It turns out that the rocket was a Sea Dragon, ... even considering the state of rocket design in the early 1960s. As conceived, Sea Dragon would have consisted of two stages.

A two-stage rocket, the Sea Dragon was, on paper at least, capable of "putting 1.2 million pounds ... At the time of Robert Truax's design in 1962, Apollo 11 was still seven years off.

If the design had come to fruition, it would have been the largest rocket ever built, at 150 meters ... (hence the term "big dumb rocket"). Sea Dragon was one of the proposals, ...

Artist concept of the Sea Dragon in the water. Aerojet via Astronautix. Imagine standing among the small crowd in a viewing gallery aboard a command ship floating 35 miles off the coast of Cape ...

Today, let's take a deep dive into the real-life and fictional exploits of Sea Dragon, the most ludicrous design for a booster rocket that never jumped off the drawing board.

The Sea Dragon, a declassified 1960s project, was a massive 500-foot-tall rocket designed to launch from the ocean, carrying huge payloads into space at a fraction of the cost.