The problem was (and still is) that too many vocal people felt that the space program was a waste of money. These voices were heard by the politicians. This is why the final Apollo launches were canceled.
Would you rather have; a 'free' Saturn V mission, or a 'free' metropolitan hospital? I just did quick googles but the quora answers were pretty vetted. Both Saturn V missions and Metropolitan hospitals cost about 1.3 billion each(inflation adjusted). To create that is. I don't know about yearly costs for nasa or hospitals. Plenty of doctors and well paid staff in each so I can't even venture a guess.
@@CellarRoot yeah yeah yeah yeah... and at the time they were saying how many people could be fed and housed with the money that was "wasted" on the Apollo program. Let me ask you just one question - how many people actually WERE fed and housed with the money that was "saved." Don't bother researching it, the answer is NONE. The government has no clue how to spend money wisely. So, if it's going to be spent foolishly, it may as well be spent on something we can ALL benefit from. EVERY corner of our current economy has benefitted from the space program - not just doctors.
You forgot to mention that it would us the *nuclear reactor of an aircraft carrier as a battery* to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen via electrolysis for fuel.
That was just one proposed idea to fuel it. Given the realities of Nuclear vessels, I doubt that ever would have actually been done. It likely would have been fueled more conventionally.
The main concept of the sea dragon was huge and simple. They would have used conventional chemical fuel to achieve orbit. It just required two tanks of fuel and control valves to mix them for combustion. A third pressure tank was used to regulate the flow. Modified payload, it could lift a reactor or a nuclear engine into space. From there these payloads could power a space station or a Planetary ship assembled in space. Picture the discovery one from the movie 2001. Then add expendable fuel tanks the length of the spine. As you empty tanks you jettison them. It should give enough fuel for a constant 1g travel, half acceleration half deceleration.
I'm sure he does. He knows a bit about rockets, sea-armament, Chinese aspirations. The Sea Dragon was always a marvel in the professional rocket community. It's just that the will to go to Mars seriously was never in legislative budgets.
It's actually way less than a supertanker ( >300 m) in length, and total loaded mass. Big shipyards could build that thing, with rocket companies as subcontractors for the engine details.
Another advantage of a sea launch I've heard is it has some ability to dodge bad weather or get closer to the equator, making launches more reliable and slightly more efficient.
Can you even imagine the combustion chamber instability that such a huge engine would have to deal with? I'm honestly not sure it's a problem that's possible to solve even with modern tech. Just look at Starship, the raptor engine is the most advanced rocket engine ever built, and they are going for a huge number of smaller engines as oppose to using one huge engine.
Carl Johan Not a rocket scientist, either.... just very keen! Have you seen this clip of a launch of an actual sea dragon (fictional, obviously, but still cool). ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-H6YJ5oIcT4g.html
Oh, man, when Truax says "rocket", you jump. Er, when he says "frog", you launch. Whichever. He was flat-out amazing, and his views on privatizing space flight were (literally, like about 3) decades ahead of his time.
@@Markle2k Big ships survive for years in corrosive environments. Musk just doesn't have the experience with salt water. If China decides they can build a sea dragon, he's gonna have some catching-up to do...
@@-danR Ships use sacrificial anodes. You can't really do that with a rocket sitting on a stand out in the South Pacific for a couple weeks longer than planned. The fix was to replace the aluminum nut with a stainless steel one that matched materials with the stainless line.
I'm kind of concerned with the environmental impact of such a launch. Sounds can get much louder underwater, and such a launch from a huge rocket would probably deafen all marine life within a couple hundred miles.
We cannot even think of terraforming another planet or creating a biodome on any moon until we have a viable sustainable space station with the ability to have life long residents. So this kind of large scale rocket, made into a delivery vessel is exactly what we need. Besides that, we could send a batch of satellites all at once.
Thanks, I always laugh when they call the SLS the largest rocket ever designed --- Not even close! Hopefully some day this dragon will rise from the ocean.
I've only come to know about the Sea Dragon thanks to "For All Mankind" and now I'm binging on what could have been. Also I now have "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" stuck in my head for the better part of a week.
If it's time to finally launch that 2001 manned probe to Jupiter's moon, that's the ticket for that. Keir Dullea is still alive and healthy, and so is his co-star. So the mission is good to go. HAL should be ready by that time as well.
Oh Gawd. Could you imagine how much bigger and better the ISS would be! And a few launches we could have a moon base built! Definitely worth a few dead fish!
I believe that was supposed to be the support aircraft carrier, rather than the rocket itself. A _full size nuclear_ aircraft carrier. They intended to hang some sort of elevator on the side of the rocket to get crew to the top.
CabanaCaseda yh most likely but there’s just no point for a rocket of this type as of now which is kinda sad cus I’m tryna see something like this lmao
Pfft. Well, the reason nobody has payloads that'd need such a massive rocket is because everybody tells them that they can only *have* tiny payloads. But if we were really serious about settling space, we'd need something even bigger. The "small scale prototype" of the Orion project using nuclear pulse propulsion would have had a payload twice that of the Sea Dragon, and it only got bigger from there. Now if you did an episode on THAT, I'd be very pleased.
I love the idea of just opening a valve and being launched into space. I'm sure there'd be safeties and all kinds of restrictions on it, but I'm imagining like a literal bathroom sink valve. Just flick to on and off you go!
There were a couple of test launches from scaled down versions - even one as recent as 2006 for proof-of-concept - but there wasn't a need to place 1m pounds of (really expensive) scientific packages into orbit at the time. Now that we're talking Moon and Mars colonies - there may be a demand for it.
Picture this: A water launch where the buoyancy of the rocket does much of the work of getting the rocket to speed. Perhaps with mechanical assist. You'd need much less fuel.
@@TheOrganicartist i think he meant more like a slingshot from the bottom of the sea, rising to the surface rapidly. But the problem is that when it got close to the surface, would have lost momentum, if the engines weren't already pushing. As for your idea of a water canon start, would be nice, but would destroy the platform and damage the ship, if engines were started while still in the tube, and you wouldn't get enough of a sling shot to have time to start them in the air once it leaves the tube. so straight from water still seems the least risky concept.
Question did they study the environmental damage caused by the sound of launching a rocket that size directly from the water? I would guess the sound pressure would destroy sea life for hundreds of miles around.
it could even cause climate change lol, disturbing the water evaporation and sea current system etc, especially if there are going to be many rockets launched from water like that.
humanity is not good at foresight. Its more of like do this, theres a huge problem we guessed could happen and did, well now we deal with that instead of preventing it in the first place. Thats just how we always operated.
Dude. They were literally having asbestos shovelling competitions (Google Images) and dumping barrels of nuclear waste into the ocean. They didn't given a 2nd thought to the environment. It was probably the era of peak human arrogance when the western world thought that we weren't beholden to mother nature.
@@moviemaker2011z You'd want to scare off all the birds and sea life nearby before launching it, although that might not be too much of an issue if you tow it out into the open ocean (most marine life is concentrated near the shore).
@@GuardsmanBass maybe, but it is a fact that sound waves which is essentially pressure waves would kill all aquatic life nearby for miles and harm severely the rest for several more miles. And as mentioned the fuel and exhaust being in a way dumped into the ocean would cause mass pollution that would take along time to clean up and fix. If we built a giant box where life was kept to a bare minimum but it could still launch in the water we could prevent the pollution issue and possibly save the aquatic life some harm. Its nkt a perfect plan, but for what the rocket it there is no good plan for it. If we were to use our strongest rockets now to lift it, the fuel requirements might be lower and the pollution might get cut. But im not a rocket scientist nor am j smart enough to fully grasp this kind of subject so i dont really know what can and will happen if it were built today.
@@InzuDraRagna That's why designs like the BFR are so important. Their sheer existence creates new opportunities and inspires people to take advantage of those opportunities, when they would have thrown in the towel before. "Where there's a way, there's a will."
Yeah, if we had one, James Webb Space Telescope could have gone up years ago. The reason it's taking so long is cuse they have to squish it in a tiny rocket and then unfold it in space, and they only get one chance. I'm sure they could find many more uses for it too, if we had one.
It's true, NASA does make'em sturdy but the ISS is like 20 years old at this point and really cramped, it's just a matter of time until a replacement is needed!
One problem that i havent seen anyone address yet. While 150m by 22m is essentially a flying tower, the exhaust would have pretty much been devastating for ocean life! If we take into consideration mythbusters episode of (shooting fish in a barrel) you would know that the shock wave from the bullet alone can kill fish around it without hitting them directly so a rocket launch in the ocean thats strong enough to carry 500 METRIC TONS of stuff is more than likely going to kill thousands of aquatic life on launch alone. Oh and dont worry some of the fuel and exhaust would sit in the ocean and pollute and poison the ocean leaving it nearly uninhabitable for said aquatic life for years. How is this not an issue for people? Also not only that, but once the rocket left the ocean and was in the air its sound would be audible probably from 40 miles away and possibly damaging to anything within a 5-10 mile radius. Edit: just for comparison, if anyone is from the U.S and want the superior measurement system imperial. A 150m rocket would be 492.1259 feet tall and 72.1784 feet wide! God DAMN thats a huge rocket! And thats what would be screaming its way out of the ocean. Enjoy that thought.
Well, one crazy solution would be to dig a hole, fill it with water and create an artificial lake big enough to launch said rocket. No fish destroyed, no pollution spreading to sea wildlife, and if it's made far enough from civilization then the sound won't matter either. Landing the stages can be done spacex style on land.
@@Wulfnstein this is true. It could be done in north and south Dakota. Im starting to think no one actually lives there and that the states are just for looks over population. Dig a deep hole 600 feet and fill with water like you said. If lucking could probably put filters throughout to suck up whatever water is left and clean it for it to use again. This kind of rocket is crazy just in theory. But one day we will need such a rocket whether we like it or not.
So rocket exhaust is not toxic. They mainly use liquid oxygen and hydrogen combustion, resulting in water. It is true that the crazy heat and pressure results in other compounds forming like nitrogen oxides that are somewhat toxic, but these tend to break down fairly quickly and are in relatively smaller amounts. Now An oxygen leak would be quite toxic to anything nearby, because oxygen is highly toxic in high concentration, but that would only be short term and localised. Obviously the idea of launching this thing from the middle of the ocean is to avoid doing it in sensitive areas, and it is likely to be done in deep water away from reefs because you need a certain, very large depth of water for this thing due to it's size alone at least. The 150 ton payload is Insanely huge, for reference the entire international space station is only around 143 tons all together, it could have been launched by this thing in one piece with room to spare.
As has been mentioned, the exhaust was water, so not poisonous. The launch itself was to happen over 100 miles from land because of the noise, so it would have been quite easy to just launch it from one of the open-ocean's many barren zones: they have very little life because a lack of surface nutrients prevents major plankton growth.
I saw a video about this around a month ago by one of the smaller space channels, like maybe curious droid or something. Definitely cool that you guys can get it out to a larger audience though :) The more inspiration the better
The sea dragon dwarfed the Saturn V rocket design. The entire main engines of the Saturn V would have fit inside the single engine bell of the sea dragon. It was rated at 40 times the thrust of the Saturn V.
While this is a cool idea I note that nobody is mentioning the effect the massive sound from launch would have on marine life. Any sea life nearby would seemingly be killed or maimed. Sound travels much more efficiently in water than air so a launch would likely be heard thousands of kilometers away.
That would have looked a heck of a lot like a submarine-launched ICBM. Alternatively, a submarine-launched ICBM would have looked a heck of a lot like a Sea Dragon launch. I'll believe NASA is serious about space colonies when they actually build and man them. No, the ISS does not come anywhere close to counting.
Whatever became of that idea with space guns? I don't mean guns in space, but a long tube, generally placed underwater due to its massive length, that would attach rockets and guide them through the tube and "launch" them out of the end of it. Sounds like it could decrease the need for a lot of fuel since you'll be getting a massive running start.
1) Gerard Bull is dead, 2) it was only good for relatively small, and very sturdy, payloads. I'm not going to pretend there's absolutely no value to such a thing, but if given the choice, I'd probably just get a bigger rocket, strap it to the bottom of an airplane, and launch it from the upper atmosphere.
This seems like a feasible transporter for deep space mining operations. It will take a huge amount of money upfront, but the worth of a single metal asteroid would pay it off already. And the thing being potentially reusable would make it a killer deal.
The frequency of the instability also drops though. Space Technology Laboratories, Inc. concluded that the instability frequency would be low enough for the technology of the day to actively manage it, which was one of the big things behind them saying it would actually work: they were apparently just unwilling to say that about the Saturn V, partially because it's frequency was too high.
I would have thought that the extra drag of escaping water as opposed to just flying through air would have been a downside. I guess when you’ve got that much thrust you could probably launch out of jelly and still be fine.
I can’t see there being that much drag as it’s not having to move much water out of the way as it is only half submerged. There will still be some forces due to being in water, because of water’s stickiness. I was also going to say about the low pressure behind it (under it) but then remembered that the exhaust will be filling that.
I absolutely love how enthusiastic the presenter is. It's like even if a subject might have seemed boring to me, she makes it sound so amazing and cool :) Well done!
Hey you guys should talk about Robert Truax's other works in the field of rocketry like almost killing Evel Knievel by throwing him across the snake canyon on the same type of rocket designed for the sea dragon
yeah the acoustics from the engine roar would be deafening underwater for many many miles. Though i wonder if humans could investigate communicating with them (building on current research) and develop a "Please leave the area" signal to broadcast on underwater speakers....
It would have been something to see, at least through binoculars (you wouldn't want to be too close to it because it might be dangerously loud). IIRC that and the potential for combustion instability in the single large first stage engine were big challenges (the F-1 engine on the Saturn V had combustion instability problems at first too). But otherwise it's definitely got some great features if you need to get a lot of payload into Low Earth Orbit. Making it out of steel makes it much more resilient against damage from dropping into the ocean.
The frequency of combustion instability is related to the size of the engine. An outside engineering team concluded the instability should be slow enough that the hardware of the time could actively control it, instead of hoping it didn't hit any resonances.
