1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,490
In the history of space, one rocket

2
00:00:02,490 --> 00:00:04,500
stands out as an icon not only at the

3
00:00:04,500 --> 00:00:07,410
space race but also as the mighty power

4
00:00:07,410 --> 00:00:10,800
is symbolized, that one rocket which is

5
00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:12,450
still the tallest, heaviest and most

6
00:00:12,449 --> 00:00:15,029
powerful ever built was the Saturn V

7
00:00:15,029 --> 00:00:17,759
and was designed to take men to the moon

8
00:00:17,760 --> 00:00:20,429
and later launched to the first American

9
00:00:20,429 --> 00:00:23,309
space station Skylab but if things have

10
00:00:23,309 --> 00:00:24,599
been a little bit different back in the

11
00:00:24,600 --> 00:00:26,939
1960s we might have had a different

12
00:00:26,939 --> 00:00:29,039
rocket to hang on the bedroom walls of

13
00:00:29,039 --> 00:00:32,429
the space fans of the 70s and 80s. In the

14
00:00:32,429 --> 00:00:35,100
early 1960s a rocket was designed that

15
00:00:35,100 --> 00:00:37,920
made the Saturn V looks small by

16
00:00:37,920 --> 00:00:40,710
comparison. This was called the sea

17
00:00:40,710 --> 00:00:43,289
dragon a super heavy lift rocket that

18
00:00:43,289 --> 00:00:45,689
would have been ten times more powerful

19
00:00:45,689 --> 00:00:47,729
with 80 million pounds of thrust

20
00:00:47,729 --> 00:00:51,328
compared to the Saturns 7.8 million and

21
00:00:51,329 --> 00:00:56,250
that was from just one massive engine. It

22
00:00:56,250 --> 00:00:58,198
was designed to lift a payload of 1,100,000 lbs

23
00:00:58,198 --> 00:01:01,259
into

24
00:01:01,259 --> 00:01:03,238
orbit compared to the

25
00:01:03,238 --> 00:01:05,969
310,000 lbs  of a Saturn V.  This

26
00:01:05,969 --> 00:01:07,679
meant but it could have lifted an entire

27
00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:11,130
space station into low-earth orbit in

28
00:01:11,129 --> 00:01:14,429
one mission. The rocket bell of this

29
00:01:14,430 --> 00:01:17,939
single engine would be so large at 75

30
00:01:17,938 --> 00:01:20,219
feet in diameter that you could fit the

31
00:01:20,219 --> 00:01:22,950
entire first stage of a Saturn V with

32
00:01:22,950 --> 00:01:25,829
all five of it's F-1 engines inside with

33
00:01:25,829 --> 00:01:28,109
room to spare. So what happened to the

34
00:01:28,109 --> 00:01:31,618
Sea Dragon a why didn't it get built. At

35
00:01:31,618 --> 00:01:34,290
the time of a design in 1962 it was

36
00:01:34,290 --> 00:01:36,900
thought by the 1970s, 80s and beyond

37
00:01:36,900 --> 00:01:39,299
thousands of people would be working in

38
00:01:39,299 --> 00:01:42,270
space and on the moon even on Mars and

39
00:01:42,269 --> 00:01:44,728
as such rockets with huge lifting

40
00:01:44,728 --> 00:01:46,679
capabilities would have been in great

41
00:01:46,680 --> 00:01:48,000
demand because they would have

42
00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:50,219
dramatically lower the cost of getting

43
00:01:50,219 --> 00:01:53,399
materials into space. The Sea Dragon was

44
00:01:53,399 --> 00:01:56,218
designed by Robert Truax,  a US Navy

45
00:01:56,218 --> 00:01:58,919
Captain and rocket engineer. He was one

46
00:01:58,920 --> 00:02:01,079
of the pioneers of American rocketry and

47
00:02:01,078 --> 00:02:03,419
worked on the Thor and Polaris missiles

48
00:02:03,420 --> 00:02:04,750
amongst others.

49
00:02:04,750 --> 00:02:07,000
His team debriefed the German rocket

50
00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:08,618
engineers at the end of World War II

51
00:02:08,618 --> 00:02:11,650
including Verner von Braun who went on

52
00:02:11,650 --> 00:02:14,800
to design the Saturn V.  Truax believed

53
00:02:14,800 --> 00:02:17,290
that it was complexity that drove up the

54
00:02:17,289 --> 00:02:20,199
cost of rockets and not their size. His

55
00:02:20,199 --> 00:02:22,780
designs for the Sea Dragon made it very

56
00:02:22,780 --> 00:02:26,469
simple yet very large. The Sea Dragon

57
00:02:26,469 --> 00:02:29,709
would have been 75 feet in diameter and

58
00:02:29,709 --> 00:02:33,039
500 feet tall, half the height of the

59
00:02:33,039 --> 00:02:36,310
Chrysler Building. This type of low-cost

60
00:02:36,310 --> 00:02:39,129
super heavy rocket is now known as a big

61
00:02:39,129 --> 00:02:41,650
dumb booster due to its simplistic

62
00:02:41,650 --> 00:02:43,930
design. Instead of having very

63
00:02:43,930 --> 00:02:46,330
complicated turbo pump driven engines

64
00:02:46,330 --> 00:02:48,910
like the Saturn's, his were the simplest

65
00:02:48,909 --> 00:02:51,849
possible design for a rocket engine. In

66
00:02:51,849 --> 00:02:54,340
place of having powerful fuel pumps to

67
00:02:54,340 --> 00:02:56,560
push huge amounts of rocket fuel and

68
00:02:56,560 --> 00:02:58,840
oxidizer into the engine, he proposed a

69
00:02:58,840 --> 00:03:01,270
pressure fed system with a separate

70
00:03:01,270 --> 00:03:03,850
liquid nitrogen tank to pressurize the

71
00:03:03,849 --> 00:03:06,400
fuel tanks. This would push the fuel into

72
00:03:06,400 --> 00:03:09,069
the massive combustion chamber. His

73
00:03:09,069 --> 00:03:11,289
engines were literally not much more

74
00:03:11,289 --> 00:03:13,060
than the valve to turn on the fuel and

75
00:03:13,060 --> 00:03:15,819
the huge engine bell. This would make

76
00:03:15,819 --> 00:03:17,319
them not only much cheaper to

77
00:03:17,319 --> 00:03:19,840
manufacture but more reliable and much

78
00:03:19,840 --> 00:03:22,599
easier to refurbish and reuse unlike the

79
00:03:22,599 --> 00:03:25,090
f-1 engines of a Saturn which were left

80
00:03:25,090 --> 00:03:27,459
to crash into the sea and be discarded.

81
00:03:27,459 --> 00:03:30,099
The rocket would be of a two-stage

82
00:03:30,099 --> 00:03:32,650
design the first stage would lift it to

83
00:03:32,650 --> 00:03:34,930
a height of 130,000 feet before it

84
00:03:34,930 --> 00:03:37,180
separated and then fell back into the

85
00:03:37,180 --> 00:03:40,599
sea using drag bags to slow its impact

86
00:03:40,599 --> 00:03:42,609
with the water, where it would then be

87
00:03:42,610 --> 00:03:46,480
recovered for reuse. Although the design

88
00:03:46,479 --> 00:03:48,399
was much less efficient than a Saturn,

89
00:03:48,400 --> 00:03:51,159
the overall increase in size made up

90
00:03:51,159 --> 00:03:53,259
that shortfall so in theory it would be

91
00:03:53,259 --> 00:03:55,120
much cheaper per pound of payload

92
00:03:55,120 --> 00:03:57,430
compared to smaller rocket systems even

93
00:03:57,430 --> 00:04:00,790
ones the size of a Saturn. However there

94
00:04:00,789 --> 00:04:02,709
are problems in making such a huge

95
00:04:02,709 --> 00:04:05,469
rocket firstly just transporting the parts

96
00:04:05,469 --> 00:04:07,389
let alone the fully assembled version.

97
00:04:07,389 --> 00:04:10,389
This together with the 80 million pounds

98
00:04:10,389 --> 00:04:13,129
of thrust meant but it could not be launched from land.

99
00:04:13,129 --> 00:04:15,740
This amount of thrust would have

100
00:04:15,740 --> 00:04:19,069
destroyed any existing launch pad. It's

101
00:04:19,069 --> 00:04:20,779
estimated that the noise level at

102
00:04:20,779 --> 00:04:23,569
takeoff would have been around 165

103
00:04:23,569 --> 00:04:27,199
decibels, five miles away or the

104
00:04:27,199 --> 00:04:29,629
equivalent of standing next to a 5,000

105
00:04:29,629 --> 00:04:32,120
horsepower top fuel dragster at full

106
00:04:32,120 --> 00:04:34,579
throttle. Then there was the exhaust

107
00:04:34,579 --> 00:04:36,889
plume this would have been up to one

108
00:04:36,889 --> 00:04:40,039
mile long. For these reasons the Sea

109
00:04:40,040 --> 00:04:42,470
Dragon would have been launched at sea, hence the name.

110
00:04:42,470 --> 00:04:44,720
Not from a floating platform

111
00:04:44,720 --> 00:04:48,200
but from beneath the water. Now this is

112
00:04:48,199 --> 00:04:50,300
not as mad as it seems and there have

113
00:04:50,300 --> 00:04:52,220
been examples of sea launch rockets

114
00:04:52,220 --> 00:04:56,510
before and after. In 2002 a low-cost sea

115
00:04:56,509 --> 00:04:58,339
launch rocket delivery system called the

116
00:04:58,339 --> 00:05:00,619
Aquarius with a very similar design to

117
00:05:00,620 --> 00:05:02,959
the Sea Dragon but much smaller was

118
00:05:02,959 --> 00:05:05,659
proposed to deliver consumables in to

119
00:05:05,660 --> 00:05:07,460
low-earth orbit for supplying things

120
00:05:07,459 --> 00:05:09,379
like the space station but failed to

121
00:05:09,379 --> 00:05:11,629
get selected. Then there was the US Navy

122
00:05:11,629 --> 00:05:13,550
which also did research into floating

123
00:05:13,550 --> 00:05:15,860
launch rockets and found that the

124
00:05:15,860 --> 00:05:18,379
take-off or smoother and less stressful

125
00:05:18,379 --> 00:05:20,300
on the rocket than that of a normal

126
00:05:20,300 --> 00:05:22,730
land-based takeoff. And if you're

127
00:05:22,730 --> 00:05:24,980
wondering why the water doesn't put out

128
00:05:24,980 --> 00:05:27,110
the flames it's because the rocket has

129
00:05:27,110 --> 00:05:29,629
its own liquid oxygen supply just like

130
00:05:29,629 --> 00:05:30,889
the Rockets that work in space where

131
00:05:30,889 --> 00:05:33,319
there is no air and the thrust just

132
00:05:33,319 --> 00:05:35,240
blows the water out of the engine bell.

133
00:05:35,240 --> 00:05:37,939
In fact the sea makes an excellent

134
00:05:37,939 --> 00:05:40,459
launch platform as it's indestructible

135
00:05:40,459 --> 00:05:42,649
it requires very little in the way of

136
00:05:42,649 --> 00:05:44,659
support systems which makes it very

137
00:05:44,660 --> 00:05:47,450
cheap, it also provides excellent shock

138
00:05:47,449 --> 00:05:49,579
and noise oppression and even allowing

139
00:05:49,579 --> 00:05:51,979
for a slight swell, the density of water

140
00:05:51,980 --> 00:05:53,930
helps guide to rock it up in the initial

141
00:05:53,930 --> 00:05:56,389
moments of lift off till it the exits of

142
00:05:56,389 --> 00:05:59,779
water. As part of a low-cost build and

143
00:05:59,779 --> 00:06:02,149
the size of Sea Dragon, it would have

144
00:06:02,149 --> 00:06:04,159
been built in a shipyard a bit like a

145
00:06:04,160 --> 00:06:07,100
submarine from commonly used materials

146
00:06:07,100 --> 00:06:09,110
including aluminium, sheet nickel steel

147
00:06:09,110 --> 00:06:11,360
and stainless steel for the engine Bell.

148
00:06:11,360 --> 00:06:13,520
It would have then been floated into

149
00:06:13,519 --> 00:06:15,799
position and fueled allowing it to sink

150
00:06:15,800 --> 00:06:17,750
so that just the top was sticking out of

151
00:06:17,750 --> 00:06:19,819
water and it would have been supported

152
00:06:19,819 --> 00:06:21,319
by flotation tanks under

153
00:06:21,319 --> 00:06:24,259
rocket. one idea was to use a nuclear

154
00:06:24,259 --> 00:06:26,449
aircraft carrier to provide the power to

155
00:06:26,449 --> 00:06:28,969
electrolyze the sea water to make the

156
00:06:28,970 --> 00:06:31,940
hydrogen and oxygen rocket fuel, although

157
00:06:31,939 --> 00:06:33,529
the first stage would have been powered

158
00:06:33,529 --> 00:06:37,129
by RP1 or Kerosene and oxygen, the second

159
00:06:37,129 --> 00:06:39,439
stage was powered by hydrogen and oxygen.

160
00:06:39,439 --> 00:06:42,439
Although smaller scale versions called

161
00:06:42,439 --> 00:06:45,079
the Sea Bee and the Sea Horse were made to

162
00:06:45,079 --> 00:06:46,819
prove that they could be launched from

163
00:06:46,819 --> 00:06:49,550
underwater the project came to an end

164
00:06:49,550 --> 00:06:52,340
when due to budget cuts NASA's future

165
00:06:52,339 --> 00:06:55,699
projects branch was closed. But even if

166
00:06:55,699 --> 00:06:57,379
it had had been built it would have been

167
00:06:57,379 --> 00:07:01,430
a very short life, it was just too big, there

168
00:07:01,430 --> 00:07:04,160
just wasn't enough stuff to be lifted

169
00:07:04,160 --> 00:07:06,410
into space to make the economies of

170
00:07:06,410 --> 00:07:09,890
scale it promised viable. The technology is

171
00:07:09,889 --> 00:07:11,930
still as perfectly valid today as it was

172
00:07:11,930 --> 00:07:15,379
in the 1960s and maybe at some point in

173
00:07:15,379 --> 00:07:17,360
the future when a large amount of

174
00:07:17,360 --> 00:07:19,129
equipment is needed to be lifted into

175
00:07:19,129 --> 00:07:21,740
space economically something of a

176
00:07:21,740 --> 00:07:24,170
similar scale might find a role once

177
00:07:24,170 --> 00:07:27,170
more and as always thanks for watching

178
00:07:27,170 --> 00:07:33,220
and please subscribe, rate and share.