Non US Sea Dragon?

pmn1 · Feb 10, 2006

Would the Soviet Union, ESA or NASDA have had the capability to build something like Sea Dragon concept and the vehicles that would have had to be built to prove it (Excalibur) and if so why didn't they/dont they? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

qso1 · Feb 11, 2006

Excerp from http://www.optipoint.com/far/far8.htm Following an article I had in the BIS magazine SPACEFLIGHT, I got a number of enquiries from people who wanted to know more about the TRW motor and ohter low-cost efforts. Though not explicitly outspoken, I got the impression that a number of people feel that, if the motor was built then (25 years ago) for as low as $ 30.000,- , then we should be able to build one today for not much more. Perhaps even amateur groups might succeed. As a matter of fact, I feel this way, too, though I am trying to be realistic about the difficulties. My response: First the excerpt, Note they say perhaps even amateur rocket builders might build a motor like this...if so, why has it not already happened? And one cannot say big Government is keeping the little guy out, if thats totally true, how'd Burt Rutan do what he did? The difficulties, this is the part BDBs shy away from and technically, the fact that no country has developed an LV of this magnitude suggests the capability to do so is borderline impractical if not impossible. Of course, BDB advocates will suggest conspiracy or politics. I don't recall the exact date of publication but Time Or Newsweek ran an article called "Lost In Space" in which one of the reporters (Greeg Easterbrook if memory serves me) suggested that the Energia (Which had 1 mission under its belt then) could be launched for $300.00 per pound payload. With 2 launches and an eventual cancellation, I'd say the payload cost per pound for Energia was proving to be much higher. Look at the infrastructure required for the Energia and its not even considered a BDB. If it were conspiracy and politics, it was not U.S. conspiracy or politics that killed the Energia and Buran. The Russians could have kept the Energia but didn't. Why? Once Buran was out of the equation, no payload within the Energias range to justif <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

rocketman5000 · Feb 11, 2006

The shear size of such a project would prevent an amateur attempts. Currently Steel costs around a dollar a pound. I don't know of many amateurs that could foot that sort of bill.

mlorrey · Feb 11, 2006

Well, there are amateurs and Amateurs. Steve Fossett, for instance, is an Amateur test pilot/adventurer, but could certainly foot the materials bill for a Sea Dragon steel framework/tank manifest.

qso1 · Feb 12, 2006

This is true but, that type of amateur is extremelly rare. If you look at the "X" prize efforts, not many arose to that challenge. And I am quite sure there were plenty of people out there who claimed to be able to do it. Burt Rutan and his Scaled Composites team arose and succeeded without any real competition as to people with actual flight ready hardware. They succeeded because they had the right combination of talent, desire, and bucks. Paul Allens bucks and since they actually spent more than what Allen fronted if the reports are accurate, they invested company funds as well. But even you stated that Fossett would foot the materials bill, framework, tank manifest. Whos funding the rest? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

mlorrey · Feb 12, 2006

I stated he'd be capable of it. My point is that there are plenty of wealthy people out there. There are a million people worth at least a million dollars in the US. There are somewhere around a hundred billionaires. Places to advertise these sorts of projects are such as The Robb Report, WSJ, Fortune, etc. Go where the money people are, not where the rocket nerds are. You need to get out of your space advocacy community and interface with the entrepreneur/venture capital/idle rich community, and learn how to communicate our ideas in ways that money people can understand. They don't care so much about the esoteric reasons for space exploration (at least not as a primary motivator). What they want to see is a viable business plan, realistic cash flow projections, an accurate market study, and attainable technology on the projected budget, all run by people with proven experience managing successful businesses and/or bringing successful products to market on time and on budget. I'd say that 99% of the space advocacy project ideas out there lack these essentials.

qso1 · Feb 12, 2006

mlorrey: I stated he'd be capable of it. My point is that there are plenty of wealthy people out there. There are a million people worth at least a million dollars in the US. There are somewhere around a hundred billionaires. My response: I agree with the stats but you have to break them down to who are the ones that finance and the projects fail. Who finances successfully. which at this stage is relatively rare (Paul Allen, "X" prize) but money follows money and were already seeing potential future success stories but will they actually suceed? Look how close the folks developing the Roton came before funds ran dry. mlorrey: You need to get out of your space advocacy community and interface with the entrepreneur/venture capital/idle rich community, and learn how to communicate our ideas in ways that money people can understand. My response: If thats a response to something I said, what was it? I agree with your entire posting except for me getting out of the space advocacy community. I'm not proposing any sort of project. mlorrey: I'd say that 99% of the space advocacy project ideas out there lack these essentials. My response: Exactly my point, which includes investors. 99% of the people with the means to invest have little or no interest in human space flight ideas because the investment has traditionally been so high as to make them skeptics on the ROI. Realistically, the only ones who have enough capital to see a project to fruition, especially a sea dragon sized project and including costs of failed tests etc. are the billionaires of which as you mentioned, only a hundred or so exist. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

pmn1 · Feb 12, 2006

The LEO on the Cheap from the Truax Engineering Multimedia Archive on Tap-Sa's post is interesting. http://neverworld.net/truax/ http://www.dunnspace.com/leo_on_the_cheap.htm <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

qso1 · Feb 13, 2006

Interesting it is but keeping in mind, Truax never realized LEO on the cheap for something the size of Sea Dragon. He also planned to be the first private citizen in space with something he called the "Volksrocket" which implied his dream of cheap access for the everyday man to space. This too was never realized. Generally, I would say that anytime someone proposes that something can be done so much cheaper, even when they are engineers etc. I would have to say lets prove it. You may have heard of Kistler Aerospace. A company today developing a rocket for delivery of unmanned payloads to LEO. In 1992 their original idea and claim was cheap manned access to LEO as shown on the cover of Ad Astra magazine in 1992. They had to whittle down their proposal to a standard unmanned payload delivery vehicle and now even thats in jeopardy. Kistler Aerospace went chapter 11 and are now in the process of resolving that. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

nyarlathotep · Feb 13, 2006

>>"Look how close the folks developing the Roton came before funds ran dry. " All they managed to design was the worlds stupidest helicopter.

gunsandrockets · Feb 13, 2006

"Would the Soviet Union, ESA or NASDA have had the capability to build something like Sea Dragon concept and the vehicles that would have had to be built to prove it (Excalibur) and if so why didn't they/dont they?" I believe the basic problem is the military origins of rocket technology. All the original space flight launch vehicles were based on rockets designed for military puposes. That led second tier nations to follow in the same path due to conservative planning. Space flight is dangerous and expensive, so it's natural for governments to only risk their money on the path already tred. There is no engineering reason a Sea Dragon couldn't be flown and built by some nation's government or by some rich industrialist. The problem is why would they spend the money? What purpose could the Sea Dragon serve? The Sea Dragon is so big it's really only usefull for extreme missions, such as manned interplanetary flight, or launching manned space stations. One possible commercial purpose that might support Sea Dragon is launching a Solar Power Satellite. I think India has shown some interest in such a project. And if a convenient shipyard on the East coast of India is available, the Bay of Bengal would serve as an excellent low latitude launching point for the Sea Dragon.

mlorrey · Feb 14, 2006

Excellent points, G&R. National rocket development HAS followed military needs, primarily because military needs have been the 'large package' customer up to now: starting with TNT warheads being dropped on London, to nuclear MIRVs, to spy, weather, and military comm satellites, and potentially SDI, militaries have generally always had the biggest payload requirements. Militaries avoid concepts that entail large long term logistical commitments. You see, straining your logistical capacity is systemically indistinguishable to actual warfare, to a military organization. War is really about logistical superiority contests, the kids getting killed are just the fireworks of disposing of the supplies once they are delivered by the logistical trains of either side. Putting space stations, moon bases, and other such installations up in space, so far as the military is concerned, like putting up US Cavalry forts way out on the mouth of Columbia River when there isn't another white man in sight for 1500 miles: it is a waste of resources on an insignificant location with no strategic value in defending against known threats with known capabilities. Until the people of the nation become convinced it is their manifest destiny to go out there and eke out a living on a scrap of moonrock someplace, then the military has no need to go there either, and thus no need of the launcher capacity to be capable of going there to make a there, there.

pmn1 · Feb 14, 2006

True there currently isn't the need for Sea Dragon's capacity but how about something scaled down to Ariane 5, Zenit 3 etc capacity but using the same principles to in theory get a lower launch price - as far as I know no-one has even tried to develop something along these lines - would you start to loose the possible price advantage as you scale down? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

gunsandrockets · Feb 14, 2006

"True there currently isn't the need for Sea Dragon's capacity but how about something scaled down to Ariane 5, Zenit 3 etc capacity but using the same principles to in theory get a lower launch price - as far as I know no-one has even tried to develop something along these lines - would you start to loose the possible price advantage as you scale down?" Good question. I would think the smaller rockets would work just fine, and the smaller size rockets could probably take advantage of a conventional land launch. One would want to fly the smaller rockets as part of the development path to Sea Dragon as well. As for possible price advantages? That is ultimately unknowable until someone finally tries it for real.

spacefire · Feb 14, 2006

I thought that the main price/pound advantage of the Seadragon resulted from its huge size: The higher tolerances involved in manufacturing would lower the costs dramatically. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> http://asteroid-invasion.blogspot.comhttp://www.solvengineer.com/asteroid-invasion.html </div>

mlorrey · Feb 14, 2006

All manufacturing takes engineering. I can easily specify a small tolerance as a large one on my drawings. The impact this has is to require more expensive precision machines and more machining time and QC inspection and refinishing. However, there is a much bigger impact on the cost of a given part by how many of them I produce, because once I've produced the tooling and procedures, and set up the machines and trained my people to produce the parts, they can produce either 1 part, in which that one part will bear the entire costs of all the engineering and tooling overhead, or more parts up to millions of parts. If you've ever taken a microeconomics course, you understand that marginal overhead costs are divided by the number of pieces you produce, ergo you get economies of scale by producing lots and lots of parts and being able to sell them all through a large distribution system. Cost savings from production quantity economies of scale are scaled by the increase in production quantities, while savings from using low tolerances are mostly fixed on a per part basis since it is mostly machining, fabricating, and finishing time: labor and machine time. So, when you are dealing with a very low production rate (i.e. a handful a year), increasing your production rate by ten times is going to decrease your costs much more significantly than the fixed cost savings of lower tolerance manufacturing. Both are important, and lower tolerances allow higher production rates with less labor and capital (less precision equipment), but lower tolerances at low production rates doesn't save as much.

rocketman5000 · Feb 14, 2006

the effects of tolerancing are really only apparent to large scale manufacturing. To keep close tolerances while you are pumping out millions of parts is quite a lot different than when only pumping out 10 parts. Rejection rates of parts can go up significantly with tight tolerances. Conversely the amount of failures goes up significantly with large tolerances. Possibble neccesitating the need to test each unit as it comes off the assembly line. rather than doing quality check on every 10th or 100th component

qso1 · Feb 16, 2006

Regardless of what Roton was, it never made it into production due to funding. Unlike many other concepts, the Roton did at least make it to its first test flight. I didn't really think it would work, but then, I'm not a builder of such machines. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

space_dreamer · Feb 17, 2006

There are to problems with the sea Dragon concept Firstly There are no 500ton pay loads needing to be launched, if say 20years down the line NASA has a 500ton Son of Sky lab station to be launched, would they want to launch it in such a way? A 500 ton module would be such a massive investment I don’t think they would risk it, 500tons of fuel maybe but then 4 SDHLVs could do the job just as well, if the SDHLV flight rate was 6 launches per the cost would only be $800 mil per launch. Secondly This is the show stopper! Launching the massive Sea Dragon (36 million kgf thrust) would create, huge sound waves and shock waves which would travel thousands of miles through the water. All whales, dolphins and most other sea life with in a thousand mile radius would be killed! The affect would be far worse than detonating a hydrogen bomb in the middle of the Amazon rain forest!

tap_sa · Feb 17, 2006

"Launching the massive Sea Dragon (36 million kgf thrust) would create, huge sound waves and shock waves which would travel thousands of miles through the water. All whales, dolphins and most other sea life with in a thousand mile radius would be killed! " I agree with your payload size argument but this one is bollocks. Surely you know that nukes have been detonated in the sea without killing all sealife within thousand mile radius. Undersea earthquakes release energy worth of thousands of nukes, creating wordwide tsunamis and yet all sealife is not wiped out. Sure there would be a lot of noise during liftoff but no monster pressure waves since the rocket (hopefully) does not explode. And even if the whole thing did detonate (which is next to impossible) it would be worth only a small nuke.

qso1 · Feb 18, 2006

I agree with the first point. It would be very risky to launch a lab five times Skylabs weight. Its also one of the reasons a Sea Dragon has not emerged. The market is just not there at this time. The second point was covered accurately by Tap_Sa. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> My borrowed quote for the time being:There are three kinds of people in life. Those who make it happen, those who watch it happen...and those who do not know what happened. </div>

pmn1 · Feb 18, 2006

from another site http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1544 <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

mlorrey · Feb 18, 2006

Large rockets are not inherently risky. Risk is a composite of the design margins, materials quality, potential failure choke points, and MTBF of every part in a system. NASA works through this by overtesting every part and designing each part to very tight tolerances. Sea Dragon works through this by building in a large scale so that a tolerance for a 30 meter rocket is five times larger for a 150 meter rocket. Sea Dragon also doesn't try to skimp on part mass, so each part has more structural strength than it needs by a significant margin. This also greatly reduces risk, because it means the MTBF for every overbuilt part is much greater than a rocket that is built to very tight tolerances and mass budgets. Nor is the cost for a payload a big risk either. If you apply the same large scale shipyard mass production principles to building whatever you launch, the cost of any given payload is going to be very small, and esp. for things like launching fuel and food into space, or big ring space station segments, you are going to have so many identical payloads in the production pipeline that loss of one launch is irrelevant. Sea Dragon does not operate by the one-off custom built scientific instrument style manufacturing of NASA. You need to get out of that mindset when considering this proposal. It operates in a complete different paradigm.

rocketman5000 · Feb 18, 2006

I believe what people mean by the risk of such a launch is that the payload would be significantly more expensive than current payload due to the larger size/complexity/features, that the launch capacity would allow. Therefore the financial exposure at each launch would be higher with a single launch failure compared to 10 launches to complete the same function. It should also be said that to build a single unit rather than 10 seperate units to be assembled modularly in space it should end up being cheaper since components such as power converters, thrusters, would not need to be duplicated

space_dreamer · Feb 18, 2006

The sound waves would travel for a very long way; the Sea Dragon is roughly 4 times the power of the Saturn 5! And sound travels further in water than air. It would have a massive impacted on the marine life, maybe not for 1000 miles but for a very large area! Large whales, like blue and fin whales can hear each other from distances of 1000s of miles! A rocket as ludicrously big as the Sea Dragen launched from the Atlantic would course many whales would go deaf. Whales echo locate to “see”. So, if they go deaf they beach! http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/marine/sonar.asp http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3916249.stm http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0619_020619_TVwhale.html http://tracc.00server.com/Fisheries/blast_fishing/blastfishing_index.html Perhaps this problem would be solved by launching from one of the great lakes in the north of the US.

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