The space shuttle external tank 8.4 m diameter and 46.9 m long.

The Sea Dragon is 23 m diameter by 150 m long.

The Sea Dragon is 2.738x the diameter of the External Tank and 3.198x the length of the External tank.

An External tank that is stretched length by 16.8% carries 24x the mass of propellents contained in the original External Tank.

Floating Super Tank: 636 metric tons - structure
18,240 metric tons - propellant
2,860 metric tons - hydrogen
15,380 metric tons - oxygen

A stretched super tank made at a shipyard and hauled to a launch point, assembled at sea to form a multi-element launcher to create a very large reusable launcher whose elements land back at sea, and are hauled by tugs to the shipyard for refurbishment and refuelling.

These put 20,000 metric tons (44,000,000 lbs) into LEO.

A slight increase to a 30 m diameter tank that is 167.5 meters long - increases the propellant to 38,000 metric tons of propellant. Allowing construction of common metals available to shipyards, increases structural weight, to 9,000 metric tons.

This system puts 20,000 metric tons into LEO as well.

Seven elements are built for $20 million each, and put into a hexagonal close packed array, to create a 3 stage to orbit reusable launcher.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/45631474/S...rived-Launcher

With a capacity of producing 20 MW per metric ton on orbit using ultra-light concentrating solar pumped laser, this puts up a solar power station that beams up to 400 GW to any point its needed.

40 launches put up 16,000 GW of capacity. A capacity sufficient to displace all other energy sources, and capable of capturing $4.5 trillion per year in energy sales. A figure 300x larger than all space programs in the world today.

What else can you do with 440 million pounds on Low Earth Orbit?

Well, if you use a 400 GW laser beam to energise an ion rocket with a 54 km/sec (120,745 mph) you can process 274.3 kg/sec. With this mass flow rate you can produce 14.8 megaNewtons. That's 1,510 metric tons of force. That's 3.32 million pounds of force. 7.5 milligees.

An ion rocket powered by a single solar power station just described, can accelerate a 20,000 metric ton payload 0.264 km/sec per hour of thrust. In 16 hours such an ion engine can add 4.2 km/sec to the delta fee of a payload on orbit. According to the Tsiolkovski rocket equation, we can calculate that only 7.48% of the starting weight must be propellant. 1,497 tons of the original 20,000 tons. With 2,503 tons of structure, this means a payload of 16,000 tons may be sent to Mars.

With 1/2 ton per person, 32,000 people may be sent, most of them in suspended animation, may be sent to Mars along a minimum energy transfer obit.

One launch every 2 days puts up 400 colony payloads every Martian synodic period. For a period of 16 hours the 400 power stations of Earth reduce power 33%, to launch all 400 over a three day period, dispatching 12.8 million persons.

With a three week cycle time for each launcher, it will take 10 launchers, with 70 flight elements, to sustain this flight rate.




On Sunday, April 30, 2017 at 4:21:59 PM UTC+12, William Mook wrote:
Orbital ATK carries less than 8 metric tons to LEO.

http://www.orbitalatk.com/flight-sys...w/default.aspx

http://www.orbitalatk.com/flight-sys...L/default.aspx

http://www.orbitalatk.com/flight-sys...20Approved.pdf

The largest rocket ever seriously studied was Robert Truax's SEA DRAGON

http://www.astronautix.com/s/seadragon.html

which would have carried 450 metric tons (990,000 lbs) into LEO. Three times larger than the Saturn V.

Sea Bee and Sea Horse were built and tested the concept, which were quite successful.

http://www.astronautix.com/s/seabee.html

http://www.astronautix.com/s/seahorse.html

* * *





On Saturday, April 22, 2017 at 12:46:02 PM UTC+12, JF Mezei wrote:
The shuttle had roughly 15 ton capacity.

SLS is to be massive with about 70 tons capacity.

But with little fanfare, Orbital ATK appear to have made orders of
magnitudes improvement with the ability to deliver 7,600 tons of supplies !

From a NASA tweet:
https://twitter.com/nasa/status/855581169596993536
Set your alarms! Tomorrow more than 7,600 tons of supplies arrive at
@Space_Station. Coverage starts at 4:30am ET:
http://go.nasa.gov/2oylzbe


What is significant is that they have maintained this error all week
with their tweets about that launch.


Note: in french, 7,600 means 7 with 6/10 with 3 digits of precision
(coma used to separate units from decimals), but in english the "." is
used, and the "," is used to separate blocks of 3 digits (thousands,
millions etc)

So, if Orbital ATK can already lift thousands of tons to orbit, why is
NASA spending billions to develop a rocket that can only lift 70 tons ? :-)