People stopped caring about Apollo missions and instead of NASA pushing hard for the moon went for the Space Shuttle an incredibly expensive way to send cargo to LEO that devoured most of NASA's budget for 30 odd years.
With the fall of USSR there was no more competition, no more goal or reason to do it as hard as we did before. This is why the fall of USSR is the saddest event to happen in human history yet. We lost our enemy and we lost our way.
@@avgVar It isn't just a lack of will, but the physics innately making things so expensive. The moon landings were amazing but costly, and new tech over the years has only made mild inroads on reduce how expensive it would be to do again.
Back in the 80s. I remember reading an article in Omni about the development on a one megabit floppy disc. The next month, letters to the editor were filled with derisive comments. To the effect of no one ever needing that much room. If the dragon would have been built. Odds are that uses would have been found. Thank you for the interesting video...Michael
My second computer had a ten MB hard disk. I was the envy of all my friends. (1986) The telephone hand set had to be put on the modem to get an outside line. Life was good!
You think you had it hard. We lived in a box of punch cards in the middle of the road. Every morning we'd wake up, our father would make us code Basic C from, scratch. We'd eat a handful of cold cereal from scratch and walk uphill to the school computer lab. Ah, those were the days.
"For All Mankind" brought me back here after all this time. Finally got see this system launch in full Visual capacity. [not tracked into orbit but the camera got washed underwater during launch lol]
I know it was true, but WTF are we going to do. Collect helium like some water farmer? Then us collecting dust and shipping samples back... With a rail gun.
By the mid 70's we had thousands of space cadets but unfortunately they all went to Washington DC and they are still there. It's a shame we can't still launch them into space. Lol.
@@dianapennepacker6854 That's kinda like saying: "What's this new fangled steam engine" Just as it was impossible for a medieval person to predict the full implication of the industrial revolution, it is impossible for us to predict all the applications of space travel. But here are a few: 1. Manufacturing, some things would just be easier to manufacture in micro-gravity, and could be made more precisely and cheaply than if it was made on earth. 2. Technology, think of all the technology that has come from space travel. You might not be writing that comment without the satellites giving you phone service. Think of all the super materials, pharmaceuticals, agricultural advances, that would be developed in space and make their way back to earth.
@@Aaron0909-8 that wasn't the problem we can build it right now the reason was its lack of need no one was looking to colonize anywhere so no need to build a rocket so big otherwise things would be different
In 1953, as a kid in 4th grade, I had this crazy idea about using "controlled" atomic explosions to propel a rocket ship. My uncle, a Navy veteran in WWII,, suggested I send the idea to the Navy. Several months later I received a reply from Cdr. R.C. Truax, of the Navy's Ship Launch Branch, BuAer. In it, he encouraged me to study hard. I still have the letter! In the summer of 1962, after my 2nd year of college, the Air Force was working on a very similar idea, called Project Orion. By that time Truax was head of Aerojet-General"s Advance Development Section, in Sacramento, CA. I wrote to him asking if my idea had had anything to do with the Air Force's program. He replied that he didn't think so, but how would I like to work for him for that summer? Of course I accepted. While there, we worked on preliminary designs for Sea Dragon boosters of 40, 60, 80 and 100M lbs of thrust! Part of the idea was to build the boosters in a drydock, then float them out into the ocean, and fuel them horizontally. As they filled, the booster would erect itself in the water. Too bad it never got done, but SpaceX's StarShip apparently has to be built near a port, because it is so big it can only be transported to Cape Canaveral by barge.Great to hear from you! Maybe you or some of your decendents will take up where R.C. T. left off!Ad Astra!
Christopher, there is a group out of Cape Canaerval interested in pursuing this technology on a smaller scale. We are going to fund it. Can you and I connect and discuss? Fractionalassets@gmail.com
LOL, do you know the Problem that you wan't to go to Duna, and then completly overpower your rocket? So You're in a stable orbit and then realise that you have 1736728 stages left!
@@invictusprima4437 You joking? Sea Dragon's acceleration was a bit heftier than an Atlas-Mercury, Titan-Gemini, or SaturnV-Apollo launches, but way under the Space-Shuttle's.
@@invictusprima4437 The plan was to use existing hardware, the Apollo Command and Service modules, to control this beast. They might have even used the "Big Apollo" concept ( www.aerospaceprojectsreview.com/blog/?p=2452 ) and theoretically in one launch put up a space station and it's crew in one shot.
tomcornwall83 Did you notice he messed up and said that Saturn V is the most powerful rocket ever launched? (or did you know it, many space fans don't)
Nope you are not. It is pretty obvious to anyone familiar with basics of launch vehicle design, that Sea Dragon was a completely unrealistic idea. Early years of space race produced a lot of concepts like that. They are fun to think about, but have very little value.
JayVal90 They're not so far! Can't build and fly one from Earth that won't spew Huge amounts of radiation and nuclear debris as long as it's firing!! Some of the same dumb ideas from the 50's when they thought everything would be better nukey- fied!!!!!
Well.. Its really not that much taller than the Saturn V. Its a lot wider, but that don´t really make it more difficult to build. Of cause the pressure of the fuel may be a problem during acceleration, but that is quite resonable solvable. The real difficulty is at the launch pad... and well.. they solved that.
When fooling with rockets as a kid we experimented using high pressure tanks of various gasses like oxygen, propane acetylene, map gas and butane. We fed the fuel through very small cooper lines salvaged from air conditioners, refrigerators or whatever else we discovered that had the tiny lines. The lines would be directed into the combustion area of solid rockets engines. We didn't have the tools or technology then to determine if any of these gasses would improve the solid motor thrust. I originally thought of this when one the other kids mentioned that if we sent a rocket up far enough it would run out of sufficient air to sustain the solid rocket burn. As quick as he said that I immediately envisioned a small tank of compressed air and delivery setup to solve the problem. We were only kids and didn't know that we would never get close to going that high. We use a flying head from an old VCR as a gyro to stabilize or alter rocket trajectory. We discovered that a plain 9 volt transistor radio battery would power the gyro for the short time we needed it. I designed a 100% flawless method of igniting one or a dozen of the solid motors all at the same time. This lead to multi stage rockets and systems to flawlessly jump from one stage to the next with no interruption of flight. These rockets were not kits bought from a toy or hobby store. We experimented with several types of tubing for the rocket body. We found out that old Christmas wrapper tubing didn't work and tubing used to roll carpet on and those for concrete bollard forms worked great. Some of the rockets we built were 10 to 12 feet high and a foot in diameter. Some of three and four stage huge rockets went so high that we lost sight of them. Only after a minute or so did we know that everything worked well when we spotted the three big main capsule chutes were spotted. I had a chute for every stage so we could reuse almost everything. Realizing that not all the motors exhausted their fuels at the same time (a big deal in weight when you have a dozen or so in the first stage alone) I designed each motor in a manner to eject its casing the moment it exhausted its fuel. Right after launch it was really cool to see small pieces (the motor casings) begin falling away below the rocket one by one. Then a second or two later the big ring of white smoke and parachute would appear as the first stage detached. The first stage would detach and simultaneously the second stage would ignite. In the beginning we would always find at least one motor which failed to fire and some times more. I remedied that with a little thinking and from then on never had another misfire. Not bad for a bunch of grade school boys with no outside help or rocket experience. And in those days their was no internet. If you needed an answer you went to the library and checked out a book. In most cases I would just figure out solutions. I made a tool that ended the tendency to get one misaligned when attaching stabilizers. It also made the job much faster. I learned to make perfect every time nose cones and a never fail system to detach stages without interfering with the flight trajectory of the rest of the rocket. I really enjoyed those days. Now all that stuff we used to get free or really cheap costs an arm and a leg. All that stuff with the rockets we built has now been almost 40 years ago. Maybe I'll do another before I get so old I can't chase down and recover rockets like I used to.
When I was a kid, my brother and I used to build small rockets from paper, filled with pulverized "match heads". They didn't lift off, but we built stands, with a vertical axle, that rotated very easily, and mounted the rockets on arms on those axles. The rockets spun around at very high speed...
Well that and it's mentioned there's a whole fleet. Probably Nuclear subs too. In the event the rocket failed, since it was apparently carrying Plutonium, They would need to cleanup as best they could and guard it from the Soviets. Only Reagan would have allowed such a thing. He was willing to do anything to beat the Soviets, so if the space race was still a thing, I don't doubt he would have gone for this Lol. I love how accurate the show is as far as what could have been done.
Congratulations CD! I've been a space fan since the early 1960s and you just told me about something I have never heard of before. I love your videos and the clear, concise narration.
I was sitting here watching this wondering the whole time, why the hell they called it sea dragon. Then, once they said it launched fron the sea, then it hit me, this is the coolest name ever
@nickys34No. They "wasted" 200 billions on technology which serves us today (thrust and new fuels, electronics, computers, medical imaging, anticorosive coatings, CCD modules, water filters, even WD40 and diapers). It was difficult even to go to the Moon, how would you go to Pluto ? Soviets tortured their scientists and did not go even to Mars.
@nickys34 "and don't go very fast for space" oh so 266,000 km/h (165,000 mph) isn't fast? (NASA's Juno probe went that fast) edit: here's another one easier to visualise, Voyager 17 kilometers (about 10-11 miles) *per second*
@nickys34 Let me check if I understood that. You're saying that the 200 billion investment in the design of the moon landing, with rocket propulsion in mind, was a complete waste of money and that they instead should've invested those funds into a better means of propulsion, which could subsequently be used for future missions. That begs the questions: What makes you think that rocket propulsion is bad? And why do you think we could've come up with a better means of propulsion with those funds?
If you have a mining operation, or something that repeats essentially the same process every mission it is cheaper to leave the chassis(Computers and engines)in orbit after every mission and have a smaller craft refuel it and let the ore drop back down to earth
Finlay Sandham it would be even more economical to use the mined material to build structures in space. You could sell the material for quite a pretty penny, so long as you make sure it's still cheaper than hauling the raw materials up there from Earth.
He means we have fully functional reusable rockets now from SpaceX, completely reusable, they land perfectly on a moving platform on the sea, get refueled and launched back. Initial prototypes did not carry that much weight however, but we have a fully working machine now. Now, they made a much heavier version that they say will transport people and goods to ISS and beyond. It works, they've done it, they proved it. Now SpaceX just needs literally some time to build the actual new designs and we're set(and more money no doubt). So yes, the moment those are released into action, disposable rockets WILL be a thing on the past 100%. Why would you waste all that money and resources when you can just refill and reuse the same rocket.
Games like this are funny and hint at our quest to comprehend the universe's 'finite-yet-unbounded' apparent magnitude. Mine is infinitely-large in infinitely-many-dimensions, lol
___________ | \ / | *Michal Laboš* 5 hours ago | o | _I have to wake up in 5 hours aaand curious droid uploads_ |__/___\_| Reply • *37* 👍 👎 Did you wake up now? it's been 5 hours.
Issues not addressed: pressurizing the fuel and oxydiser tanks would require thick walls to contain pressures greater than the engine chamber (example: 1015 psi for F-1 engine, 1410 psi for Merlin 1D) that would make it weigh a LOT, and floating in the sea would cause the addition of several thousand tons of ICE being frozen to the outer casing (LOX boils at 90'K) - that may be alleviated by having the fuel and lox in concentric tanks, with the fuel being an 'insulator' as the outer layer. Such a heavy lifter could find a purpose, as a delivery system for fuel tanks to orbit for in-space refueling.
Actually, [many aspects of] this approach are perfect to combine with another non-conventional approach, which is to send the entire first stage (or as much as possible) all the way into low orbit. Especially a rocket this huge in diameter is *INSANELY VALUABLE* in outer space... as a place for astronauts to live, for a laboratory, as a fabrication facility, or even as a large piece of a truly huge space station or space habitat. Also, the engine could become part of an interplanetary spacecraft to take humans and equipment to Mars and/or various asteroids... or equipment packages further into the solar system and perhaps even beyond the solar system. I cannot even begin to convey how valuable such a huge empty structure would be... not only the outer shell, but also the huge tanks that would hold liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen (or other fuel). Those tanks would probably be removed from the huge shell so all tanks could become parts of other structures (or a larger structure). BTW, excellent video.
It would be next to impossible to install all the life support systems needed for anybody to spend any significant time in the the structure after it was already in space, and you definitely couldn't do it before the propellant was all used up. A more interesting approach would be to send the rocket up in stages and integrate the stages in space then send the propellant up so you have a fully loaded rocket that's overcome acceleration due to Earth's gravity, from low Earth orbit a 2 stage rocket with 80 million pounds of thrust could probably get a straight line velocity of around 100km/s and still have enough propellant left to gravity assist off Jupiter. That's Pluto in 2.5 years.
Yeah, the tech is not yet there, but again long before underwater we though the same till tanks were invented. Maybe not any time soon but one day we'll make something that can do it. The aging process seems more of a concern over food and air though
This rocket is the epitome of putting all your eggs in one basket. Sure it can lift a massive load, but if one thing fails, one thing, all of that is lost. Same with the engine, if one engine fails, the rocket can normally compensate with the other engines, but this one can't. The overall cost is cheaper if we can guarantee success, but if rockets have taught me one thing, nothing is guaranteed. We are pushing the boundaries of technology, after all.
You do realise how many launch booster have exploded in spaceflight history, right? A single failure of one of these will produce astronomical economic losses...
Using the Saturn V as an example, at what point in the flight would it have been possible to continue the mission if, say, one of the first stage rocket engines failed? My guess is that, if one big rocket engine can be as reliable as one of the smaller engines used on the Saturn V, then it would be much safer to use one big one. With 5 smaller engines, the chances of one them failing is almost 5 times as high. Either that, or, with the multi engine scenario, you have to build excess performance into the system or reduce the payload.
I wish we had a better form of propulsion than chemical rockets..... Something with *_far_* higher speed potential, or considerably better fuel efficiency.
the rocket was never feasible and may not even be so today. a little known fact of rocket engine design is that as the engine gets larger, the fluid dynamics inside it get harder to control. back then without the advent computational fluid dynamcis an engine that size was impossible to make. today it would be a serious challenge and advances in fluid dynamics software are still being made that would allow to design it in a practical timeframe some day.
Florian Bösch Shit! They can't even reproduce the Saturn V today! With all the computer technology available they had to pull all the Saturn off static display and went around to all the desert junkyards and collected every piece of Saturn materials laying around!They had no idea how to make such powerful engines! Every "New"idea and development they've made since the shuttles retired have been firstly reversed engineered from the Saturn rocket system! It's embarrassing!!
squach623 !!!!! that's a stupid myth. Saturn V "can't be build" currently only because the infrastructure to make it is not present anymore. To build a Saturn V you would have to build a ton of factories first, which is just a stupid waste of money for a roclet that doesn't have much of a place in today's world.
Florian Bösch the designer looks like the Christopher walken of the space industry. so would your fluid dynamics argument hold true no mater what the design and technological advances? not trying to be stupid, but I'm interested, and we'll, stupid.
You're correct. But it's not just the fuel mixture that's a headache, it's also oscillations, corrosion, etc. that are the result of unwanted turbulence and pressures at the wrong locations. These effects do exist in smaller engines as well, but in smaller engines they can be compensated for easier than in larger ones.
What a fantastic and daring concept! This might be the way to settle on Luna and Mars, as well as spaceborn infrastructures. Truax might yet be remembered as the greatest rocket engineer ever.
@Diego Marra Low Cost Launch Vehicle, aka the "a rocket a day keeps the high costs away" philosophy of rocket design. See the resources at astronautix.com
I never knew this was really investigated. I’ve been watching it on For All Mankind. I always assumed, oh there must be some reason this wouldn’t work that I haven’t thought of yet. Glad to know I’m not losing it.
Seems like you cant read like he cant write since there are at least 10 comments pointing out that typo under this video already... Why dont you two join your forces together then? Ah I know, youre just a random kid from the internet for that bald man, at least until you give him some bucks which make him lost his shit and notice your nickname for a second. Now how sad is it for you?
Single stage to orbit? I guess somebody was checking the math on this but it's hard to see it working. With chamber pressures typically over 200bar in rocket engines the nitrogen storage tank would either have to have been at a ridiculous pressure or very, very large to maintain tank pressure as those tanks emptied. Add to that all these tanks having to be stron enough to contain those pressures AND the dynamic forces of flight and I just don't see it happening. Sure, you could use lower pressures. Try that and Tsiolkovsky rocket equation says "You will not go to space today."
"kerosene was forced into the chamber at a pressure of 32 atmospheres and liquid oxygen at 17 atmospheres. " "NASA Marshall gave the Aerojet designs to TRW for evaluation. TRW fully confirmed Aerojet's costs and engineering, a great surprise to both TRW and NASA" and me :) Thanks for the link! Interesting.
Aerojet had a test site down in Florida... the Miami area out in the swamp if I remember correctly. It had to be a water launch as it was from a pit in the ground and any pit in south Florida is water filled pretty quick. Site is still there and someone filmed it and put it up on RU-vid. Crazy idea as the chamber pressure would quickly overwhelm any gas pressurized feed system. Turbopumps might not even do it as the feedlines would have to be massive - but the fuel and oxidizer would still have to come out of small holes no bigger than a pencil in order to get good mixing for a stable burn. More likely to be a bomb than a rocket engine. See F1 instability for good historical perspective.
Scott Wheeler They never figured out why putting that baffle in fixed that issue with the F1, did they? If I recall correctly the F1 had combustion instability issues via a swirling of the gases inside the chamber. That baffle with the holes fixed it, but I remember them saying they didn't fully understand WHY that worked just that it did.
Suffices to say,... ... ... ...[spoiler alert]... ... ... ....if you’re watching For All Mankind, hang around for the post credits sequence at the end of S01E10.
Actually, while it was not intended as an ICBM I think the whole idea was that it would be capable of having multiple satellites as its payload - a bit like SpaceX's Starlink project.
This is SO brilliantly scripted! As a teacher, I appreciate the way the information naturally flows -- present a data point; data point raises questions; articulate the question; answer the question. Truly brilliant expository & explanatory work -- I bow before this demonstration of superior skill. And... Subscribed of course.
I don't think a lot of fish are going to hang out in an area where there's like 30 divers hooking things up and a nuclear sub humming away and random huge shit splashing into the water and loudspeakers and motors everywhere for hours pre-launch. They barely stick around if you talk too loudly in a rowboat...
After the Soviets collapsed so did American enthusiasm in space. Perhaps the US needed another Cold War to have the motive to go back into space... like China perhaps.
What's this guy name? He deserves love letters from all over the world because he is what humanity needs to enrich our curios minds to evolve humanity into a bright future.
Probably not an issue at the time but I suspect the pollution aspect of blasting Kerosene fuel exhaust straight in to the sea would be a problem these days. Of course if the 1st stage could be launched on Hydrogen and Oxygen fuel perhaps less so.
It'd be nothing like an oil spill. Still, some kind of cleaner synthetic or bio-sourced fuel would work too. Also, it could operate from inside an artificial lagoon, separated from the sea. Filling it with fresh clean water would help the machinery.
And here I thought that the "Sea Dragon" in For All Mankind was just a weed-induced fever-dream of some Hollywood writer. "Nobody would make a rocket that launches out of the ocean!" I'll be damned...they coulda done it.
1,1000,000 is not a number @pizzapower95. 1,000,000 is ...but you cannot have 4 digits in the hundred thousand section of the number. So choose. 11 million (11,000,000), 1.1 million (1,100,000) but you cannot have "1 million 1 thousand thousand". elementary school math man.
i thougt you where so amazed by the payload to think the numbers where wrong (like me). i didnt think that you would actually comment about a typo in a case where even a 6 year old could figure out wich number was meant.
dude... 1 million, 1.1 million and 11 million are three different numbers. I can CLEARLY tell it's a typo, but the poster should've fixed the typo...instead, they left it there. Was it because they're ignorant or because they're lazy? either way, you're investing way too much time in responding to this.
@@M4T1J4P0 true, however the big problem was none of the people making rockets at the time (rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman) didn't even know where to start with making such a massive thing shipyard or not.
Define "cheaply"? Because even at it's capacity, billions ain't cheap. It was hundreds of millions in 1962, in theory. Who can estimate what it'd cost now?
Not aware of any studies that determined the effects on marine mammals' hearing. Whales are known to ave very sensitive hearing, communicating over hundreds of miles. Before the advent of powered ships, whales might have communicated across thousands of miles, even. It seems unlikely that the sonic results from those nuke tests, from active sonar, and from hundreds of other artificial and natural sources don't damage these animals' auditory organs. I have permanent tinnitus from a single accidental exposure to compressed air release ten years ago, which must be a fraction of what would be transmitted through water. Think how anti-submarine depth-charges work.
Instead of launching directly at sea maybe make like this large artificial lake that would act as the entire sound suppression system. This would allow more people to watch the launch and preserve marine life as well
That was basically an XL Saturn. There where different versions but the C-8 would have been larger, wider and had 8 F-1 engines and 8 J-2's on the second stage. Thanks to upgraded F1's it would have had twice the thrust of the Saturn.
You don't have to use flying rocket technology any more the are all obselete and should all be scraped they have advanced technology that is far superior and safer than any rockets ever ben built on this earth
If you master the art of levitation you can lift any weight that's right any size any shape diamond shape triangular shape disks shape barrel shape round and square shape rectangular shape any shape whats so ever no wings whats so ever no wheels whats so ever no steel suport legs whats so ever ans is virtually polution free and no noise what so ever 4 mile wide 12 miles long 7 sided spacecraft and can fly in our atmosphere and space an alternative spacecraft called electromagnetic propulsion systems anti gravity wave riders that repells gravity fly from America to Australia in 20 to 30 seconds or to the moon in under three minutes
As far as assembling the IIS, it was probably a safer proposition to assemble it from 40 shuttle missions, than to put it fully assembled all inside one Sea Dragon, if it existed. If the Sea Dragon blew-up during launch, there goes the whole space station. We lost two shuttles, but if one happened to be an IIS assembly mission, only 1/40 of the IIS would have been lost and needed replacement.
Very interesting, Paul. I hadn't heard of the Sea Dragon despite being a 'space race' geek since I was a teenager in the '60s. It's always slightly annoyed me the way the Yanks talk in pounds, however many hundreds of thousands there are! Rather than a 1,100,00 pound payload, 550 tons is much more meaningful to me. Likewise with their aircraft weights. E.g. 660,00 lb max take off weight for the B-777 - huh? 330 tons - aha! I suppose we should be grateful they don't tell us that it's 12,912,081 feet from New York to Los Angeles. {:-) Very much enjoy your channel. Cheers from DownUnder.
Great video. Great voice for narrating. I had never heard of this rocket until I watched this video. Too bad it couldn't be launched just for the heck of it.
This channel is pretty cool. I find it hard to believe that this idea wasn't tried. It seems like a barn door engineering approach to rocketry compared to the ultra light, high tech, high price equipment that was used instead. Kerosene is relatively and hydrogen is "free" when you have a Nimitz aircraft carrier hanging around. If there is less land based infrastructure to maintain and if the actual craft is cheaper to make.. then it makes sense.
It may have been impractical in the 60s, but a rocket that big, capable of carrying hundreds of tons of payload would make possible to build not only a space station way cheaper than it cost to build the ISS, but also a spaceship big enough to carry humans between Earth and Mars orbits, and the required supplies for a year and a half long mission
If there is a secret space force, why are they still fooling around With rockets that should have Went out in the 50's, when i was Reading science fiction about Them.
1.1m lbs is 498.95 tonnes.... he wanted to explain, but didnt know how to use a simpler method... just want to make the video more interesting for dumb people.
I am going to be in the office tomorrow and the rest of the week and I will be there in a minute Iu to be get it to done by then tomorrow I will call me back when you in a minute few minutes to talk when we you are doing a high of a call with them MVC might have to do a lot more new one and