What would happen if the Seadragon was built and used during the 1960's and 1970's. How would it change the history of the space race and space exploration?
What if the Seadragon was built and used?
- Thread starter ChadMachine999
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I swear I think there was a thread on this not long ago.... the consensus if I recall was "Not too good!" 
I searched for "Seadragon" in the search feature and I saw nothing. If I made a duplicate thread, I'm sorry. I did not mean to do that.
Used for what? And why?
Specifically the Seadragon, (and for that matter most of the "high/super-duper-heavy payload" launch vehicles only make sense with a highly expanded space program that actually NEEDS massive payloads put into space on a regular basis. There's simply not enough payload to justify a single Seadragon launch, (which by virtue of being a 'single' Seadragon is going to be vastly more expensive than you'd think and utterly unaffordable really) let alone the number needed to make actually building the thing economical.
I think it may have been more than a "little" while ago And yes the general consensus on most threads this comes up on is while it would be 'cool' (see "For All Mankind" ) in general, like Orion, it's not that useful unless you have a massive space program/need to put massive amounts of payload into orbit on a regular basis which no one has every needed. It's only 'cheap' if used a LOT, (IIRC something like at least 4 launches a year, 6 is better, 8 or more was a 'sweet-spot' or something like that) otherwise it's horribly expensive to build and operate. (Especially as, again, it isn't likely to fly with a full payload very often)
Randy
Specifically the Seadragon, (and for that matter most of the "high/super-duper-heavy payload" launch vehicles only make sense with a highly expanded space program that actually NEEDS massive payloads put into space on a regular basis. There's simply not enough payload to justify a single Seadragon launch, (which by virtue of being a 'single' Seadragon is going to be vastly more expensive than you'd think and utterly unaffordable really) let alone the number needed to make actually building the thing economical.
I swear I think there was a thread on this not long ago.... the consensus if I recall was "Not too good!"
I think it may have been more than a "little" while ago
And yes the general consensus on most threads this comes up on is while it would be 'cool' (see "For All Mankind" ) in general, like Orion, it's not that useful unless you have a massive space program/need to put massive amounts of payload into orbit on a regular basis which no one has every needed. It's only 'cheap' if used a LOT, (IIRC something like at least 4 launches a year, 6 is better, 8 or more was a 'sweet-spot' or something like that) otherwise it's horribly expensive to build and operate. (Especially as, again, it isn't likely to fly with a full payload very often)Randy
Manned moon mission that's more well supplied and/or with more people.
A large enclosed lunar rover.
Space probes that can carry more fuel and be larger with more instruments.
You could almost send the International Space Station in one shot, but it's 25,000 pounds over payload. Think how large a station you could have if those were the chunks you sent.
Well, the Saturn V was already too big for anything anyone was willing to provide funds to do besides go to the moon. Just as the Saturn V withered on the vine, the Sea Dragon would likely do so too.
Oh, and if they actually try to launch any of them, seriously bad things happen to marine life in the North Atlantic Ocean (and possibly the Arctic and South Atlantic) as the engine lighting up in the ocean will deafen a whole lot of marine life. Especially whales.
So it is one of those things that leads to a bit of a crapsack world really...
fasquardon
Hey, no need to apologise, we do it all the time around here
I just looked for it too and can't find it. Could've been that it was a link reference in a more recent thread on some other topic, but I remember doing some more research on it b/c I frankly had never heard of it...
When the Sea Dragon was designed, there was no commercial launch market and even today, there isn't a commercial market large enough to support a reasonable Sea Dragon launch schedule (i.e. launching a couple a year).
Also, why launch constellations with lots of combustible rocket buses in the cargo bay when you could just launch large, long duration space telecoms stations?
With the massive capacity of Sea Dragon, it is much more economical to build bigger, more rugged, more high-power satellites that can do far more for much longer life spans than the dinky things that could fit on a repurposed ICBM. With Sea Dragon in might even be practical to think about manning these stations.
Which might sound awesome, and it is. But it would be so low-volume and high in up-front cost that it would be beyond the reach of commercial entities for generations. And by that point the Sea Dragon would be obsolete.
So either commercial satellites would ride on smaller LVs, or wise governments would launch coms stations every generation or so on a Sea Dragon.
fasquardon
groundhogday666
Banned
Hello folks !
Try Google own search engine and "Sea Dragon" - not attached !
Cheers !
Try Google own search engine and "Sea Dragon" - not attached !
Cheers !
So, specifically nothing anyone wanted or needed then?
SeaDragon was, btw, a LEO launch vehicle only so anything beyond that takes more stages which was NOT something you could easily add to the LV configuration. So in addition you need, as I noted above, a pretty robust orbital infrastructure capable of assembly and transfer of large and/or large amounts of payload on about a weekly basis. (Keep in mind Seadragon is only economical if it's flying a LOT)
Seadragon was based on an assumption of unlimited growth and utility in orbital operations that never came to fruition. Worse it didn't scale-down very well with the second offering being that NASA requested to be studied called disparaging by the Seadragon designer the "Sub-Caliber" (rather than the official title of "Excalibur") due to it's far lower payload capability and higher expense. And mind-you this was still vastly more payload than NASA was authorized or allowed. And again, if it's not launching at least every other month it's loosing money.
And also as noted it would devastate the area of ocean it launched from. (Not even mentioning what it would do to a system like SOSUS
)Seadragon, like the Orion-put-put drive are great options if you absolutely have to leave the planet in a short period of time, or you need a complete space-based infrastructure in a short amount of time but pretty useless in any lesser situation and in any plausible 'build-up' in space scenario you are far more likely to find a more economical and sustainable system to build up the orbital payload you need.
Let's start over a bit; What exactly changed in the early space program to require something like Seadragon? As Fasquadron pointed out the Saturn V was too much and unsustainable. What came about to make the Seadragon an 'answer' to any question? Specifically the 'history' of the space race and space exploration ALREADY had to massively change in order for someone to suggest that Seadragon is something we'd need. What is the requirement that drives needing about 4 times the payload of a Saturn V into orbit every other month (at least) for the foreseeable future?
Keep in mind that Seadragon was NOT considered a good option for Super-Heavy Lift Launch during the Space Solar Power Satellite studies.
(As examples)
Randy
The only real use is, as you say, for a sustained and much larger space programme. I used a SeaDragon expy in my EDCverse but that was derived from the Whoniverse and there was a lot more going on in space (not least UNIT and the other militaries).
The best opportunity for the Sea Dragon to get off the ground and into production would be for the military to realize that intentionally crashing one would produce a nuke-tier explosion without any radiation. For when you want to level a city in one hit without endangering anyone down wind.
Who-doesn't need a Seadragon then?
Actually it's the same problem with having a 'reason' to use the Orion-drive. Sure you get a lot of payload-per-flight BUT then you have to take into account supporting all that stuff (and/or people) once you have them in orbit. And Seadragon (or the Orion Drive) simply isn't going to be an effective way to do that. So you end up needing another, more cost effective way to get the 'real' materials into orbit on a regular basis.
The notes for my "Mac-And-Orion" scenario, (McNamara was very much against 'settling' for going to the Moon as he felt it would be too easy for the Russian's to beat us again and argued for a more 'distant' goal and the means to get there with) where he briefs Kennedy on the Orion drive as a plausible answer to beating the Russians to Mars and beyond but needing NASA and a reusable 'shuttle' vehicle to support it once it's in orbit. (And getting the Air Force to divert a large part of their budget to help build that damn thing helps as well
) Of course as he points out to Kennedy, if they go that route then any chance of Nuclear arms limitation talks is pretty much out the window and we can expect the Soviets to build their own version no matter what we claim is the reason we're building ours so an orbital nuclear arms race is likely no matter what. Of course on the other hand the Soviets by this point are NOT making any adjustments or plans no turning their obviously military space program into a civilian one like the US so Eisenhower's gambit has obviously failed anyway...We kind of understood that after seeing what a single N1 did to the Russian's own territory by accident
The problem though is it's not a subtle or quick weapon when you need about a month just to get it set up for launch AND it's built in an open ship-yard their satellites can easily see. The other problem, more in context actually, is that doesn't matter if the explosion leaves radioactivity when the simple idea of getting one ready to launch will likely cause a nuclear war anyway. if we're being honest the whole reason "Global Quick Strike" has never gotten off the ground (pardon the pun) is because you can't really tell if it's a kinetic or nuclear strike until the warhead has made impact which is a tad late to be deciding if you're going to respond or not. At which point you have to consider that even now the majority of nuclear weapons are considered 'tactical' (in that they are rather short-range in use) rather than strategic. I take it no one here brought up the idea of "Ryder-Rent-A-Rockets" after 9/11? It was a 'big' point of discussion during the late 90s since everyone was expecting commercial SSTO's to be widely available sometime in the 'near-future' of the early 2000s.
Randy
Because in low to medium Earth orbit any individual satellite will usually be eclipsed by the Earth from the point of view of a customer, and therefore you need numerous satellites to provide continuous coverage. You want to use low to medium orbit for basically two reasons. First, it drastically reduces the transmitter power needed on the ground to communicate with the satellite, so that (relatively) small antennas can be used to connect with satellites. In other words, you need them for satellite phones that aren't large units suited for vehicles but not individuals. Second, it significantly reduces the latency experienced by the user since the signal doesn't have to travel all the way to geostationary orbit and back, which improves user experience and enables some latency-sensitive applications.
This is why people started to think about low-orbit constellations over geostationary satellites IOTL, after all...
Sea Dragons own studies never really had a payload in mind, and showed things like very large hydrogen tanks.
Which does bring up an interesting possibility, though it's less AH than "next 20 years" stuff. Sea Dragon is pretty close to what you'd need to fuel a SpaceX Starship in a single shot...
Which does bring up an interesting possibility, though it's less AH than "next 20 years" stuff. Sea Dragon is pretty close to what you'd need to fuel a SpaceX Starship in a single shot...
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