I think we should get started on Heatshielding and human rated rocketry.
For Facilities I'm thinking 3 for Assembly complex, 2 for Tacking and 3 for Spacefarer Training Facilities.
I think we're a while off humans in space being anything more than a gimmick. We'd have to develop an entirely new launcher to do anything useful with them, and that means it's a very long term project at minimum. If we can get by for, say, ten years just coasting along launching weather satellites and developing our technological capabilities so that we can design an actually good rocket that'll be our standard crew shuttle for the next several decades, that's better than rushing towards a stopgap solution & then needing to do all that anyways after our first crewed launches. It's still described as a "should the need arise" thing, not a "we need this to do ___" thing.
Basically, I think we should avoid the Apollo trap of "we MUST achieve this prestige program within x years", throwing a lot of money at something that's only going to be used a half-dozen times, and then immediately afterwards being stuck because we can't afford to keep doing it because our rush to get it done meant we prioritized short term instead of long term solutions. I feel like rushing to put people into space before we have an actual need is possibly falling into that trap.
I was actually thinking of grabbing a Politics die or two next WC meeting. We've been forced to ignore the recruitment options simply because we don't have the Politics dice for them. Fixing that should really help our crunch in the long term. Plus, the Science crunch isn't too bad. We only have two new projects, and I have little interest in doing Supersonic Phase 3 rn unless the WC offer one hell of a bribe. It's in good enough shape that I'd be comfortable just doing Talent Scouting for now.
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It sounds like we're going to be launching Spaceplanes from the rockets, so I want that figured out before we do human rated rocketry.
Every die we grab is less that goes towards reconstruction, increasing the overall budget of the world government. We're not able to keep maxing out our dice at a sustainable funding level (IMO, 1%). 1% of 50000 in the future is better to me than 1.5% of 32000 now. We're not in a rush.
I'd really like to get started on the Aseembly Complex Expansion so we can auto building and launching Dawns with sats, since this is pretty much specefically what the program slot is FOR. I'm pretty much down for whatever else
The R-4 is, based on some math we did, a relatively primitive design. If we were to do some modest improvements that don't constitute a full redesign (lightweight tanks, probably improving avionics, vacuum nozzles on the upper stages, getting some cleaner-burning propellants to improve reliability, etc.), we could put something like 800 kg into orbit. I'd rather we hold off on the assembly complex until we develop that "generation 1.5" rocket since we're only a year or two out, because 8 metric sputniks gives us a lot of room to play with payloads.
Anyways, a plan:
[] Plan: end-of-year holiday
-[] Tracking Station Construction (Phase I) (3 dice)
-[] Rudimentary Heat Shielding [MATSCI] (1 die)
-[] Design Studies (Alternative Launch Systems) (1 die)
-[] Balloon Tanks [MATSCI] (1 die)
-[] Weather Studies (Phase 4) (1 die)
-[] All-Sky Survey (Phase 1) (1 die)
-[] Photovoltaic Investigations (1 die)
-[] Propagandize for Space (3 dice)
This is a low cost plan that lets us bank a LOT of resources. If so, we can consider dropping back to 1% funding despite asking for some of the better promises (or picking more promises). With the war ending we'll probably lose a lot of the easy PS sources we've been reliant on so far, so now's a time for being a bit cautious. I'm also avoiding things like research labs or new launch complexes and stuff like that which showed up in prior promises so that they can still be promised next year. The things I did pick are either very low cost and unlikely to be a promise (heat shielding, alternative launch systems now that it's already started, weather studies) or are critical for later stuff (photovoltaics probably needs to be done before we do weather satellites, if we want something which won't run out of power immediately).
