Recently, the “DIRECT Launcher Group” of launch vehicle designers presented their concept for (among other things) “Leviathan,” a sea launched heavy lift two stage launch vehicle. Leviathan is a hydrogen/oxygen vehicle using annular aerospike engines for both stages for altitude compensation. With a gross liftoff weight of 8,861,460 pounds/4,019,491 kg, payload delivered to a 160 nautical mile circular orbit at 29 degrees inclination is 129,287 kg/285,030 pounds. The claimed cost? $60 million per launch, or $429 per kilogram (compared with $34,836/kg for the Shuttle). Eight launchers per year are foreseen.
The Leviathan would be floated out into the ocean, filled with propellant, righted and launched directly from the water; both stages would be recoverable.
http://www.directlauncher.com/
See the two PDF files for more info & graphics.
http://www.launchcomplexmodels.com/DirectP2/Information/Product_Sheet_-_Leviathan_Heavy_Lift_Launch_Vehicle_RC.pdf
http://www.launchcomplexmodels.com/DirectP2/Information/Baseball_Card_-_Leviathan_H2008.pdf
I will bypass the merits of the concept of a super heavy lifter in the current launch market or of this specific design (see discussion HERE), and simply point out the historical precedent. Leviathan follows in the footsteps of the Aerojet “Sea Dragon” design from 1963. Sea Dragon also launched from the surface of the ocean and was a two-stage “tube” launch vehicle. However, that’s about the end of the similarity. Sea Dragon was intended to be rock-simple, made out of inches-thick aluminum by the same techniques and laborers who built ships. It was a pressure-fed design, which meant relatively low performance but also design simplicity. But most importantly, Sea Dragon was intended to capture the launch market that NASA foresaw for the 1970’s and 1980’s, from the vantage point of 1962-63. A market filled with space stations, Moon bases, Mars bases, missions to Venus, the asteroids, Jupiter and beyond. To service this market, Sea Dragon had a payload of 550,000 kilograms. Coupling the high payload weight to the modest performance and relativley crude structural design led to a truly huge rocket design. In comparison, Leviathan, which is far larger than any launch vehicles currently seriously contemplated (assuming of course that Ares V is well and truly dead), is a pipsqueak.
The 1960’s dreamed bigger than we do.
Note to self: the Sea Dragon diagram shown at the Wikipedia page, as well as elsewhere online, is the one that I patched together and cleaned up *years* ago for Aerospace Projects Review. I *really* should have tagged it with my web address or something…
