Super technology leader

Ever since humanity invented rockets, people have never been satisfied with their payload capacity, always wanting greater capabilities, which has led to rockets becoming increasingly large.

From rockets that could initially be hauled away by trucks to the Saturn V, which dominated the rocket field for a long time, humanity embarked on a path of giant spectacle worship.

In fact, the Saturn V was not the largest rocket ever designed by the Americans. In the rocket design blueprints from that era of frantic space race, there were rockets even more violent than the Saturn V.

This behemoth was 150 meters tall and 23 meters in diameter. The massive Saturn V paled in comparison; placing them side by side would be like comparing a strong man to a malnourished child.

Its name was 'Sea Dragon'.

The Sea Dragon rocket had an astonishing payload capacity of 550 tons to a 566 km circular orbit, about 4 times the payload of the Saturn V super-heavy rocket.

With huge carrying capacity comes huge launch weight, so the Sea Dragon rocket, with a launch weight of approximately 18,000 tons, became the largest super rocket in terms of mass and payload among all rockets with complete design demonstrations to date.

The super weight of 18,000 tons after fueling made it impossible to stand upright on land, so it had to be built horizontally in a shipyard like a submarine.

Its huge internal propellant tanks could provide buoyancy, allowing it to float on the water and be towed by tugboats to the launch site, which was a calm sea area.

Its first-stage engine nozzle was equipped with a huge ballast water tank, which, when filled with water, would allow it to stand upright in the seawater.

The Sea Dragon rocket's first stage would ignite directly in the sea, and after shocking a bunch of marine life to death, the first stage would send the second stage out of the water. Then, four small engines on the outer wall of the second stage would ignite to stabilize the rocket's vertical ascent until the entire rocket body was out of the water.

Despite its enormous size and seemingly clumsy appearance, it was actually equipped with an inflatable airbag deceleration recovery system, unlike the Saturn V, which was discarded after use.

The first-stage rocket used spherical fuel tanks that could be embedded in the second-stage engine nozzle to save space, and after separating from the second-stage rocket body, it would deploy inflatable airbags to decelerate.

Its second-stage rocket engine did not actually have a dedicated nozzle. After the first-stage rocket separated, the 'rocket body' that encased the first stage served as the nozzle.

The rocket body expanded outwards, forming a flared opening, which was the engine nozzle.

After the second-stage rocket finished firing, it would use the blunt-nose design commonly used in manned return capsules to resist the heat during re-entry into the atmosphere, and then deploy inflatable airbags to decelerate after re-entering the atmosphere.

The recovery of both the first and second stages involved splashing down in the sea, and then using a ship to tow them back to the rocket factory for maintenance, and finally reuse.

At the time, its design team believed that significantly increasing the rocket's payload was just icing on the cake, and that reusing the rocket body was the most important factor in reducing launch costs.

From today's perspective, this idea is very correct.

By the way, the Sea Dragon also had a way to reduce costs, which was that it did not need to build a special launch tower, because it couldn't stand on it even if it was built. Launching directly from the sea saved this part of the money.

But...

Don't think the Sea Dragon rocket is so awesome and advanced. In fact, it is truly crude and massive, and could definitely be built with the technology of the time.

After fueling, its weight would reach 18,000 tons, but its first-stage rocket did not use multiple engines stacked together for thrust; it only used one engine.

So, the characteristic of the Sea Dragon rocket was that the engine nozzle was larger than the fuel tank, extremely huge!

This engine eliminated almost all consideration for the word 'efficiency,' and simply increased thrust through 'volume stacking,' allowing the Sea Dragon rocket's first stage single engine to have nearly 36,000 tons of thrust!!

Its insane thrust was 50 times greater than the thrust of the F-1 engine used in the first stage of the Saturn V!

The second-stage single engine thrust also reached 6,400 tons, which was 60 times that of the J-2 engine used in the second stage of the Saturn V!

However, because of the extremely simple engine structure, its enormous thrust also made it extremely wasteful of fuel.

Note, not using, but wasting.

That's why it weighed 18,000 tons after being filled with fuel, and some of that fuel was for it to 'waste'.

Fortunately, its estimated research and launch costs were very attractive.

The transportation price at the time was about $67 per kilogram, which is equivalent to about $575 per kilogram today.

This is very attractive data, after all, Elon Musk's Falcon reusable rocket's ultimate transportation price target is only $1411 per kilogram, and it wasn't cheap when it first started using it, it only started to decrease after many uses.

In fact, the attractive price per kilogram of the Sea Dragon rocket was based on 240 launches.

But even according to the original idea of the Space Shuttle, launching the Sea Dragon rocket once a month would be a launch estimate of up to 20 years.

However, during the space race, there was no project that required such frequent launches. The only thing that might have come close was simultaneous space station construction and Mars exploration missions, but obviously the American space agency could not have the funds to carry out these two projects at the same time.

Later, the Americans even canceled the Apollo 18 and 19 manned lunar landing missions because they were mired in the quagmire of the rainforest war, and there was no money to invest in Mars exploration missions.

Similarly, there was no similar demand for commercial launches. Even the largest satellite that humans send into geostationary orbit only weighs a few tons, which does not require its super carrying capacity of several hundred tons at all.

Later, people calculated that if the Sea Dragon rocket was drastically reduced to launching 4 times a year, its price would skyrocket to $5776 per kilogram, which is about $46,000 today.

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This price is outrageous. You should know that the calculated freight per kilogram when the Space Shuttle was retired was only $18,000, which is more than twice that.

And one of the reasons for the Space Shuttle's retirement was that the price not only did not decrease as expected, but became more and more expensive.

The Sea Dragon rocket is more expensive than it, how can it be used?

In fact, the Sea Dragon rocket's demonstration team also overlooked another factor that was originally controllable, namely fuel costs.

Although offshore launch can save the construction and operation costs of auxiliary buildings, it also means that there are no large storage tanks for storing fuel and oxidizer.

Moreover, the thermal conductivity of water is much greater than that of air, so the Sea Dragon rocket's liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen cannot be filled at the dock, otherwise it will evaporate almost completely when towed to the launch site.

The Sea Dragon rocket's fuel tank does not have any high-end insulation devices, everything is simplified.

In addition, liquid hydrogen is not an easy fuel to transport. In the era of demonstrating Sea Dragon technology, the technology of special liquid hydrogen transport ships was not yet mature, so the only solution at the time was to electrolyze seawater 'on the spot' at the launch site to generate liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

However, that method was extremely time-consuming and extremely energy-intensive, and ordinary ships simply could not supply that much energy.

Therefore, the technical team at the time also admitted that if the Sea Dragon rocket wanted to launch, it would have to be assisted by a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, because only the nuclear reactor of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier could provide enough energy to complete the production of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in a reasonable amount of time.

This...

This design that abandons fuel utilization in pursuit of extreme thrust, although it has an original recovery system, it just happened to become the Sea Dragon rocket's 'Achilles' heel', coupled with various factors, the Sea Dragon rocket finally remained on the paper design drawing.

Even though it's a super behemoth.

Even though, from the design, it really can fly.