Sea Dragon/Apollo

[pmn1]

What if the Sea Dragon approach had been taken for the Apollo missions rather than the Saturn?<br /><br />You dont (initialy at least) need the capacity of the Sea Dragon - a booster with the payload that Saturn V historically had but using the Sea Dragon engineering approach would do although Sea Dragon's payload would open up other possibilities.<br /><br />What would a Sea Dragon (550 tons to LEO or a scaled down Saturn V payload booster) launch have cost compared to Saturn V? <br /><br />What could you put on the moon with 550 tons to LEO? <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[qso1]

You can figure roughly half the payload to the moon or 200 tons to the moon. This is based on the Saturn V payload of roughly 100 tons to LEO and 45 tons to the moon.<br /><br />Expense being one of the primary concerns of hardware development, the launch cost of a Saturn V was $: 431.00 million. in 1967 price dollars.<br /><br />http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/saturnv.htm<br /><br />The $431 million dollar cost works out to about $2.5 billion today.<br /><br />http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi<br /><br />Sea Dragon launch costs were estimated to be $300 million. in 1962 price dollars or $325 million in 1967 dollars or $1.9 billion in todays dollars.<br /><br />Of course, in developing something like the sea dragon, payload capacities may vary and you may end up with say 10% more or less depending on upper stages etc.<br /><br />The sea dragon approach would probably have allowed direct lunar landing of a larger 2 stage vehicle, no lunar orbit rendezveous. The upper stage of the vehicle would upon leaving the lunar surface, go direct to Earth. This means the upper stage would require aerodynamic shaping similar to the Apollo CM.<br /><br />During the early days of Apollo development, huge booster designs were considered for direct to the surface landings. They proved impractical when compared to EOR which was later shown to be less practical than the eventually chosen method of LOR. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p><strong>My borrowed quote for the time being:</strong></p><p><em>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.</em></p> </div>

 

[pmn1]

Which brings me back to this article - 100 - 150 MW from a 100 tons SPS sounds quite good.<br /><br />http://www.spacedaily.com/news/oped-05zza.html<br /><br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>

 

[mlorrey]

100 MW * 8760 hours/yr = 876,000 MWh/yr<br /><br />150 MW * 8760 = 1,314,000 MWh/yr<br /><br />Now, 150 MW/100 tons is 70 watts per lb, which is spacecraft typical power density. <br /><br />At $0.15/kwh, this generates $131,400,000 per year. <br />At $0.20/kwh = $175.2 million/yr<br /><br />Assuming a ten year life, this is $1.75 billion in lifetime revenues at 20 cents/kwh. Given the launch cost alone is $1.6 billion, not counting the cost to build the SPS, it still is not cost effective to launch SPS'.<br /><br />If you are generating 150 MW, your revenues are $2.63 billion over 10 years.<br /><br />Assuming a $1.9 billion launch cost for 100 tons to LL1(200,000 lbs, at $9,500/lb launch cost, which is how the SeaDragon numbers scale for inflation), and assuming SPS production cost of $5.00/Wp and 10W/kg power density, the SPS will cost $50/kg or $22 million delivered to the launch site. This is based on earthbound solar panels, though. Going with GaAs multijunction technologies, and spacecraft type construction, a closer price is $5,000/kg, or $2.2 billion. Assuming no hiccups in deployment (and automated deployment), this is $4.1 billion.<br /><br />Assuming a 5.5% finance rate (utility bonds) this is about $7 billion total capital costs for a 10 year payback.<br /><br />Now we can also increase the electricity rate at the rate of inflation, averaging 3%/yr, this ups the 10 year revenues to $2.06 billion, still way short of paying back the investment. You would need 30 years to earn $8.575 billion, and still owe $7 billion. <br /><br />Essentially you'd need electricity prices in the range of $0.30-0.40/kWh to make this investment pay itself back.

 

[rocketman5000]

In 5 to 10 years such a thing might exist. As oil prices rise and the technology prices fall it might be actually become feasible. <br /><br />In the interm however I believe that electrical power in orbit would be far more valuable. Offering far in excess of .15kW/hr since everything in orbit is at a preminum from lifting from our gravity well. Instead of using up spacecraft mass in telecom sats on solar panels it could be used for propellant. In a few years vasimr should be seeing its way onto satelittes with the promise of much less propellant mass needed.

 

[nyarlathotep]

>>"Assuming a $1.9 billion launch cost for 100 tons to LL1"<br /><br />That's an awfully big cost you're assuming for something that could be churned out in bulk from underemployed ukranian and russian shipyards.<br /><br />Once you've set up your tooling, I wouldn't expect the unit cost to be much more than $250m.

 

[rocketman5000]

I work with LCC (low cost countries) almost daily for my job as a value engineer and typically thier tooling cost is almost a 1/3 to a 1/2 of what domestic suppliers want. Mainly due to labor rates. It is only going to be a limited time that Russian, and possibly Ukraine is going to stay an LCC before it will no longer be cost effective to make there and pay for the shipping and the duties to bring parts here, but the major upfront cost could be controled considerably, but it would require site visits to determine the factories capacities and abilities to make parts for you. You can get quality low cost parts from LCC but it takes much more upfront work. We, my company, has found this cost effective and therefore we persue opportunities as they arise if they fit the timeframe of implementation.

 

[mlorrey]

The original SeaDragon proposals made estimates in 1968 dollars. Adjusting those projections for inflation, we get $1.9 billion.<br /><br />We are talking about building a vehicle half the size of an aircraft carrier. Aircraft carriers cost tens of billions of dollars today. Oil tankers and giant cruise liners cost similar amounts.

 

[publiusr]

Some Titan IV launches cost a billion dollars a shot--and that was only 20 tons or less!<br /><br />Sea Dragon would be a good project for the NAVY.<br /><br />But they want to waste many more billions on the DDX and Littoral combat ships.<br /><br />Stupid.<br /><br />The whole idea of a stealth surface vessel makes about as much sense as a stealth covered wagon with Kevlar for Canvas, carbon fiber wagon wheels and aerogel horseshoes--its still obsolete.<br /><br />We've got stealth vessels--their called submarines. Patrol craft should not have to be stealthy--they need to be fast hydrofoils to deal with the new generation of supercavitating rocket torps like Skvall and other similar products that could sink an X-Band radar and or ABM platform right off the bat. Sea Dragon would be cheaper and give us some space based capability.<br /><br />But the NAVY folks still think they are in Jutland, just like the Air Farce still thinks its in Mig Alley. Those folks want to have a fewer number of JSFs which just increases flight times to deal with Rogue airliners that a Phantom with gunpods or a Spad with Sidewinders could down.<br /><br />And when it comes to shooting down ICBMs, JSF is no better than a Sopwith Camel. But we can spend 200 billion for JSF and call Sea Dragon too expensive.<br /><br />Good Grief.

 

[mcbethcg]

Sorry to digress, and disagree:<br /><br />The navy is not there to build space infrastructure. If Nasa wants Sea Dragon, they can do it.<br /><br />Regarding stealth ships: In my opinion, the purpose of stealth on a ship is not to make a surface vessel undetectable. The purpose of stealth on a ship is to make the ship have a lower radar signature for fire-and-forget anti-ship missiles. With a lower radar signature, radar jamming becomes much more effective than usual.<br /><br />Highly reflective objects like conventional ships would appear very "bright" and stealthy objects would be very "dim". Meanwhile, the sea reflects radar as well. If the ship can lower its reflectivity to be merely the same as the sea around it, it will be invisable to all but the most sophisticated missiles. Throw out some jamming as well, and the missile is lost.

 

[mlorrey]

Publiusr has the idea. The Navy isn't just ships, its job is to control the seas. This can only be accomplished by controlling the high ground above the seas: air, which is why our Navy is built around aircraft carrier groups, and space. Building Naval facilities to rain down God Rods on errant ships would be the ultimate means of controlling the high seas, and the angle at which they'd strike (i.e. from straight up) makes such weapons immune to ship stealthing technologies. Moreover, subs can be directly observed from space, and God Rods can also quickly strike them at significant depths.<br /><br />If the US Navy doesn't realize this, the Chinese Navy will, and use it to gain advantage over the US in advance of any showdown over Taiwan in the future.

 

[gunsandrockets]

"We are talking about building a vehicle half the size of an aircraft carrier. Aircraft carriers cost tens of billions of dollars today. Oil tankers and giant cruise liners cost similar amounts."<br /><br />You grossly misstate the size and costs of the Truax Sea Dragon.<br /><br />http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm<br /><br />In truth the Sea Dragon would have massed only 18,000 tonnes, not "half the size of an aircraft carrier" which masses 90,000 tonnes. Unless you are talking about one of the dinky French aircraft carriers.<br /><br />The ship made today most comparable to the Sea Dragon is a liquid natural gas tanker of about 20,000 tonnes. Ships like that don't cost "tens of billions of dollars", they cost less than 50 million dollars.

 

[tap_sa]

<font color="yellow">"In truth the Sea Dragon would have massed only 18,000 tonnes"</font><br /><br />And most of that mass would be fu.. propellants. The 100,000 tons of Nimitz are all steel and equipment.

 

[j05h]

>The ship made today most comparable to the Sea Dragon is a liquid natural gas tanker of about 20,000 tonnes. Ships like that don't cost "tens of billions of dollars", they cost less than 50 million dollars.<br /><br />I've always wanted to see a SeaDragon-type craft built in a New England shipyard, but one that specialized in LNG tankers would already have a lot of the technique present for Sea Dragon. Any candidate yards?<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[mlorrey]

Actually, I've been thinking that Portsmouth would be a good place. The Navy yard specializes in servicing, refuelling, and repairing Los Angeles class subs, which will be peaking around 2008 and falling off from there. Despite the successful effort to get Portsmouth off BRAC list, its use to the Navy will be at an end by 2016-2018 unless they get a new weapons system to work on there.<br /><br />There was talk that Airbus was looking for an east coast port that had good facilities and access to an airport with excess capacity. We were promoting Portsmouth and its Pease Trade Port (formerly Pease AFB), but it didn't come through. At this point, I'd like to try to get Pease get declared a spaceport. Building Dragon's at the Portsmouth Yard and towing them out into the gulf of Maine for launch would allow the full range of launch options: straight east around to directly south into a polar orbit.

 

[j05h]

I was in Portsmouth yesterday! 8) They were doing touch-and-goes with a KC-135, big plane! <br /><br />I'm all for building Sea Dragons at the Navy yard. The protests (there, Groton, Bath) were ignoring the elephant in the room: military need for naval servicing is in decline. We do need to push commercial re-use of those facilities, and building rockets makes a lot of sense. Pease Tradeport is a great example, take excess Air Force capacity and turn it into airport and shipping hub. <br /><br />Would the Navy yard have the capacity to construct a 300+ ft rocket? I thought they did mostly servicing. perhaps structures would be built elsewhere and integrated there. The specific issues I see up front would be handling the rockets on-base, tankage construction (LNG-derived tanks make sense), and of course design. what would be needed changes at Portsmouth (well, kittery) to make Sea Dragon happen?<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[mlorrey]

Yeah, Portsmouth was one of the big shipbuilding ports at one point. Since WWII it has been primarily a submarine building port. Many of the Polaris subs were built there, including the USS Abraham Lincoln, length 381' and the John Adams, SSBN 620, length 425', displacement 8,250 tons. The last sub built there was the USS Sand Lance SSN 660, length 292' 3".<br /><br />The shipyard is pretty large, much larger than is needed for its current day activities. Its website says it has three drydocks that can handle up to Ohio class subs (over 600' length). Sounds like the site can handle SeaDragons. Here is an aerial photo of the shipyard. Kittery, ME is to the north, Portsmouth, NH is to the south and west.

 

[j05h]

It's excellent to know that the Portsmouth yard is capabable of that size construction. In my time, the yard has mostly been a maintenance/refit facility. A 600'+ drydock should be enough to lay down a Sea Dragon keel. If the skills are there, they could begin as soon as someone writes a check. Mr. Musk? Mr. Shuttleworth?<br /><br />Issues with this: Engines (first and foremost). AFAIK there have never been the massive engines that Sea Dragon would need. Mr. Truax did a lot of design work on submersible & low cost engines but the first and 2nd stage engines dwarfed even the F1. #2 issue: propellant. The original Sea Dragon would have used a nuke-powered aircraft carrier to split H and O2 from seawater. I envision this modern Sea Dragon as commercial, so geting the Navy on standby for fuelling duty is unlikely. I like the idea of using a commercial liquid fuel best: MAPP (your suggestion last week) or propane despite lower ISP of each. This makes sourcing and handling significantly easier: if you launch off the East Coast, you can just have tankers dock to the support ship and fuel your Dragon. <br /><br />Portsmouth has all the infrastructure for assembling payloads, too. Major runway, rail links, direct sea access and it's right on i95. <br /><br />Thoughts?<br /><br />Josh <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[nacnud]

Borrow/hire a spare Russian nuke icebraker

 

[j05h]

good call, Nac <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div align="center"><em>We need a first generation of pioneers.</em><br /></div> </div>

 

[mlorrey]

Well, as for skills, NH has the highest educated workforce in the country. The Shipyard has the highest efficiency ratings the Navy, with the fastest turnaround times and the lowest cost per refuel/refit. They just received I believe a Presidential Unit Citation for this quality of work. A lot of the workers have previous experience building the Seabrook nuke plant, a few miles to the south and dismantling reactor #2 that was cancelled before completion.<br /><br />The state has no income tax, no sales tax, the 2nd lowest per capita tax burden, and has been rated the most livable state by Morgan Quitno Press a few years running. It is either the 3rd or 4th best business environment in the country.

 

[publiusr]

Bill Sprague may need your contacts:<br /><br />See bottom of this page.<br />http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=1544&posts=5<br /><br />http://www.thespacereview.com/article/808/1

 

[publiusr]

Any other news on Sea Dragon concepts?