me of a rocket scientist I knew who showed BART (and the press) why their Westinghouse train control system kept losing trains unpredictably. Had them run the gist train back and forth twice, and said it should work now. It didn’t and took another pass to scrape the rest of the rust off and let enough voltage through the rails. The press gleamed the next day with news of his inaccurate prediction. To which he said “You’re damned right I was wrong -it’s even less safe than I thought!”

Thanks Scott, for keeping us abreast of the peculiar goings on at Arca and providing a thoughtful, realist, assessment in the nicest possible way

4:58 I must admit that's a design I didn't expect to see anywhere else than KSP. x)

How much drag will that booster cluster generate in low earth atmosphere trying to accelate to Mach 1.5? Looks utterly improbable. Oh, and there is a fault on booster # 326...

I'm really surprised you didn't mention how much Arca's concept there was starting to look an awful lot like the German Orbital Transport and Rockets (OTRAG) concept of strapping lots of mass-produced rockets together.

Scott was extremelly polite discussing about this monumental aberration of ARCA.

I saw that episode of Mythbusters. I hope Arca also builds a little red house for their first launch

"To try and get more investors excited about things." That practically gave me PTSD from remembering the bad old new space days of the late '90s. Where tech venture capital flowed like water into new space companies, as long as they had concepts that promised orders of magnitude RoI and made for really cool presentations. So many "innovative" SSTO concepts. And then when the VC money dried up during the dot-com bust they just shriveled on the vine because almost none of them had anything of real value (except maybe Kistler).

My biggest problem with this rocket. It looks like the crashey mcsplodey. You can tell they did not use a wind tunnel or anything because at that point you effectivley have a flat surface.

That was actually pretty interesting, expected it to be a complete joke like most people make of them but you’ve done it again, taught me new stuff in a different way. Well done, this is why you’re just genuinely the best

If they go for ecology... Wouldn't liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen rocket be just as green? Then I don't know how serious they're about asteroid mining, but developing a new kind of rocket seems like an overkill for a small company. Can they afford doing all these projects at the same time?

I refuse to believe that first stage could ever take off. The weight of the struts required to hold that thing together alone would eat up all the power.

The “lots and lots of simple, small modules” is basically the old West German Otrag-idea.

Superb video, as usual! You were over the top on this: fun, informative and incredibly respectful, even if they did not really deserve it. Thanks so much, you are very inspiring to me.

I wonder if they even have a solution how to control the hundreds of "engines" to keep the rocket straight on course. People talk about Starship being challenging because it has 30 engines active at the same time...

The amount of rockets they have to produce also seems much more than say a Falcon 9. Forget the propellant, what about the structure? Isn't this way more with so much surface area?

Scott is so gracious- just another reason we appreciate these videos

I was designing a relief valve on a steam pipe the other day and was calculating thrust loads and pipe support reaction forces. The project manager asked why, and my response was that relief valves discharges are upside down rockets.

And here I thought the Soviets had the most boosters in their concepts. The complexity of having that many boosters strapped together is insane.

The natural evolution from this idea is to make a "spring rocket" with multitude of stages (due to the low energy stored in each stage) that can put something into orbit. I don't have the time to run the numbers but I imagine a 50 Km tall tower of compressed big springs doing the same think as that big hot-water OTRAG-style rocket, just even more inefficiently. The entire spring rocket could be compressed with a single cable from the innermost stage (with the winch being solar-powered for extra green-points, of course)

In some ways this reminds me of the orbital launcher that a German company wanted to build in Katanga. Literally dozens or more of identical super simple engine and tank assembly.

Steam rockets were first used in the Hellenistic period, albeit just as a curiosity, so at least they can say that the concept is well proven

Doesn’t water vapour itself have a strong greenhouse effect when injected into the upper atmosphere? It seems to me that methalox rockets are less damaging, given that their fuel can be generated via solar power and can effectively be net-zero in terms of carbon emissions.

When I saw this OTRAG abomination, my first thought was: It must be powered by blockchain. I was not surprised...

This is literally when you try to make a rocket to orbit Kerbin using only fireworks in KSP

4:34 The slow scroll-down, the ultimate reveal of the most Kerbal amalgamation ever rendered, I couldn't keep myself together!

That's the most Kerbal Rocket the world has ever seen

I’ve been looking forward to see your take on this. Anything that has crypto attached to it instantly loses all credibility imo and that’s not even taking into account the actual design itself.

Hey, Scott, good to see you have time to visit. Almost always I have heard of the subject of the moment, and the mind just smoothly trips along. BUT. This time, my logic tracer slipped off the rails. Right up front there were the people of Arca Space decided to switch away from incandescent steam by direct chemical reaction to deciding to just heat the water to incandescent steam prior to launch. Give those folk some information on using HTP, ask them for a rethink.

Your presentations are always interesting and the math and calculations you put into these is incredible. Thanks for to what you do.

I remember myth busters making a rocket like this. It took a good minute for that water heater to fall back to earth.

FYI: The dark green steam car @13:45 was steam-turbine powered, not a steam rocket.

Thanks, Scott, for a lesson in kind sarcasm. I applaud your forbearance. Jess

As your wonderful daughter sang so beautifully "They say space is hard". Awesome as always Scott, thank you again for great content and KSP instructions lol. That is how I found you back in the day. OG here of course. :-)

That would be beautiful to see the stage separation of those 420 first stage boosters. It will be destruction derby in the air and those boosters that survive the initial phase will have their chutes shredded by debris. Or maybe they plan to discard those boosters slowly, but it may take a minute or so, and in this time the next stage may be low on steam already.

420 rockets? Ok, now I know where they are getting their ideas :) Explains everything.

Looks like a heavy rocket from start tech kerbal space program. I guess we've all done this, adding the little tanks and solid boosters in great numbers to reach orbit for our first heavy mission...

Your analysis is extremely generous, this is easily the least ecological rocket concept I have ever seen.

I found these people way back with the flight of the aerospike thing, but they always seemed very sketchy. Most of all i think they only ever made one test tank that was tethered "fly" aka produce an unknown amount of thrust for a very short amount of time. I dont know what they are trying to achieve, but it seems like they are constantly trying to procure funding for their hobby backyard project.

I love your way of saying it is not a scam, and still getting the message through that it is... 👌😎

This video was really fun to watch Scott!!! 👍🤩🤩🤩

You are spot on aboot the dangers of steam. I've seen 2" thick SAGD steam pipe explode in the middle of the woods. From a distance it looks like drinking straws all crumpled and 10 - 15 " trees "chopped" down.

They could use a nuclear reactor to produce the high temperatures needed. If they can't get hydrogen peroxide though I can't imagine anyone will let them have a reactor. The mental imagine of that many boosters detaching and falling back to earth is amusing though. It would literally be raining boosters.

Oh this is JOYOUS!!! I'm teaching a 'steampunk' science class at the moment... Part of what we are looking at is what 'steam tech' actually could be used today. You just made top of the playlist :D

I got to see the ARCA Space Center two weeks ago! The Cozombaza backyard is blooming wild forests, beautiful region for hiking and rocket testing! Surreal to see sheep heards grazing next to the testing towers. If you ever get to Romania Scott I'll gladly be your tour guide 😎🌍 ARCA changed their ways again, to a more lucrative (military funded) and very sensible steam anti ballistic interceptor project. Worth the follow up!

Nevermind all of the energy put into building those 500-ish rockets, which are presumably not reusable.

when OTRAG goes wild

The Eco Rocket Heavy reminds me on my Kerbal builds when I tried to get to mun without tutorials.

the "Phrase" about "water is safe beneign and safe" reminds me on some old PR quibbeling when steam cars where still relevant but also of steam engine boiler explosions

I like ideas. I like people building things. As long as it isn't impossible, go for it. I'm rooting for you. As long as we're clear about the troubles involved. More power to the builders. No need to be a super cynic. You have my respect for not turning into one even if an "easy" opportunity presents itself! Standing at the sidelines, laughing, never doing anything - that's always the easiest. If you risk nothing, you can lose nothing. More power to those who try.

These guys went full Kerbal. Never go full Kerbal.

As a kid I used to make rockets using vinegar and baking powder as fuel. It worked very well actually !

nice coverage. a couple of comments. to me the best thing about water is it can be split into h and o ions.. lots can be done with that if you have a large amount of electricity(like a fission reactor), second is on spin launch, it seems like this would be great on the moon to send material to orbit, and the earth/moon lagrange point, and probably all the way to earth.

This looks like something they would have come up with in the 1930’s/ early 1940’s as a way of getting to the moon before they really understood how chemical rocket engines worked, in fact I remember the crazy mission concept you did a video about way back in the day, the British plan to build a rocket made of something like 500 black powder rockets strapped together to carry a crew to the moon.

As a boiler operator engineer, I would rather be sitting on a regular old every day run of the mill rocket then a super heated stream rocket any day! No thanks man. What are they trying to do? Kill people?🤣 What an amazing time to be alive 👍

I think a solar concentrator setup would make more sense than photovoltaics if the goal is to heat up a whole lot of water. Cutting out the middleman lets you skip a lot of conversion losses.

I've seen people build rockets like that before. In KSP. One guy tried to put a Kerbal on Mun using only RCS thrusters, and had something like 10 layers of asparagus staging.

Just like the water powered car we have heard about out of France for 20 years...it too sounds awesome on paper...

Unless their rockets are reusable (imagine the logistics of 420 of them) calling it eco while the stages fall back and litter wherever on earth is an oxymoron.

If I remember correctly, water high in the atmosphere is actually a very potent greenhouse gas (although it is shorter lived than CO2). A large part of pollution of airplanes isn't even CO2, but just water. With the EcoRocket this would be much worse given the sheer volume of water pumped into the atmosphere.

Good luck on your written test, Scott.

this video is not only about rocketry, but also a good example of how to evaluate and comment something without getting sued while your eyes are rolling so far back in their socket that they get into a stable retrograde orbit around your skull... and by no chemical means, but just the green power of sarcasm! nice!

This is in absolutely no way more eco than a falcon 9. So incredibly inefficient.

Scott, brilliant video. I value your opinion on Arca. I have got fed up with following Arca. Their continual chopping and changing of technology is not progress but dithering unfortunately. I also believe that they are honest, not scammers. I voiced my disappointment at the lack of progress on their website and was denounced as being impatient, I've been following them since before the move to Mexico! I wish them luck. Their new rocket looks ugly, the original rocket was a thing of beauty.

I do believe Scott was mildly annoyed by the ARCA shill trying to make him look foolish. I love this video, sir 😊!

As this started with mention of linear aerospike, when it turned to water rockets, I thought it was going to be about basic research - using water/steam to do "static fire" testing of candidate aerospike designs, preliminary to building a real engine using more conventional fuels, rather than a propellant system for a real launch vehicle.

Like keeping all those dozens of rockets together structurally isn't going to be weight intensive and cumbersome? Not to mention the chance of anomalies just increased linearly with each rocket added.

The rocket configuration is very "OTRAG-ish" isn't it.

Even Kerbals look at that and say "Dude, that's too many!" 🤣

My favorite toy when I was younger was a pump up water rocket. It was definitely safer than the solid rocket motors and I was allowed to play with them unsupervised

The design and construction of their pressure vessels must be "quite interesting", and the effects of a pressure vessel rupture just before launch (maximum pressure and temperature point) would be somewhat exciting to say the least.....

I would _expect_ them to use vacuum distillation by heating a small amount of material sufficiently that the change in partial-pressures causes some of elements in the raw ore to preferentially evaporate, with the vapor then directed over condensation plates to capture it. NASA has looked at it for Moon mining before, and it _seems_ at least to be a workable technique.

If they can get the boosters to land, that'd be pretty awesome seeing that many land.

Re water heating. A great way to pre heat water would be using decomposing waste. Even a pile of grass is able to ignite once the bacteria get chowing down.

It is hundreds of times more efficient to make the payload out of multiple smaller parts that are reassembled in orbit. That way you don't need 420 boosters all tied together. 100 individual launches is so much better.

4:50 The design looks fine as long as they use enough struts - which they probably will since they clearly play KSP too.

That heavy variant out kerbals the most kerbal rocket I've ever seen :P

I like it. Holy shit I didn’t know the whole story, all the way with these fellas