The Biggest Rocket ever Designed? - The Sea Dragon
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- Опубликовано: 1 апр 2017
- In the history of space, one rocket stands out as an icon of not only the space race but of the mighty power it symbolised.
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At 1:00 there is a spelling mistake showing the payload as 1,1000,000lb this, of course, should be 1,100,000 lbs.
That one rocket, which is still the Tallest, heaviest and most powerful ever built, was the Saturn V, which was designed to take men to the moon and later launched the first American Space station, Skylab.
But if things had been a little different back in the 60’s we might have had a different rocket to hang on the bedroom walls of the space fans of the 70’s and 80’s.
In the early 1960’s, a rocket was designed which made the Saturn V look small comparison.
This was the Sea Dragon, a super heavy lift rocket that would have been 10 times more powerful with 80 Million lb’s of thrust compared to the Saturn’s 7.8 million and that was from just one massive engine.
It was designed to lift a payload of 1,100,000 lbs into orbit, compared to the 310,000 lbs of the Saturn V. This meant it could have lifted an entire space station into Low Earth Orbit in one mission.
The rocket bell of this single engine would be so large at 75 feet in diameter, that you could fit the entire first stage of a Saturn V with all 5 of its F1 engines inside with room to spare.
So what happened to the Sea Dragon and why didn’t it get built ?.
At the time of the design in 1962, it was thought that by the 1970’s, 80’s and beyond, thousands of people would be working in space and on the moon, even on Mars and as such, rockets with huge lifting capabilities would have been in great demand as they would dramatically lower the cost of getting materials into space.
The sea dragon was designed by Robert Truax, a US Navy Captain and Rocket engineer. He was one of the pioneers of American rocketry and worked on the Thor and Polaris missiles amongst others. His team debriefed the German Rocket engineers at the end of World War 2 including Werner Von Braun who went on to design the Saturn V.
Traux believed it was complexity that drove up the cost of rockets and not their size. His designs for the Sea Dragon were very simple but very big. The sea dragon would have been 75 ft in diameter and 500ft tall, half the Hight of Chrysler building.....
Schematics and drawings of the Sea Dragon used with permission of aerospaceprojectsreview.com 
Наука
So you basically build a large submarine, tow it off shore, fuel it with an aircraft carrier, then shoot it into space? Awesome!
With thinking like that, we should have a flying car and holidays on the moon by now. What happened?
@@FourSeasonsHD is a mix of truth and bs mate
Your summary makes it clear why this was designed by a Navy engineer.
no rocket fuel, nuke engine
@@FourSeasonsHD Vietnam and LBJ's "Great Society" programs needed the money more according to Congress.
"biggest rocket ever designed"
Nothing compared to my 150 story rocket I drew at age 5
xD i thought i was the only one who did that (2)
xD i thought i was the only one who did that (3)
xD i thought i was the only one who did that (6)
😂😂😂😂😂 Holy shit I laughed at that..... Well done sir!
not as big as my fire cock
Don’t worry she’s remembered in “For All Mankind” the TV miniseries.
I love the little details in that show like that, when they showed the sea dragon launching I was like “AYOOOOOO THATS THE BIG BOY”
That was an awesome scene
"See... Another day in the office" Edward Baldwin
i just love that it looks so small before liftoff and you wach it grow bigger and bigger after it comes out of the water more and more
Amazing show.
I wish the world continued to look toward the stars with the same level of ambition we had in the 60’s. We could have achieved so much.
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 100% this.
@@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.
“No price too high” space edict from president was inaccurately quoted as “No, price too high” and NASA has never been the same.
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
And now we're at the age where even our phones could hold up to a terabyte of data. Oh, how far we've come.
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.
Yes, we'd quickly fill it up with 1,000 tons of porn and wishing we'd bought a bigger rocket.
I have now a pile of 64MB Floppy disks on my desk to remember the good times...
Space Shuttle: I can build your ISS in 20-30 launches..
Sea Dragon: Hold my beer..
ha ha ha, excellent, made my day !
the never planned X-55 Kiryliev: keep talking B R U H S
Rather, "Hold my tanker!"
Falcon Heavy: I can build your ISS in 8 launches.
Saturn V: I can build your ISS in 4 launches.
*hold my 1 engine
"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]
Likewise.. the moment when I realised just what it was that I was about to see on the screen.. just wow...
That's an awesome show, I can't wait for season 2!
Hell yeah same!
ok
Which episode?
"It was thought by the mid 70s, there would hundreds possibly thousands of people working in space."
Me: 😭
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.
2021, no new moon landing :(
This proves that space is truly almost insurmountable.
haha we have youtube shorts
@@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.
"however, there were problems in making such a huge rocket"
YOU DON'T SAY
NHRA
What?
Materials, fuel, weight and probs a lot more
Lonny Clark.
@@idk5676 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
I love the way this guy presents his information in a normal, conversational tone without too much drama. Really easy to watch.
“why didn’t it get built”
beacause congress forgot a few 0s in nasa’s budget
I mean the whole point of Sea Dragon was that it was cheap to make and build, the most expensive thing would be the fuel itself and payload.
@@Eshanas That was the problem. No-one needed to put a 1,100,000 lb satellite into orbit.
And they didn’t download TweraScale
@@DaveF. Launch the entire ISS in one launch, plus a couple of modules extra.
@@00chla50 Not a lot of sense in developing an entirely new, massive booster for a single mission.
Watch the after-credit scene of "For all mankind" S1E10 :)
@LaughToMouth actually, the designer died in 2010
Me too
Truax was my great-grandfather. I enjoyed your concise review of this rocket.
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!
James Barnard Wow really cool story! Sounds like you’ve had an exciting career. Thanks for sharing! -Jim
Christopher Michaelson He was my Dad. We must be related somehow!
No he wasn't. You are LYING.
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
In an alternative universe where the Sea Dragon was used to get to the Moon, Curious Droid made this video about Saturn V instead
Hugo the sea dragon would probably not be able to carry humans as the G-force on launch would be to much for a human to survive
@@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.
tubeist- dan look up the Russian photon it is similar to this
Then after that? Launching ship in size of MC80 in Star Wars from sea? 😂
@@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.
In the alternate history of the TV series "For All Mankind" the Sea Dragon is shown. Very cool visuals
Very cool that “For All Mankind” pulled this rocket out of the closest for next season.
Largest ever designed?
I think Jebediah Kerman might have something to say about that.
FieryWingedAngel His rocket is 100k sea dragon rockets put together on top and boosters are 70 space launch system rockets
Lol but isn't jebediah the pilot? Would it be monvonhor Kerman be the one to Mahe something to say about that
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!
FieryWingedAngel yeah
Damn right XD
I'm a rocket nerd and I didn't know anything about this monster! But now I do, great video.
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)
Did I stop what?
Uh lol I don't even know what I said. Corrected it lol.
But the Saturn V *IS* the most powerful rocket ever launched in terms of payload and total impulse and overall size.
No . SOVIET ''N-1'' IS THE MOST POWERFUL ROCKET EVER LAUNCED, BUT IT BLOW-AWAY AFTER 49 SEC.
6:25 ohhhh so that’s why there was an aircraft carrier at the end credits in For All Mankind.
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.
Sea Dragon: *starts engine*
Every fish in a 500 mile radius: Why do I hear boss music?
The vid just ended and I saw the views counter go from 2.2M to 2.3M. I didn't know I had such power!
You should have bought a lottery ticket.
2.6m now!!
"You have been given great power, my son. Use it wisely."
Try to focus on my bank-account!
looks like friends of NASA's videos have this type of counters LMFAO
looks like something I'd make in kerbal space program
4:40 and someone _did_ make it in KSP
Just use the tweakscale mod on the Vector engine and Kerbodyne tanks and you're good to go.
NEXTER: GO HOME, JEB, UR DRUNK
JEB: I SMOKED ROCKET FUEL
NEXTER: WTF?!
BOOM
I9
Killing all submarine life around, you forgot to mention..
Wat?
Submarine life😂
A legendary seafood buffet for a legendary rocket launch
@@areaperleviathanthatcantal8588 sub meaning life below the ocean's surface
Not at point nemo of You do not now what that is look iT up
7:15 Well, we have starship, and it's bigger than the Saturn V, good predictions lol
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've been a space fan since the 60s too when LSD and magic mushrooms were available. Shrooms, we called them. Went to the Moon and Mars MANY times.
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.
WARPHEAD Awesome.
Thanks for your interesting story! Building some proper rockets is something I still want to do as well before I'm too old.
Damn sounds awesome. Working on some rockets is in my stuff to do list
pretty awesome for a kid-
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...
Love you bringing obscure vintage space information to my awareness through your RUclips channel!
165db from 5mi away? psht, that's nothing. You should hear my mum waking me up in the morning
dragonage200 i do every morning you should hear the other things she does 😎
Well get yer ass to school! Then you can build or fly them!
@KGB2101 Same, the way I sorted out the noise problems with my kids was a basement and a gag
I have to wake up in 5 hours aaand curious droid uploads
haha same
___________
| \ / | *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.
5 hours... cute.
Yup, just woke up
Michal Laboš good morning!
i like ur acting in Game of Thrones
haha
Hodor
Made me laugh,thank you.
Marjan Perveinis
Gee thanks Captain Obvious! Do you fly around here often??? :D
if there was intelligent life, the master of whispers would know about it
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
I just love this video.
I’ve watched it many times.
This would have been amazing to see fly.
Someone start a gofundme page for a sea dragon.
@nickys34 it was about 20 billion in 60's money, maybe 100 billion today. My new car was 3400 then, probably 34,000 today so factor of ten, maybe.
@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 you’ve been brainwashed sorry
@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?
Nice video as always
1:04 Theres a typo in the in the amount to punds the payload can lift , it says 1,1000,000 when it is supposed to be 1,100,000
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?
@@Weisior geez dude were just pointing this out no need to be so negative.
@@Weisior - you mad, princess? You are? It’s ok.. just put your Dora The Explorer diaper on and don’t shit yourself again.
Thanks. Sea Dragon has long been close to my heart, along with all LCLVs.
@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
Neat concept. I was always a fan of the Big Dumb Booster concept.
BFR. B ig F ucking Rocket is better.
0:56 "1,1000,000 1 million 100 thousand :0" somebody made a typo
He says, "One million, one thousand pounds..." which makes it worse. 1,1000,000 lol
1,001,000 is what it should've been.
@@SergeantSquared No, he said "One million, one hundred thousand...".
@@bobason456 you're right
My all-time favorite Curious Droid blooper.
You have clarity. ...A good riveting story teller
Fantastic video chap many thanks. Just found your channel. Will be on a morning hangover binge watch 👍🏻
I just found your site and REALLY find it compelling! Bravo!
Your videos are amazing sir,
I tip my hat to you.
I’ve always really loved this project, the solution is just so simple yet elegant.
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.
This is one of the most enlightening rocket videos on YT. I got a sense of gratification due to having thought of the water launch concept on my own too. If I ever start a rocket company. This will be my go to in place of very expensive ground facilities and equipment. There's so many advantages it's almost dumb.
"A monster of an engine for heavy lifting purposes, the Mainsail's power rivals that of entire small nations."
For All Mankind...s01 e10 end of tittres: Year 1983... Sea Dragon lounch!!!!
Yes! Just saw that too and it was awesome!
It'll be fun too see how they will depict it further!
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.
1:22
The first stage of the Saturn V goes up to the 2nd black part, not the first
I think they were referring to all 5 power plants fitting in the motor bell but you are correct.
"spice race" :D
esfin z same here hahahaha
Control the spice, control the universe.
The 1800's space race: the SPICE race lol
It would be funny if he exaggerated his accent because he thinks 'it's cool'.
Muad'Dib!
As per usual another brilliant video, thanks for that,entertaining and informative
Thanks for your space videos. Thanks for your work.
......................... Am I the only aerospace engineer here who thought this was not even physically possible!??
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.
Wheatley they said nuclear rocket engines weren't possible either...
Truax designed Evel Kneivel's Snake River Canyon rocket...
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.
I just designed one 3 feet taller...
MIne's 1 foot taller than yours using my new design using my new pencil.
Mine is 1.1x more powerful than all of yours.
Well, my rocket is so big it has its own rocket, and my rockets rocket is bigger than your rocket.
Mine's 76 feet in diameter.
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
One video of this rocket in my recommend and I can’t stop learning about it
All your videos are great!
So the project might be revived once the space mining and refining corporations get into action?
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.
Nah, disposable rockets are a thing of the past
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.
Now I'm picturing a Sea Dragon with *WEYLAND-YUTANI CORP* painted on the side. :P
Thank you for being so informative. Interesting, as well.
As usual great content, very informative. Great shirt as well.
Absolutely fascinating. Great video. I hope that this is something will come to fruition. I’m surprised that space x haven’t tried this out.
WOOOOO KSP!
nah...more boosters!
you still need more struts!! more = better! rocket science man
Did anyone notice 4:40? It was literally just ksp gameplay with the HUD turned off!
JEB, UR FIRED!
JEB: DANGBRO
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.
Actually, blah blah blah..find a new starting word
That's a pretty good idea
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
That reminds me of the plan to construct a space station out of all the orange fuel tanks from the space shuttle.
Thank you Paul. Outstanding content, as always.
Absolutely loved this episode! Thank you
Superb videos. Thoroughly informative and well produced. Thank you for sharing!
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.
If every human being was negative and expecting failure at every turn we would still be living in caves.
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.
You've got your logic on backwards, the more parts the more points of failure.
I wish we had a better form of propulsion than chemical rockets.....
Something with *_far_* higher speed potential, or considerably better fuel efficiency.
Fasinating as ever. I'd never heard of this rocket nor the idea of water-based launches of this type. Excellent.
Great video.. thanks for making and sharing
Ya know funny enough this just happened to pop up in my recommended after watching the last episode of season 1 of For All Mankind.
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.
I... Kinda love this guy's way of explaining things!!!
I like your narration. As always.
4:40 Looks like KSP is much more helpful at demonstrating what the launch would've looked like.
Very nice explanation.. fascinating story.
Laurence Vanhelsuwe to be a part of the team
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
Nice video thanks for the info
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.
Damn, Imagine the Throw-Weight this would've carried? 100s of high and low-yeild MIRVs.
Who says we havent
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.
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.
David Green You know what would make that rocket better!???? MORE COWBELL!!!!!!!!
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.
Man the reason I love you videos is cuz I actually learn new shit. :)
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.
"That's the second biggest arrow I've ever seen."
-Get Smart
I used to be an astronaut like you, but then when I was on the arrow, I banged my knee.
Suffices to say,...
...
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...[spoiler alert]...
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....if you’re watching For All Mankind, hang around for the post credits sequence at the end of S01E10.
David Harrison oh yeah boi!
So cool. I couldn't stop laughing. Insane :)
I marvel your educational series
Warm and hearty wishes to you
Wish you keep making such beautiful and well researched videos
Excellent vlog. Always interesting. :-)
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."
Its a two stage launch vehicle. www.astronautix.com/s/seadragon.html
"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 RUclips. 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.
Reminds me of BFR.
Very good. Good job :)
Enlightening! Thank you!
1,1000,000 lbs? you have an extra zero there guy...
no thats correct. i know it sounds insane but the saturn 5 had 260,000 lbs
and this ting is mutch larger.
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.
Speaking of 6 year olds, your typing is really coming along, pizzapower! Keep at it!
How many lawyers can it send to Mars, presuming a crash-landing? Could it haul away all of them, in a single mission?
What happen the ex-wife and her lawyer take all your money?
@@privatebubba8876 Nawww, I'm good. She wanted my money so I never married her.
Love your work! Love the shirt!
thank you, sir, very much, for a very informative and intelligent upload.
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.
khaled Al Rashidi. Russia already has one. They call it satan II. It can evaporate an area the size of Texas.
It looks like something my kid drew
Imagine the sound underwater you would probably deafin the entire sea population with one takeoff
I love Sea Dragon. I've incorporated something inspired by it into my worldbuilding project. I named it LaCIE, or Large Cargo, Interplanetary Engine. It works just like the Sea Dragon would but the 2nd stage has three sci-fi handwavium nuclear torch drives which it uses to make the final push to orbit, and then is sold as an interplanetary freighter engine.
Elon recently tweeted about a 60 foot diameter Starship 2.0 concept rocket. This would be approaching Sea Dragon size.
In the future Musk should definitely make occasional nods to the Sea Dragon, and if possible surpass its size with Starship 2.0.
How about ITS 1.0 , huh ?
The spice must flow! This rocket could haul eleventy million pounds of spice from Arrakis if it had been built.
aaa so you're from the space guild i see.
picked on the accent too haha
The Mentats conspired to keep it from being built.
Larpgasm NO, IT WIL MAEK ALIENZ SMOKE SPAEC MARIJUANA
LOL THE SPICE MUST FLOW!
Congratulations! Great video! Seems that the rocket will be featured on For All Mankind season 2....
Awesome video