Humans have always been curious
about what’s in space.
However, it wasn’t until the early 20th century
that the physical exploration of outer space
became possible through the development of rockets.
Furthermore, the “Space Race,”
which we extensively discussed in the documentary
“How the United States won the Space Race to the Moon,”
between the Soviet Union and the United States in the mid-20th century,
fueled the development of more efficient and powerful rockets.
One of such rockets is the Saturn V,
which was first launched in November 1967.
And until today,
the Saturn V rocket remains the tallest,
heaviest,
and most powerful rocket ever launched.
However, the story could have been very different
if a rocket designed in the early 1960s was launched.
This rocket was called the Sea Dragon,
and it was designed by the American rocket engineer Robert Truax.
The Sea Dragon is the largest rocket humans have ever dreamt of building, but
unfortunately, it never made it out of the concept stage.
What happened to the Sea Dragon,
and why was it never built?
Let’s take a journey back in time to the early days of space flight.
During the peak of the Space Race,
humans were attaining unbelievable height
and setting new records in space travel.
Both the United States and the Soviet Union
were building countless rockets.
The largest rocket the Soviet Union built
was the N1 that was an incredible 105 meters tall.
The United States made the biggest rocket humans had ever built
with the Saturn V that was 110 meters tall.
But both rockets wouldn’t be nearly as tall as the Sea Dragon
that was supposed to be 150 meters tall!
In 1962, the Sea Dragon was proposed by Robert Truax,
an aerospace engineer for Aerojet.
According to him, what made rockets expensive to build
was not their size but rather the complexity of the engines.
The following year, Aerojet carried out a study
and found no technical obstacle for building the Sea Dragon.
The Sea Dragon would be a 2 staged rocket
capable of delivering extreme payloads not just to the Moon but also to Mars.
The principles guiding its design were simplicity,
reusability,
and cost savings.
Unlike the Saturn V, which had 5 smaller engines,
the Sea Dragon would have one massive engine.
To make things simpler, the Sea Dragon didn’t have a complex fuel pump
but rather a pressure-filled system using liquid nitrogen tanks.
This would have made it easy to build
and refurbish after use.
Although the Saturn V holds the record for the largest payload capacity
to Low Earth Orbit of 310,000 pounds,
this would have been unimpressive
when compared to the Sea Dragon’s payload capacity of 1,100,000 pounds.
That’s enough to launch an entire space station
into Low Earth Orbit in one mission!
At its launch,
the Saturn V produced a whopping 7.6 million pounds of thrust.
However, the gigantic Sea Dragon would be about 10 times as powerful.
Since it was so incredibly powerful,
the rocket had to be launched from the Sea.
To position the rocket vertically,
the base of the rocket would be filled with water.
Once launched, the rocket would produce
an estimated thrust of 80 million pounds!
Keep in mind that it would only use one massive engine.
So why was the largest rocket ever designed not built?
Although technically the Sea Dragon was possible to design,
its enormous size was one of the major reasons why it was never built.
Transporting the various parts of this engine,
let alone assembling it,
was a challenge on its own.
The amount of thrust produced also meant
that it was impossible to launch on land
as it would have destroyed any existing launchpad.
Hence, this was the reason why it was proposed to be launched at Sea.
Again, the engine of this rocket would have been so loud
that it could even destroy the rocket.
It was estimated that at take-off,
the noise would be about 165 decibels 5 miles away.
However, the most important reason
why this rocket was never built was
money.
NASA was interested in the design,
however, at the end of the 1960s,
NASA’s budget was cut,
and experimental design projects were put on hold.
They couldn’t justify the cost of building
a massive rocket like the Sea Dragon at the time
because there was no need to launch
any material weighing a million pounds to space.
Even though the Sea Dragon was never built,
it will go down in history
as one of the craziest ideas ever fully conceived.
The only rocket that comes close to the Sea Dragon is SpaceX’s Starship,
which you can see in the Evolution of Starship.
Click the video on the right
to watch this animation,
thank you!
Subtitles done by Emir Kahvecioglu