Author Topic: Sea Dragon class LV thread  (Read 187205 times)

Offline Jim

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #180 on: 07/20/2011 08:04 pm »
Will SpaceX borrow half of the Sea Dragon idea?

SpaceX has talked about making their rocket sea-water resistant.  When I was picturing the fully-reusable future SpaceX launcher, I was picturing a first stage which after separation, turns around, re-ignites some or all of its engines with residual fuel, and boosts back to the launch pad for a propulsive landing.  Might SpaceX instead just propulsively slow it down above the ocean enough to slip in without sustaining damage, to be pulled up, perhaps by an amphibious erector tower or tow-cable to be taken back to the pad? 

Is one of the reasons for building a new Texas pad a range rule against boosting your stages back in the direction of a Florida pad?   

See Kistler.   Also, why do you keep reading things into spacex that aren't there?

Offline DLR

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #181 on: 07/31/2011 12:37 pm »
Sea Dragon is not needed.

It's $300 per kg to orbit in 1963 is $2160 per kg in 2011 dollars, which means it would be competing with Russian rockets (Zenit) and Falcon Heavy on a cost per kg basis.

Offline Downix

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #182 on: 07/31/2011 04:46 pm »
Sea Dragon is not needed.

It's $300 per kg to orbit in 1963 is $2160 per kg in 2011 dollars, which means it would be competing with Russian rockets (Zenit) and Falcon Heavy on a cost per kg basis.
You only measure to LEO.  To BEO, it crushes everything else.
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Offline Jason1701

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #183 on: 07/31/2011 08:45 pm »
Why was Sea Dragon so much more efficient at BEO?

Offline Downix

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #184 on: 07/31/2011 09:08 pm »
Why was Sea Dragon so much more efficient at BEO?

High energy upper stage.  While not as good as the RL-10, it still was over 400.  Using the same launch costs as above, of ~$1 billion per launch in todays dollars with the projected GTO payload of 294 metric tons would give $3593 per kg, which is over $1000 less per kg than the Falcon for the same.
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Offline Prober

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #185 on: 07/31/2011 10:05 pm »
Aerojet did some fantastic engine work and doesn't get the credit like the bigger boys LM, Boeing etc.

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Offline clongton

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #186 on: 07/31/2011 10:10 pm »
Aerojet did some fantastic engine work and doesn't get the credit like the bigger boys LM, Boeing etc.



Wait till you see the finished performance of the AJ-500.
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Offline robertross

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #187 on: 08/01/2011 01:24 am »
Is someone going to correct the thread title? ;)

Offline kraisee

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thread
« Reply #188 on: 08/02/2011 02:25 am »
I don't know where DLR's $300 figure originates, but it is not a figure from any of the original AeroJet reports into Sea Dragon, nor the TRW (nee STL) independent assessment reports that von Braun ordered.

The AeroJet worst-case estimate was Case #7, which stated $32.80 per pound ($72.31 per kilogram) to LEO.   In today's money that worst-case would be $533.40 per kilogram to LEO.

The best case was Case #5, which stated $8.90 per pound ($19.62 per kilogram) to LEO.   In today's money that best-case would be $144.73 per kilogram to LEO.


TRW's report was able to validate all of AeroJet's claims and even went so far as to say the figures were highly conservative in all cases.


DLR - Perhaps you're thinking of Truax's "Excalibur", which was essentially a 1/10th scale (55mT to LEO!) version (Truax's 'Falcon-1' development system for his operational 'Falcon-9' heh!) ?  That was estimated around $150 per lb to LEO, which would have been much closer to $300/kg to LEO.

Ross.
« Last Edit: 08/02/2011 02:49 am by kraisee »
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Offline strangequark

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #189 on: 08/02/2011 06:16 am »
Wait till you see the finished performance of the AJ-500.

;D

Such a pretty engine. God bless you Monica Jacinto.


Also, hopefully I'm not necro-posting too badly, but wanted to address these:
SD was proposed before the F-1 got on the test stand and revealed the problems with large engines and combustion instability. The guarantee of combustion instability on a single-bell 80 million pound thrust first stage engine, or a 7 million pound thrust upper stage engine is simply ridiculous.

The diameter on the Sea Dragon was huge. Use an aerospike with modular combustion chambers. Would be good for production as well, because you could mass produce the damn things.

The cost is also prohibitive. How expensive was the 1 million pound thrust RS-84 was going to be? How expensive is the quarter-million pound thrust J-2X? Warp drives would be cheaper to develop than an 80 million pound single-bell engine.

Pressure-fed, with modular combustion chamber design. The worst thing to design is the spike at that point. Not saying it would be cheap, but well below Dr. Cochrane's designs.


That amount of power in the ocean will kill everything within miles. Environment groups will make it illegal long before the first test flight ever came close.

-MP.

Now, this admittedly is delving outside my expertise (not a Marine Biologist). However, there are large swaths of ocean with very little life in them. Cetaceans would be the big concern, and I would suspect there are ways of annoying them away with warning sounds.
« Last Edit: 08/02/2011 07:42 am by strangequark »

Offline Jason1701

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #190 on: 08/02/2011 02:03 pm »
If you change Sea Dragon to use an aerospike, it's almost Direct P2.

Offline strangequark

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #191 on: 08/02/2011 02:56 pm »
If you change Sea Dragon to use an aerospike, it's almost Direct P2.
s

Haha, it looks like I needed to pay more attention to what Ross, Chuck, et al are up to these days. So is this what C-Star is doing?

Offline Downix

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #192 on: 08/02/2011 04:27 pm »
If you change Sea Dragon to use an aerospike, it's almost Direct P2.
s

Haha, it looks like I needed to pay more attention to what Ross, Chuck, et al are up to these days. So is this what C-Star is doing?
From my understanding, Ross left cstar earlier this year, and this is a different venture.

And there is at least one version of the Sea Dragon researched which was to use an aerospike.
chuck - Toilet paper has no real value? Try living with 5 other adults for 6 months in a can with no toilet paper. Man oh man. Toilet paper would be worth it's weight in gold!

Offline go4mars

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #193 on: 06/21/2012 07:27 pm »
How likely are reusable cores/stages from SpaceX's BFR (the colonization rocket) to launch and land from the ocean?  0% likelyhood?  5%?  more? 

Will the BFR (whether land launched or water launched) be more potent in terms of kg to trans-mars injection, or less potent, compared to sea dragon?  Guesses please. 

At this point, I would guess 20% and more potent.
« Last Edit: 06/21/2012 07:30 pm by go4mars »
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Offline go4mars

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #194 on: 10/22/2012 08:47 pm »
Several people have mentioned their concern over developing a large rocket engine due to combustion instabilities.  With modern software/analytical tools, is combustion instability still considered a practically insurmountable challenge for developing really big engines?
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Offline strangequark

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #195 on: 10/23/2012 04:51 pm »
Several people have mentioned their concern over developing a large rocket engine due to combustion instabilities.  With modern software/analytical tools, is combustion instability still considered a practically insurmountable challenge for developing really big engines?

It's not insurmountable, it's just extremely expensive. We know more than we knew during the days of the F1, but you're still looking at a very test-intensive program to get it right. Models of combustion stability have to take into account the coupled interactions of combustion kinetics, acoustics, and multi-phase fluid mechanics. Models of any one of these are happy to get within 10-20% of the real world values. Computational acoustics in particular is in its infancy.

Offline JasonAW3

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #196 on: 12/19/2012 09:28 pm »
SD was proposed before the F-1 got on the test stand and revealed the problems with large engines and combustion instability. The guarantee of combustion instability on a single-bell 80 million pound thrust first stage engine, or a 7 million pound thrust upper stage engine is simply ridiculous.

The cost is also prohibitive. How expensive was the 1 million pound thrust RS-84 was going to be? How expensive is the quarter-million pound thrust J-2X? Warp drives would be cheaper to develop than an 80 million pound single-bell engine.

That amount of power in the ocean will kill everything within miles. Environment groups will make it illegal long before the first test flight ever came close.

Nice idea. Totally impractical.

-MP.

Ok,

     Quick fix.

     Plug Nozzel for the first stage and about 10 to 15 F-1 engines on the second stage.   Problem solved.

Jason
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Offline RanulfC

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #197 on: 12/19/2012 09:40 pm »
SD was proposed before the F-1 got on the test stand and revealed the problems with large engines and combustion instability. The guarantee of combustion instability on a single-bell 80 million pound thrust first stage engine, or a 7 million pound thrust upper stage engine is simply ridiculous.
I should probably point out that as knowledge was gained in the F1 program the design was changed to several combustion chambers feeding a single nozzle so it wasn't "actually" a single engine design :)

Quote
The cost is also prohibitive. How expensive was the 1 million pound thrust RS-84 was going to be? How expensive is the quarter-million pound thrust J-2X? Warp drives would be cheaper to develop than an 80 million pound single-bell engine.
The last design upgrade I recall had the engines being developed from the F1 it self so the design costs were a lot less than expected overall.
Quote
That amount of power in the ocean will kill everything within miles. Environment groups will make it illegal long before the first test flight ever came close.
Engine "burp" or simply fireing up the turbopumps will clear the area in a hurry. A couple of "sounding-charges" (big band, little actual blast) would effectivly clear out all the life within a couple of square miles within seconds. IIRC there is actually a Navy procedure number for such an operation :)
Quote
Nice idea. Totally impractical.

Ok,

     Quick fix.

     Plug Nozzel for the first stage and about 10 to 15 F-1 engines on the second stage.   Problem solved.
Note exactly :) See the "problem" is the amount of payload one of these things could lift. Short of a sudden "emergency" colonization program, need for a super asteroid/comet defense system or solar power satillite program the SD is simply too BIG to be viable. It has such a huge payload capabilty that you can't really justify a "viable" use for a single flight, let alone the multiples that the "program" would have required.

It's an "issue" I wish we didn't have, but it is still the main issue with a SDLV type vehicle :)

Randy
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Offline JasonAW3

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #198 on: 12/20/2012 03:35 pm »

Note exactly :) See the "problem" is the amount of payload one of these things could lift. Short of a sudden "emergency" colonization program, need for a super asteroid/comet defense system or solar power satillite program the SD is simply too BIG to be viable. It has such a huge payload capabilty that you can't really justify a "viable" use for a single flight, let alone the multiples that the "program" would have required.

It's an "issue" I wish we didn't have, but it is still the main issue with a SDLV type vehicle :)

Randy
[/quote]

Not exactly sure I agree with you on this.

      Yes, the payload, currently, is excessive.  However; If this could be made as a reliable TSTO craft that either could have both stages reusable, OR the first stage reusable and use the upper stage as a .5 stage, (Doing Dry-for-wet) as part of either a space station or as a part of a Mars Exploration Vessel, then I think that it would more than justify the cost.

     If fact, such a launcher, pound for pound (or kilogram for kilogram, if you will) would be a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper than any current launcher, including the Falcon 9.

     Mind you, justifying a 500 to 600 ton payload in a single launch could be tough, but say someone like Bigalow Aerospace wanted to put up his Space Hotel all at once, this would be the beast to do it.

     Heck, with a scond launch of a fully fueled Orbital Transfer vehicle, you could send 500 to 600 tons of Mars Base to Mars in two launches.  (Talk about establishing a foothold on Mars).

Jason
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Offline Jim

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Re: Sea Dragon class LV thead
« Reply #199 on: 12/20/2012 06:00 pm »

     If fact, such a launcher, pound for pound (or kilogram for kilogram, if you will) would be a couple of orders of magnitude cheaper than any current launcher, including the Falcon 9.

Wrong, because the development costs of the vehicle need to be included.  Also, it ignores the cost of the payload and the infrastructure need to develop, build, test, transport and prepare such a payload.

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