Per Aspera (Space Agency Plan Quest)

January became February, which in turn faded into March, and now you sat at your desk at the end of the quarter, musing over the progress the IEC had made. It wasn't, perhaps, as explosive as some points last year, but it very much was substantial, and you often felt as if the baseline of improvement was creeping ever so gradually upward, quarter-for-quarter. The research team reorganization you'd introduced in late 1954 was already paying off, bringing new heat shield materials to support the dream of crewed spaceflight, along with returning spaceborne experiments safely to the Earth after time on orbit. What you liked best about it, though, was that the engineers and scientists assigned to those teams seemed happier and better rested than before. The IEC somewhat self-selected for those who had passion and drive enough to ignore physical discomfort and exhaustion in pursuit of their goals, but that didn't exactly make it a healthy habit to encourage. Perhaps progress was less rapid than it had been (though, personally, you thought it remained about the same, which truly said something about the value of a good night's sleep), but that didn't bother you at all.

Musing, you took a sip of your coffee and pulled out the day's paper…


NEW YORK CITY - The Union of New England Communes has become the first region to recognize same-sex marriages. This represents a major victory for the queer community, as while homosexuality was decriminalized worldwide in the wake of the Revolution, there is still work to be done achieving equal rights for that group, and marriage equality is chief amongst those concerns..

SYDNEY - Councillor John O'Rourke (SDL) leveled accusations against the IEC of making 'nuclear rockets'. The Councillor has repeatedly made remarks lambasting the IEC, calling it a 'boondoggle' and 'wasted resources.' A spokesperson for the IEC dismissed the accusations, saying that, "The only nuclear thing we're working on is power plants, which we sought and received Council permission for. If the good Councillor has a problem with that, he can raise it at the next Council."...

GLOBAL - The polio vaccine, entered into limited trial last year, has begun worldwide rollout. The effort has been applauded and pushed in equal measure by the medical community, touting the possibility of eradicating once and for all a disease which has plagued humankind since time immemorial. "There will be no more children taken from this world too early by this monstrous disease," the Department of Health and Welfare said in a statement…

CHAD - The practice of spirulina farming has taken off across Sub-Saharan Africa in recent months, as the age-old technique has been spread by people moving across the region. Spirulina, which is a type of algae, is cultivated in lake waters and harvested, then dried into cakes for later consumption. Highly nutritious, some doctors with the Health and Welfare Department are looking into its utility as a disaster-relief foodstuff and a way to reduce food scarcity across the world...

Resources:
30R (+475R/turn - 35R/turn from payroll/dice purchases = +440/turn net)
103 Political Support (Decays to 100 on Q2)
1 R-2 Gale
1 R-4 Dawn



Scientific Advances
Improved Instrumentation - Gain +1d2 bonus to a random field every 2 launches. Gain +1 to AVIONICS immediately.) (Made obsolete by First Satellite)
Regenerative Cooling - Starts down the path to more powerful and advanced rocket engines.
Second Stages - Can now build 2-Stage Sounding Rockets.
Combustion Instability Research - Turns the initial success roll for a rocket from a >60 to >50.
Engine Cycles - Enables Early Orbital engines.
Mobile Launch Operations - Can launch Sounding Rockets without the need for a launch pad.
Improved Stringer Alloys - New (expensive) alloys improve the performance of structural tanks. (+5 to R cost of Heavy Sounding Rockets and above)
Copper-Chrome combustion chamber alloys - New combustion chamber alloys with higher heat transfer efficiency allow for hotter (and thus more efficient) chamber temperatures, leading to the ability to produce more powerful engines. (Future rocket designs will be higher performing.)
Aluminum-Lithium monolithic tanks - New tank alloys enable lighter, higher performing tankage to be produced for new rocket designs. (Future designs that use Al-Li tankage will be more performant, but more expensive in R terms.)
First Satellite - With the launch of the Curiosity I, the IEC and the world have entered a new era of spaceflight, and the horizons of science and engineering broaden ever further. (+10PS, Improved Instrumentation bonus deactivated. Gain +1d2 bonus to a random non-CREW field per two satellite launches.)
Van Allen Belts - An area of charged particles from the Sun, trapped by Earth's magnetic field. These belts have caused several minor hiccups with the Curiosity I satellite, and given the transmitted radiation readings, care must be taken if the IEC intends to launch humans through them. Staying for any significant length of time would be... ill advised.

Scientific/Engineering Specific Field Bonuses
AERO - +19
AVIONICS - +10 (+1 from First Satellite)
CHEM - +11
CREW - +3
COMP - +13
MATSCI - +17
PHYS - +9
PROP - +14

IEC Leadership:

Director of the IEC:
Penelope Carter [The Director] - [+10 to Politics rolls, +2 Politics die, +5R/turn in funding from Connections, reroll 1 failed politics roll per turn]

Assistant Director of the IEC:
Sergei Korolev [The Engineer] - [+5 to Science and Engineering rolls (unless researching [HGOL][FUEL] projects, then it becomes a -15), +1 Science dice, +1 Engineering Dice. Request: Build and launch a 2nd Generation Orbital Rocket within 5 years. Demonstrate crewed orbital spaceflight within 5 years.]

Chief Scientist of the IEC:

Assistant Director of the Spacefarer Assembly:

Passive Effects

Rocket Reels - Adds a coinflip for 2 gained political support per quarter; gain an additional flip for every successful orbital rocket launch. [UPGRADED]

Nuclear Power Authorization - The World Council has been successfully convinced to support the IEC conducting peaceful, power-generating nuclear experiments. (Current WC approval status: Given, Apprehensive; Current public approval status: Apprehensive)

Promises Made (Expires Q1 1956 unless otherwise stated):
Conduct Materials Research (Phase 5) (Int(C), Int(M-L), FWW) (small additional progress requirement added in order to represent finding materials good for civilian use)
Build the Beijing Institute for Chemical Research (Int(C))
Build the New Delhi Institute for Physics (CPAL, Int(C))
Launch a Venus probe before 1960Q1. (+2 to Dnipro Aerospace Metallurgy Centre's bonus on completion) (Int(M-L)
Launch a probe to Mars by 1960Q1 (+2 to Long Beach Propulsion Research Complex's bonus on completion) (Int(D)))
Conduct Nuclear Power Plant Design Studies (FWW) (Does not expire as long as the dice is locked)
Build 2 points of Industry or Electrification in the Pacific or Africa (FWW)
Build the Big Ear (CPAL)
Transfer APCP formula to the UWF for use in military rockets. (UWF) (Autocomplete)
Hire a spacefarer from South America (UWF)
Conduct Design Studies (Alternative Launch Systems) (SDL)

Rocket Construction (1 R-4 Dawn Complete, 2 Curiosity-class Satellites Complete)

Construct an R-4 Dawn (17/120)
Construct a Curiosity-class Satellite

The Assembly teams found themselves assigned to continuing Dawn production and beginning serial-production of Curiosity-class satellites this quarter. While progress on the Dawn front was slower than you'd become accustomed to, it was more than sufficient to put the last touches on the Dawn begun last quarter and move on to the next, while other teams put together Curiosity III and IV.

Rocket Launches

There was only one launch this quarter, a Dawn carrying Curiosity III into a polar orbit. The Dawn was just able to accomplish the task, given the increased delta-V requirements imposed by the inclination not taking advantage of the eastward spin of the Earth for a 'free' four hundred meters per second of velocity. The launch was fully nominal, and a short time later as the satellite passed back overhead it reported that its deployment had been successful as well, bringing the satellite class' success rate up to 2/3.

(+1 to AVIONICS)

Build a Scientific Complex
-Beijing Institute for Chemical Research (CHEM) (187/450)
-New Delhi Institute for Physics (PHYS) (178/450)

Fresh off of finishing the scientific complexes in Sao Paolo, Long Beach and Mombasa, the Facilities teams charged straight ahead into the complexes in Beijing and New Delhi. These were the best-developed locations they had yet been asked to build in - Beijing in particular - and as such their issues were somewhat fewer than expected. Neither site, at this point, needed either additional power or water and waste supply added on, as both had received rebuilding assistance that had brought their areas up to modern standards (where they hadn't been before, anyway).

The Beijing Institute for Chemical Research, given its area of focus, was located on the outskirts of the city, as far away as possible while still receiving utilities. It was situated next to a railroad, and in fact one of the beginning stages of construction involved driving in a set of rails for trains to be able to pull cargoes of reactants (solid, liquid and gaseous) directly up to the facility. This, too, necessitated an efficiently-planned cargo handling area with separated stations each material type could be stored in. As the cargo area was under construction, so too were the labs and their air and liquid handling systems. Everything was built to be as safe as was conceivable, and with justified reason - many terrible tales could be found utterly trivially of the accidents that could occur at any chemical works, and given that some of the experiments that were hoped to be undertaken here would also incorporate elements of mass production for testing purposes, the Institute certainly counted as one of those.

The New Delhi Institute for Physics too was on the edge of the city, but it had, in contrast, somewhat simpler requirements. It needed high amounts of power available on-site for physics experiments, and an ample amount of water and space available - for it was here that the heads of the nuclear power research project wanted to site their test and prototype reactors. That, of course, necessitated a series of negotiations with the local leadership to make sure they understood what the IEC wanted to do and, once again, obtain their permission, though this time for those experiments only. They were given approval, wary though it was, and ground was broken for those buildings at the same time as the rest of the facility's buildings. Its second biggest draw were its computers, aimed at helping the physicists here solve their problems; it had nearly as many as Mombasa itself did, and while the construction was underway there were classes in Mogadishu training operators and maintainers alike in how to run the machines - because there just quite simply were not enough qualified people available on the planet for the number of computers the IEC ran, and would run.

Big Ear [PHYS] (209/300)

One of the more exciting things you'd been able to greenlight this quarter was the construction of the Big Ear, the nickname given to the large radio telescope that your astronomy department had requested a year or so back. It was most of a hundred meters long, with the receiver on one side and a curved parabola taking up the other wall some twenty meters away. The reflected radio waves coming in from across the universe would feed into that little (somewhat steerable) strip of receivers and from there a combination of computers and human brainpower would turn the signals into information about where they had come from, how long ago they had been made (and thus how far away they were), and all sorts of other interesting information besides.

It was also, thankfully, relatively quick to set up - as evidenced by the nearly-complete frame and receiver strip when you went to visit it. The larger problem was needing to upgrade the local power supply - but it wasn't the first time the Facilities personnel had done that, and it probably wouldn't be the last. It was, however, pricey - all the radio equipment was special-order, and then there was the power plant gear itself. But it was a price worth paying, you'd been convinced.

Conduct Design Studies (Alternative Launch Systems) [AERO, PHYS] (216/300)

You'd authorized another quarter of funding for the Alternative Launch Systems studies, though it seemed that letting it languish for a while had somewhat dulled the enthusiasm of the researchers involved. Still, they did make some progress on what they called a 'launch loop', a (very) large structure that should, in theory, be able to put payloads into orbit with little more than electricity and a small kick stage. It would run along the ground (ideally equatorially, and again ideally out to sea) and an electromagnetic drive system would accelerate the payload it carried up through the atmosphere and out into space. Even calling it very large was somewhat underselling it, however - by their estimates, such a loop would be thousands of kilometers long, and easily the largest and most expensive infrastructure project the IEC had ever considered, and in the top ten in world history. It had some drawbacks in the form of, of course, cost, weather concerns, and the sheer power draw it would need just to keep itself upright. The engineers on the project, however, assured you that if it were possible to build it at all, those concerns could be dealt with.

Other ideas advanced included air-launching systems - which ran smack into a number of problems with regards to practicality and the laws of physics, along with lack of sufficiently large carrier aircraft - and more work on the previously advanced ideas of the space elevator and space tower. You had, from the word go, known that this study would attract the most wild-eyed dreamers amongst your engineering staff, but you hadn't been quite aware of how willing they were to be absolutely wild with the things they came up with. It was refreshing and amusing in equal parts.

Nuclear Power Plant Design Studies (1/8 turns, 1 locked dice)

The nuclear power plant design work began promptly, with civil, mechanical and electrical engineers pulled in to begin mulling over the requirements of any nuclear reactor (currently envisioned, at any rate). Power. Water. Road or (preferably) rail access. Security considerations. Infrastructural requirements for the fuel itself. The list went on, and on. With New Delhi under construction, finding a location for a test reactor and a prototype was made somewhat simpler than expected, and permission was sought from that locality for the privilege of building both there - and, once received, the talks turned more to the specifics of the reactor's operating regime.

Rudimentary Heat Shielding [MATSCI] (2/2 turns, 1 locked dice returned)

After reviewing the results of the previous quarter's test launch of ablative heat shielding materials, a particular set proved the most resilient and was chosen for future testing and usage on IEC spacecraft - a resin-impregnated hemp base, formed into a honeycomb pattern, atop which an ablative silicone elastomer was poured in and set, secured with an additional, outer ring made with a combination of carbon cloth and phenolic resin. While descending at re-entry speeds through the atmosphere, the elastomer would burn away, or ablate, and in so doing remove heat from the heat shield, keeping the overall ablation rate low enough so the payload it protected would remain at survivable temperatures internally through the entire descent - and, critically, un-burnt.

Observation Satellites (2/4 turns, 1 locked dice)

With the basics knocked out, the Observation Satellites group moved to the actual mechanical details of 'how do we keep this pointed in the direction we want'. Some favored spin stabilization for its simplicity, while others preferred having the ability to actually point the spacecraft - which would also be quite valuable for interplanetary probes. So it was that they set about developing a reaction control system that used a series of what were essentially small pressure-fed motors linked to tanks of compressed nitrogen to point a spacecraft in a desired direction. A group split off and began devising avionics to control that system, and between those two efforts the majority of the funding and engineering time available to the project for the quarter were spent. Some, however, was made available to the optics team, who investigated the cameras in production around the world, hoping to find either an off-the-shelf model or a manufacturer that could make exactly what they wanted for the task of weather observation.

Human-rated Rocketry (2/8 turns, 1 locked dice)

One of the challenges with human-rated rocketry was the sheer force a rocket could, would, and did exert on its payload during the entire ascent phase, followed by an abrupt cessation when the engines cut out in the target orbit. While, theoretically, a well-optimized R-4 could put a single spacefarer into orbit, two or more was right out and that single spacefarer would have quite the unpleasant ride the entire way up, as the maximum g-force loading on the payload right before engine cutout was over eight Gs. Ideally, a crew-carrier rocket would have a more sedate acceleration, perhaps starting at 1.3 to 1.5 G at liftoff and ending around 4 G. It would thus have to either have some sort of throttling capability for its engines, be carrying a heavy mass, or be sufficiently large as to limit the acceleration thus. This was, necessarily, more inefficient than a satellite-carrier, in size and fuel expenditure. The upside was that, provided a throttling method could be devised, the same rocket could put heavier payloads of cargo into orbit without needing to design an entire extra launch vehicle specifically for cargo use.

The IEC, of course, could do either the single-seater option or the multi-crew option, but it could only do one at a time, at this particular time, so a choice must be made.

[ ] [HUMAN] Go with a single-person spacecraft.
[ ] [HUMAN] Go with a two-seat spacecraft.

Conduct Materials Research (Phase 4) [MATSCI] (231/350) (Nat 100)

While the current round of materials science research was underway (and indeed ongoing), the teams reported results from personal side-projects undertaken by small groups of the overall research team. The first of these was inconel - an alloy known since the 40s, where it had been used in jet engines - now applied to rocketry. The specific formulation for jet turbines was not quite well suited enough to be used in rocket turbomachinery, but with a slight tweaking of the formula, they were able to come up with one that was, and for what it was good at, it was superior to just about everything else available.

The second of these was hastelloy-N, a nickel superalloy that had a shockingly high heat tolerance while maintaining strength at those temperatures. This was a reasonably good material for making, say, rocket nozzles with, or maybe combustors, but what really got the scientists involved excited was its applications in the field of nuclear reactors - which were, by all accounts, going to have high pressures and high temperatures (or at least one of those) involved, and would benefit from the material.

[Tech added: Inconel turbine parts - Enables higher-performance rocket engines to be constructed.]
[Tech added: Hastelloy-N reactor parts - Enables higher-performance nuclear reactors and nuclear engines to be constructed.]

University Rocket Competitions

Given the success of the Rocket Box so far, when one of your new graduate engineers approached you with the suggestion that the IEC sponsor a worldwide series of rocketry competitions at the university level, you walked the suggestion straight to Outreach and asked them about the feasibility and how exactly to go about it.

Now, most of a year after that day, they had brought forward a plan: each Region would host a series of competitions in various classes, such as Altitude Record Solid and Liquid classes, respectfully, along with various size classes, but also preserving a 'Novelty' class - for the more… eccentric designs to be shown off in. Then, once a year, the winning university teams from each region would be flown to Mogadishu to tour the Space Centre and take part in a two week shadowing program during the equatorial summer, getting to actually work alongside IEC engineers and scientists and gain valuable knowledge and experience.

Naturally, you signed it, and with a reasonable staff allocation and a budget, it was off to the (rocket) races.

Bothering Councilors

Even though you'd just come back from the World Council session, there were promises you'd made that, while the could be completed by the IEC's own Facilities personnel, they could also be accomplished by getting ahold of the Department of Reconstruction and Disaster Relief's Executive Council and asking them to consider a slight priority modification. Thanks to being, well, the Director of the IEC, you were quickly able to get ahold of one of the Councilors there, a young man from Sumatra who had managed to find himself elected by his region on the strength of the actions he'd taken to save several towns from devastating wildfires caused by incendiary bombing during the Third Great War.

With congratulations afforded and a certain amount of schmoozing on your part, you asked him to…

[ ] [BOTHER] Divert resources to rebuilding Electrification in [name the region you want]. (Takes 3 turns to complete)
[ ] [BOTHER] Divert resources to rebuilding Industry in [name the region you want]. (Takes 3 turns to complete)
[ ] [BOTHER] Divert resources to rebuilding Infrastructure in [name the region you want]. (Takes 3 turns to complete)


Propagandize for Nuclear Power (155/???)

Building on your work from months ago, you began to strategize the most appropriate tone and direction to take with your propagandizing. The best path forward seemed to be to present the benefits of clean air and emphasize how little waste a reactor would produce - it wouldn't, for example, make a river un-swimmable and un-fishable thanks to toxic runoff the way other plants might, nor would it have enormous piles of ash to deal with after the fuel was used up. It would be necessary to emphasize that these plants' only function would be producing power, and nothing whatsoever to do with producing any new bombs.

At this point, you yourself had become convinced that this was the right path forward - but you were very aware of how many people would likely disagree. So, when the Outreach department asked if they could start taking the propaganda public, you told them to trial it in Mogadishu - a city untouched by atomic fire, and also, handily, right next door. Hopefully all went well.

Engineering Job Fair (93/150)

The Personnel department resumed its search for more engineering candidates and began talking to a wider spread of universities to inquire about their graduating classes. Masters students graduated somewhat year round - there was typically a cohort every quarter - but the bachelors' only appeared, really, at the end of the school year for that particular region. There wasn't much progress made, mostly for that reason - they hired on an additional batch of graduate students, but the undergraduates who were typically far more numerous were as yet unavailable. Hopefully, next quarter would fare better.