THE SEA DRAGON ROCKET
By: Abhijay Bhosale
This. Is. The finale. The last edition of the Unknown Off-Ground Series. It's been a great few reads, so let's end off with a blast. A blast that can lift 550 tonnes... to space. This could have been the biggest rocket ever made, capable of launching a little over 3 Antonov An-225s, or the largest plane ever built. It could have even lifted the entire International Space Station into orbit in one launch. At 150 meters tall, it would have been big enough to be as tall as a skyscraper. And through all of this, it would be one of the most efficient rockets ever planned. This is, the Sea Dragon.
Origins
Our story begins with a man named Robert Traux. Robert Traux worked for Aerojet, an American aerospace company. During the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union, each country had to make their mark in space. One of these things involved making space stations. Although the first space station wasn't put into until almost after the moon landing just under a decade by the Soviets (Salyut 1), there were still plans to make a space station. And these things required immense resources and technology, or from the Sea Dragon's perspective, weight. Although there was still the Saturn V, the capacity it could perform outdid the Sea Dragon's but at a cost of payload and efficiency. And another thing the Saturn V couldn't do was be reused. To justify the cost, they needed a rocket that could be like a space shuttle and carry many times the payload. Previous versions of the rocket named the Sea Horse and Sea Bee tested out the Sea Dragon's technology, and they proved very successful for a company that mainly built missiles. However, when Aerojet talked about their proposal to NASA though, it was destined to fail.
The engineering behind the rocket is relatively unknown. Most of its design is completely conceptualized. But from what we do know, we can paint a pretty crude picture. The rocket would have been covered almost entirely in 8mm steel plating. You might have noticed the small triangles in the diagram below on the Sea Dragon. Those were the auxiliary boosters for most likely to control the direction of the rocket. It would make sense considering bell nozzle had no mentions of thrust vectoring in any articles. It would have fired for 81 seconds and taken the rocket up to... 1.1m (1.8 km) per second... wow. Even then, these speeds weren't THAT great. While others remember the SR-71 Blackbird as being among the fastest, the X-43A was actually the fastest air breathing plane. It reached a speed of 1.7 miles per second at 20 miles above the ground. The Sea Dragon would reach those speeds at 25 miles. But still, the friction from this launch would be immense, since the speed would rise and it was going straight up. The X-43A was launched from a plane (not like the Boeing 747 AAC, it was just out on the bottom of a bomber) and then went up to speeds where it would avoid some friction. The rocket would have to endure almost all of it. The second stage would also consist of one bell engine. This time though, it would fire for 260 seconds instead. Unlike the last engine though, it would have an expanding bell, changing the configuration from 7:1 to 27:1 as it climbed to improve performance. The first stage would be using a fuel of Refined Petroleum 1 (RP-1) and Liquid Oxygen (LOX) while the second stage would use LOX and Liquid Hydrogen. Although now the rocket would be in orbit, the payload had to be put in the cargo of the rocket since it didn't really have a place to put a capsule or docker. The most likely scenario would probably be making versions of the rocket that could be streamlined for specific missions. But on textbook, it would just be a big dumb booster. Literally. The principle it was based on was a big. Dumb. Booster. In astronautics, it's called a BDB. All it meant was that it would rely on proved and fundamentally simple technology. That would not only make it easy to replicate, but also easy to refurbish and easy on the wallet.
This picture may have a lot of detail, and although some parts are true, other things are most likely made up since this was found on Reddit and was fanart for a TV show. Nonetheless, the "External View," "Cutaway," and "Flight Sequence" sections are all confirmed facts.
If the Sea Dragon launched from a normal platform, the platform (along with a few building around it) would probably burn. So the answer to this was to put it in the water. The rocket would be assembled in a shipyard, where it would then be towed to the launch site. The launch site... well, it would just be a designated part of the sea where the rocket would launch. After the tugboats took the rocket to where it was, a ballast tank on the engines end would start filling up. A ballast tank is what submarines use to submerge and emerge from the ocean. The water fills up in the tank, and then the tank along with the thing it's attached to goes down. With the ballast tank being only on the engine's end, the rocket would go from being towed parallel to the water to standing fully straight. When the rocket was ready to launch, the ballast tank would disconnect from the rocket right as the engines started. In that moment of unstableness, the engine would take over and make the rocket go straight up. But in the case of a malfunction during launch where the engines end up going off course, the auxiliary rockets as mentioned earlier would keep it upright. Numerous tests with the Sea Horse and Sea Bee proved that launching with submerged engines didn't affect rocket performance. For recovery, the rocket would have its first stage jettison into the ocean in a passive reentry, where it could be recovered. The seconds stage could also come back down after spending its required time in space. For another reusable launch, the parts would be repaired and refurbished, and towed to the launch site again. It was a near 100% reusable rocket, the likes of which SpaceX could only dream about. It was an airtight procedure.
Why Wasn't It Made
Why wasn't the Sea Dragon made? It was actually quite simple. The rocket, was too good. It could carry so much load, it was extremely efficient, and even the cost of it would pay off eventually. But no one could justify having to send so much weight to space in one go. Just like the F-22, its purpose was lagging behind the capabilities of the thing to fulfill it. And there was also a lot of skepticism. Sure the principles making it fly were proven and airtight, but for a project this grand at this scale? It would be like asking to make the Burj Khalifa taller. It seemed like there was an invisible barrier in everybody's mind that didn't let them take a step forward, even when everything was already old technology. This section about why it failed is extremely short. Even though the Cold War was going on, it wasn't as if anybody was forcing the US to stick with its line of thought. It could have revolutionized space travel, and there's even ways to make it suitable for civilian use. But I guess it was never meant to happen. Well, happen yet. Thanks for completing the whole Unknown Off-Ground series, and I'll see you in the next blog.
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