Sea Dragon was a 1962 concept for a reusable, two-stage, sea-launched carrier rocket. The project never materialised as NASA's Future Projects Branch was shut down in 1965. It would have been the largest rocket ever built.
The sad thing is that this is more accurate than the 'For All Mankind' version. This correctly shows that most of the upper stage would be above water, rather than just the command/service module. Why couldn't they have done it right?
It seriously cannot be understated how gargantuan this concept rocket is. The thing could lob 550 tonnes into LEO. For 1962 that is just incredible. For comparison, the Saturn 5 can only lob up 140 tonnes to LEO. It would be supported by a nuclear powered ship carrying RP-1. The liquid Nitrogen and Oxygen would be produced at the launchsite. - It is estimated that due to in situ fuel production and simplicity of being the textbook big dumb booster, that payload costs could be as little as $60.00 per kilogram. It ultimately proved way too large to be of any practical use - even to this day. And yes, that is a single engine bell that dwarfs the mighty F-1 in terms of both size and thrust.
Gabriel francis Most space elevator concepts put things at about $220/kg. For perspective, Skylon (if it's ever finished) promises to deliver $3,000/kg according to project guidelines and the BFR can probably do between $140/kg to $47/kg depending on the final design. Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator_economics The benefit of a space elevator (if it were possible to build one which it is looking more and more like it isn't) isn't to bring cost per unit mass down but to bring heavy stuff up you couldn't practically fit on a rocket. The Sea Dragon is probably about as heavy a payload as you could build practically. The rocket equation is a game of diminishing returns. Eventually you reach a point where so much of your takeoff mass is rocket that it doesn't matter how much more rocket you build you're never going to increase the payload mass. For chemical rockets most sources I've seen cap it at 800t and to do that you need a stupidly big rockets with the best possible engines. After that point you can make the rocket as big as you like and you're only going to decrease the maximum payload. Space elevators allow you to put any amount of mass on a tether and haul it up. Even the most conservative serious concepts image "trains" going up these things with each car the size of a oil tanker. If you want to bring cost per kg down then you either need more efficient rockets or an orbital ring. Not only are orbital rings actually possible to build but you're looking at $1.9/kg. It would literally be like catching a train at that point. Source: jenda.hrach.eu/f2/Low%20cost%20design%20of%20an%20orbital%20ring%20-%202017-1.pdf
I'm not sure effects on the local environment would be all that bad. High powered sonar could be used to "chase off" any fish or whales that have decided to come check it out so they don't all die from the shock wave and RP1 engines typically burn so fuel rich that they produce CO as exhaust almost exclusively - which isn't a hazard in water being only slightly soluble. Sea launched rockets remain an attractive option for niche applications but that's primarily countries that need orbital infrastructure but don't already have a space program (Australia, Indonesia, etc.). They're not really used though primarily because if you have the capital to invest in the infrastructure needed to build sea launched rockets you might as well just build a normal launch site and conventional rocket since you can leach most of the engineering studies from publicly available ESA and NASA documents. Building a sea dragon replica would be nifty but it's like building an aerospike engine. In theory it'd be revolutionary but in practice you have to re-invent the wheel and might as well just use a normal rocket like everyone else.
@LaughToMouth personally I wonder most about how one such a huge engine could work, and why there are the small side-engines in the middle of the rocket :). Baosic questions, basically :D.
@@snuffeldjuret those small(er) side engines are called Vernier thrusters, or something like that. They're used to steer the rocket (as you can see, this design lacks fins, flaps and wings of any kind, so in order to point to different directions it needs side engines. That, or thrust vectoring)
Yeah, more like TweakScale...however my first craft with tweakscale was minuscule, enough to fit in a kerbal‘s pocket. And then I build rockets large enough to fit VAB or SPH in the payload fairings...
To be fair, I don't think they launch in For All Mankind was manned - though you are right about half above the water. Don't think it matters, at the end of the day, because what a cinematic shot that was
Awesome liftoff - both as depicted underwater, and from the surface (the underwater flashes and the massive swell before the Sea Dragon exited the water)!
I've looked into some other designs recently and realized that Sea Dragon was a sounding rocket compared to some other vehicles. Look into the UR-700M and Nexus rockets for some really serious payload.
Honestly, the guy who designed the sea dragon had the right idea. About a lot of things. It just wasn't possible to really get such a project going at the time.
@@rundownpear2601 I just looked it up and was disappointed at 151 tonnes but then realized I wasn't looking at the nuclear variant and omg 750 tonnes. WHAT THE WHAT.
I was waiting for someone to dare do the Sea Dragon. The NASA sketches looked over the top but this animation conveys that this monster could have been real. Great stuff!
I don't think it could have been real sadly. An engine that big would have MASSIVE combustion chamber instability that even modern tech would struggle to fix (if it's even possible at all to fix in the first place). Just look at Starship and how it is going for 30+ engines instead of 1 big engine, despite the raptor being the most advanced rocket engine ever built.
@@carljohan9265 Forget combustion instability, this thing would've had 10 times the thrust of the Saturn V and would have most DEFINITELY permanently damaged the hearing of the crew on board, and since this rocket would be made of the cheapest materials, you really think that the thrust of such a large engine wouldn't completely obliterate the ship?
@@Saturnares Yep, that's another problem, one that the SLS incidentally is most likely going to have (that thing will either RUD itself at launch or max Q). But it won't matter if combustion chamber instability can't be solved, since that causes the engine to explode.
@@carljohan9265 I'm sure the SLS will be fine. They're testing the SRBs and they seem to be doing well, and also they're doing wind tunnel tests. Although the Block 1B will have about the same payload capacity to LEO as Starship, I don't understand why they don't just rebuild a Saturn V and replace the old parts with better ones. NASA should just make a modernized Saturn V and be done with SLS. What would you pick? 140,000 kg to LEO and 1 billion dollars to launch, or, 105,000 kg to LEO and 850 million dollars to launch?
The ever so spectacular, and monstrously massive classic Seadragon, it may be called a "big dumb booster" but it would have been a spectacle for sure and perhaps it would have been pushing us much further out than we are now
@@ImieNazwiskoOK These were designed to be less expensive than the Saturn Vs of the space race era, and multiple times more efficient. They’ve mostly only been proposed as cargo vehicles, not for manned launches, and the cheap materials it uses, alongside its semi-reusable factors, would’ve made it the cheapest way to get a massive payload into orbit. Nowadays we have the Starship, rendering this a little useless, but still super fuckin cool.
@@Zacharysharkhazard -hull is heavy -making engines for this=hardest thing ever (turbo pump would need turbo pumps with turbo pumps) -What would be launched anyway?
@@banger2998 But why not launch it in parts? I think it might have SOME sense in times when docking and orbital assembly was crazy and very hard thing (which is why idea of having separate lander and capsule which would need to dock was rejected at first), but right now not that much.
This has got to be my favorite never-built rocket design from the pre-Apollo/Apollo era. Launched from the sea, massive payload, and K.I.S.S. Thanks for bringing it to life!
Campbell Mays Energia II was a evolution of the Soviet Energia. Energia II was 100% reusable becuse it launch like a rocket and land like an airplane but no like the shuttle each one of the boosters have wings for land, but was only a concept
I missed this when it was published but I’ve loved the Sea Dragon concept ever since I first heard about it. To see it rendered like this just made me unspeakably happy. I’d give 1000 Likes if I could. I had no idea the staging worked like that. Amazing!
The first stage rocket nozzle being tucked into the second stage nozzle is quite brilliant - and it flares out wider to be vacuumed optimized. Was this part of the original plan or just some brilliant creative license?
Slight creative license, but given limited details in original proposal, as accurate as I could hope for.. drawings show the interstage supports are above the expandable nozzle segments, and describe 4 1/4 circle segments, not 8 in the expandable nozzle shown unless I misread the over 500 pages in the two proposals on the wiki page. The 1st stages conical tank remains pressurized to allow it to collide with the ocean at up 600 ft/sec and be undamaged ! Robert Truax was a true genius !
What SpaceX does is cool but it's sad that all the credit goes to musk while the company's achievements are the result of the work of thousands of people during the last century (scientists, technicians, engineers, programmers, taxpayers from all around the world)
I’m sure this has been pointed out but you have the first stage coming back without the LOX tank / cone. That rounded dome is the RP-1 tank, buried inside the first stage and which was designed to share a common bulkhead with the LOX tank.
I keep forgetting how ridiculous that second stage was. Thanks for these animations; had to come back to this one after seeing the recent "weird staging" video.
So would maritime life in the radious of I don't know....1k km ? SIngle F-1 - which is a sneeze's worth compared to ...THIS - could blow out windows some 10 miles away....
I always wondered if the acoustic pressure waves of igniting a rocket that powerful underwater would not have just destroyed the integrity of the rocket's structure. (or deafened every fish and sonar operator in the ocean)
Dampening the sound was the whole point of putting it in the water in the first place, it could not be launched from land at all. The ecological impact probably would be disastrous too. Although there are certain spots out in the open ocean with very little life, perhaps those could be used for launching. One of the benefits of this design is it can be towed from the shipyard to any launch site on the ocean.
@@TheNefastor Do, or do not, there is no try. Or in other words, let's poke him directly and see what he says, maybe they can scale it down a slight and use it as a booster for that upscaled V2 of the Starship he mentioned. Maybe call them Starcruiser and Megaheavy
@@ALI3NPROFESS0R I'm reading back all the comments from 2 years ago, and I really cringe at how salty and how much of a know-all I tried to be. I think I changed because I noticed it :)
My grandfather tried to create a rocket engine all his life (he was an engineer and chemist), when he was close to creating a functional engine he unfortunately died of old age, Now I'm trying to continue his project.
First: Sea Dragon was a cargo only vehicle. Second: Yes, the first stage would have been recoverable and reusable. This animation is very nice, but it is not really accurate. I was a member of a group that about 8 years ago revamped the Sea Dragon concept, and scaled it down to a 100 ton to LEO cargo vehicle. The single 90 million pound thrust engine was replaced by an aerospike engine with 72 combustion chambers, for a total of 36 million pounds of thrust. You can go to www.nasaspaceflight.com and do a search of "Hercules project", to find information on our project.
Who knows if this would have worked. They had a hard enough time dealing with combustion instability in the massive 12-foot (3.65m) bell-nozzle diameter F-1 engine. What hell would they have gone through trying to make that 75-foot (23m) nozzle diameter motor work?
I find it funny how the design drawings had an Apollo CSM at the top of the dragon. Could you imagine spending months in an Apollo capsule for a Mars mission?
That second stage engine bell is insane! Didn't realise it would've done that. Also the Vernier engines are not lit after takeoff. Were they just to get it out of the drink?
A old idea with some awesome abilities but to bad we never built it but with todays technologies and stronger and lighter materials it could happen if you could ever get the money to fund it ! Great video by the way ! =) thanks
Great video, but dont understand what I'm looking at when the camera cuts to the view presumably inside the rocket. I'm on a android phone so its hard to see. Can anyone enlighten me?
