When the Saturn V first launched in 1967 it was the largest and most powerful rocket ever made. But a rocket designed years before the Saturn V would have shattered the scale of rocket design. This video looks at the enormous 60’s rocket concept known as the Sea Dragon. It also looks at it’s interesting design and why it was ultimately never built.
source.image: Primal Space
The Sea Dragon was a 1962 conceptualized design study for a two-stage sea-launched orbital super heavy-lift launch vehicle. The project was led by Robert Truax while working at Aerojet, one of a number of designs he created that were to be launched by floating the rocket in the ocean. Although there was some interest at both NASA and Todd Shipyards, the project was not implemented.
With dimensions of 150 m (490 ft) long and 23 m (75 ft) in diameter, Sea Dragon would have been the largest rocket ever built. The rocket would have been able to carry a payload of up to 550 tonnes (540 long tons; 610 short tons) or 550,000 kg (1,210,000 lb) into LEO.
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The first stage was to be powered by a single 36,000,000 kgf (350 MN; 79,000,000 lbf) thrust engine burning RP-1 and LOX (liquid oxygen). By this point the vehicle was 25 miles (40 km) up and 20 mi (32 km) downrange, traveling at a speed of 4,000 mph (6,400 km/h; 1.8 km/s). The second stage was also equipped with a single very large engine, in this case a 6,000,000 kgf (59 MN; 13,000,000 lbf) thrust engine burning liquid hydrogen and LOX.
