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In November 1967, NASA launched the iconic Saturn V rocket for the first time.
Standing 110 meters tall and producing 7.6 million pounds of thrust, the Saturn V stillI
holds the record for the largest and most powerful rocket ever launched.
But a rocket designed years before the Saturn V would have shattered the scale of rocket
design and altered the course of rocket technology.
The rocket was known as the Sea Dragon.
This was an enormous two staged rocket, aiming to cut costs and launch extremely heavy payloads into space.
The idea for the Sea Dragon came from engineer Robert Truax in the early 60’s.
Truax envisioned a semi-reusable two-stage launch vehicle, capable of delivering extreme
payloads to the Moon and Mars.
Simplicity, reusability, and cost-savings were the guiding principles behind the rocket’s design.
Sea Dragon’s first stage consisted of a single engine rather than multiple smaller
engines like the Saturn V. Instead of using complex fuel pumps, it had liquid nitrogen
tanks which would pressurize the fuel tanks and push the propellants into the engine.
Taking away the complex and unreliable fuel pumps would make the engine cheaper to build
and easier to refurbish.
Since both stages of the rocket were designed to be refurbished and reused, they had to
be recovered carefully after each launch.
Once the rocket launched and reached an altitude of about 38 kilometers, the first stage engine
would cut out and separate from the 2nd stage.
It would continue to fall back to Earth using an inflatable flare.
This would help to slow the stage down and orientate it in a way that wouldn’t damage
the engine once it hit the ocean.
The second stage would follow a similar path back to Earth after delivering the payload into orbit.
Given the sheer size of the Sea Dragon, it would have been far too big to build
and transport on land.
The incredible amount of sound generated during liftoff would have created shockwaves strong
enough to damage the launch pad and the rocket itself.
In order to overcome these issues, the rocket would need to be built and launched at sea.
The rocket would be built in a shipyard and towed out to the launch site.
In order to orient the rocket vertically, 6 tanks near the base of the rocket would
fill with water and sink the engine into the sea.
Although sea-launched rockets had already been used during the second World War, the
technology had never been tested on such an enormous scale.
In order to begin testing the Sea Dragon, engineers modified a rocket from the
U.S. Navy nicknamed ‘Sea Horse’.
Testing began in San Francisco Bay where engineers fired the rocket’s engine on a barge above
the water and slowly lowered it into the water.
The engineers found that once submerged, the engine continued to fire perfectly and the
sea dampened the shockwaves substantially.
The success of this test opened the door for the Sea Dragon to become a reality.
However, like many other rocket designs, Sea Dragon failed to leave the drawing boards.
As the 1960’s came to a close, NASA’s budget was slashed as the United States went
to war with Vietnam.
At the height of the decade, NASA’s annual budget peaked at $5.9 billion.
Over the next few years, their budget was reduced by 37%.
These cuts ended many of NASA’s experimental research programs along with the construction
of the Sea Dragon.
In many ways, the sheer size of the rocket’s design contributed to the downfall of Sea Dragon.
As the Saturn V rocket continued to develop, NASA were reaping the benefits of having a
rocket much larger and more powerful than anything else that had come before.
Although Sea Dragon would have opened the door for even larger payloads, NASA couldn’t
justify the cost of developing the unproven technology required to make Sea Dragon operational.
From a technical standpoint, there were also concerns with combustion instability for a
rocket this large.
Sea Dragon would have generated more than 79 million pounds of thrust at liftoff,
10 times the amount of the Saturn V - which had its own combustion instability problems.
Either way, the Sea Dragon will go down in history as one of the craziest rocket concepts
that almost happened.
Since the retirement of the Saturn V in 1973, SpaceX’s Starship rocket is the closest
thing we have to the Sea Dragon concept.
Starship is designed to be 118 meter tall and produce 16 million pounds of thrust.
So although we never got to see what became of the incredibly ambitious Sea Dragon,
we can look forward to the exciting future that lies ahead in the world of spaceflight.
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