Sea Dragon (video)

2:49 PM, 5/11/24:

Er, this one has a few issues. First of all, a single engine would be astronomically frickin' huge in comparison to any rocket engine ever produced. The Saturn V's F1 engines are the most powerful engines ever in production on an operational rocket, to my knowledge. That one was about twice as powerful as the Raptor engines on Starship.

In order for a single engine to lift all that mass, plus its own weight, would require an engine that is maybe ( sit down, this is big ) 100 times more powerful. Ain't gonna happen.

Or it would have to be a couple of orders of magnitude more efficient. Not likely.

This one was also nicknamed the "Big Dumb Rocket". I'd say it is dumber than that on more than more metric. This is what happens when you don't do any back of the envelope calculations. If Aerojet actually put their names on this fantasy, I'd like to know how the hell the would ever make an single engine that powerful???

end update of 10:12 am post

Did this one make my fave list of rocketry?  

Actually, no. The post was called Ideas for Space, or something like that. Sea Dragon was not on that list.  Sea Dragon was mentioned here, however.



There's definitely room for ideas of putting frickin' huge amounts of stuff into orbit, but this one won't be able to launch rockets at the pace that Starship will be able to. That's assuming that Starship actually works. There's a significant risk of failure in Starship, in my opinion. However, Sea Dragon seems low risk, if the idea is to put frickin' huge amounts of stuff into orbit with each launch. The launch rate would have to be increased with sheer numbers of vehicles. They would have to be towed to and from the sea, which would be a slower process of having them return to the launch site with a quick turnaround.

Sea Dragon could launch people into orbit. A return from orbit would be more conventional, with the capsule and parachute method. Huge frickin' numbers of people could be launched from these things. Plus supplies to justify the size of the beast.

There's news that SpaceX will have plenty of revenues for investment for his whims. Elon Musk likes to recycle ideas from the past. Maybe he'd jump for this one. The Starship may be just one of many rockets in the future. Governments cannot do this job. It takes an entrepreneur to do it. Anybody?