Once derivative roads are fully funded, paving of direct population facing roads can start at scale, modernizing the countryside to a state that would be adequate for the Union of 1970.
So even if we finished all the road projects next turn, we would still be a decade behind where we need to be.
And if we finish all the road projects at the end of next plan, we'd be 15 years behind.
And we are currently 20 years behind, so we should have had today's road network in 1960.
It is at this point considered a national priority to work with the Austrialians so as to import coal into the Black sea.
!
So we need to import coal from Australia despite the supplies of cheap coal we have coming from Siberia. That's sure something. I wonder if this is due to not having enough metallurgical coal coming from Siberia, or because we don't have enough transportation capacity yet?
(If I were to guess, it would be the latter.)
In view of this, we probably don't need to be shy about the electrification of our steel industry, if we ever get the electrical headroom to do this. Turn Siberian coal into electricity and use electricity to make steel.
Coming to an electronics store near you on February 21st 1980, the Iskra integrated desktop computer! Now with a cassette reader, 45x30 character color display, 4-12 KB RAM, and a fast K6806VS 1.1 MHz CPU. External storage capacity is available for a nominal fee, allowing programs to be kept on a discrete floppy compatible drive. Peripherals are available both as discrete units, with an expansion card paired with a device, or universal expansion cards with standard ports for expanded graphical, storage, or workplace use. A software compiler is included as standard alongside basic programs on two additional casetes with further options offered for office use.
-Dec 1979 Iskra, The Iskra Computer
This sounds pretty comparable to the Apple II - slightly better display and a lower amount of maximum RAM (the Apple II ranged from 4k to 48k). That's better than I thought we'd be doing - the OTL Apple II launched in June of 1977, so us having a computer this good launched only a year behind is very good. It puts us significantly ahead of anyone who didn't have Steve Wozniak on their payroll in this period of OTL.
Of course, TTL the Americans might be even further ahead, but last we heard about where their cutting edge was, it was about where the OTL cutting edge was.
The difference in optimism between the action description and results description is jarring. I can not tell which one is Balakirev speaking, but unless the reevaulation about the future of nuclear happened literally in the middle of this year it gives the impression of some significant confusion in the ministry.
Meh. We'll see how things look after the next plan. River Reversal will drop coal prices, but I sure do not see the gas industry collapsing any time soon with how demand is rocketing.
Well spotted.
I wonder if massive investments into coal gassification would help? If lots of coal was being used to meet oil demand, it should support coal prices some... But probably another megaproject isn't the answer.
As for the vote, I definitely back
Modify Recoverability Information - the other options are worse, and triggering a crisis now is, well, probably as good a time as any.
Balakirev's decisive nature could get some mileage out of an oil crisis during an election year, I am sure.
I am strongly in favor of
Prioritize Internal Unity - Balakirev's personality makes anything else non-viable IMO (an alliance would be undermined by Bala's ambition, putting struggles on hold would be undermined by his decisiveness). We should continue to lean into Bala's status as the grim reaper of Soviet politics.
And as has been said already, a smaller, more united political grouping is a better tool - we need a sharp scalpel, not an unwieldy hammer that is actively fighting against Bala's efforts at doing political surgery.
As far as which dice pools to expand, I think that looking at the flavor text is important. This is not only a moment to pick our dice pools, it is a moment to shape how Balakirev thinks about the Soviet economy. And since this guy is going to become top dog or destroy himself trying, the effects of this choice will be reverberating for decades to come.
As such, I am quite dubious about
Long Term Growth Emphasis - 4 infra and 2 HI dice are nice and all, but as far as HI goes, we are more often than not limited by resource costs or electricity availability. Also, this emphasis seems to prime Bala to push for an intensively coal-y future.
Stabilization of Infrastructure seems like a fairly safe option. The bubble it would cause in general labour prices would help get us through an oil crisis. Plus, we are a LONG way behind on roads and even once we catch up on those, we have a housing crisis in the wings, water projects to work on, we need to upgrade our airports. I would estimate at least two, if not three plans MINIMUM that we need all the infra we can get. And fixing the strait jacket of our road problems will help alot with improving productivity.
Support of Consumer Industries seems to be a decently strong path, but I am dubious that having so few infra dice will be wise.
Addressing the Labor Problem is IMO the best pick for preparing us for GenSec Balakirev. In the long run, pushing up general wages in a sustainable way is the key challenge. But the lack of infra dice makes me uncertain that this is a great way to go for the right now.
So at the moment I favor
Stabilization of Infrastructure.
Now onto the bit that people might actually listen to me about, rocketry!
[]RLA-3 Minimal Stack: Combining a nuclear transit stage with an additional fuel reserve and a forward crew section, a series of RLA-3 launches can conduct a full lunar mission. The nuclear assembly will in effect perform the full transfer, orbit, and capture burn before being discarded into the lunar surface. The surface stack will in itself only need to land and perform the takeoff operation, placing down three men onto the surface before returning back as an integrated module. An assembly in LEO leaves the greatest chance for an abort, and as long as the hardware does not fail in the process it can form a viable route towards the moon. (-40 RpY)
[]Heavy Direct Lander: With the expectation that a 150 ton capable launch vehicle is developed a far heavier lander can be designed without much attention to alternative configurations. Orbital propellant depots introduce a significant technical vulnerability alongside several other factors compared to a sufficiently sized rocket. Criticism from the current engineers of a superheavy design can be ignored as a lunar landing is politically necessary, especially one conducted before the Americains. This will start the program while the LV is still being worked on, ensuring that a complete functional upper stage is made available by 1982 no matter the costs inherent to the project. (-50 RpY)
[]Separated Lander: Placing an immense technical risk on an orbital rendezvous promises to significantly lower the mass costs of any rocket platform and it can enable the use of two RLA-3 systems to achieve the launch profile without any new hardware. The lander itself will have to be more developed, but the Luna program has already somewhat pioneered the systems required to achieve a landing on the moon without issue. An initial transfer stage will be combined with a smaller upper stage vehicle that will remain in orbit while a single man lands on the surface to plant the flag. The achievement is meaningless in future capabilities but if the domestic program is to overtake American progress then radical measures must be taken. (-40 RpY)
The
RLA-3 Minimal Stack is something we've had in mind for some time - if the big rocket doesn't work out, use a nuclear upper stage as a fallback option to win the moon race.
That our nuclear engine successfully managed to get a probe into Mercury orbit also bodes well for it being able to manage the far less challenging Lunar mission.
It also gets 3 men onto the Lunar surface, which is a decent payload.
This approach also involves an Earth orbit rendezvous, so going this way will synergize with our orbital depot efforts and the nuclear tug program, since if that program works (which it may not - pumping liquid hydrogen in microgravity is a tough engineering problem), we can change an EOR to a rendezvous with a tug at our propellant depot.
Crashing spent nuclear stages on the already toxic and irradiated Lunar surface is fine. Especially as our nuclear stages just don't have that much nuclear material.
The
Heavy Direct Lander is a pure brute force approach. Our engineers absolutely can make a big dang rocket. This is the "burn political capital to get things done" Apollo approach.
This is probably the safest choice as far as achieving the Lunar base goal eventually, as we'd be burning money to overcome all obstacles, rather than trying to be clever. The downside is that 1982 may be too late, and in any case, developing a new rocket in only 3 years is extremely ambitious. So this route may be giving the Americans the upper hand.
Separated Lander is IMO politically non-viable - the race is for a Lunar base, meaning that landing first can easily be dismissed by the Americans. Also, after our great success in whipping up a political storm over the moon race, a mission that is so clearly propaganda-focused and that has such a limited capability is just not going to fly. This option is obviously not a brave drive towards the future.
Also, the single man Lunar lander won't really be useful as a lifeboat if we have to Apollo 13 a mission, and the one man going down to the moon on his own will have no help if he has an emergency. The safety margins aren't good.
On balance, I favor the
RLA-3 Minimal Stack, though I do wonder if we should bite the bullet and go full Apollo on this. Rolling so high on "Publicize Space Targets" last turn means that the pressure in this moon race is higher than in the last one.
If I understand right: Our eggheads had a panic about how harmful lunar dust is, and failed to come up with a decent decontamination system, leading them to plan a mission around spacesuits being single use. That would be tolerable for Apollo-style missions, but if we want an actual long-term MOONBASE than this is a disaster. IDK what to do now... scrap it? Press onwards, and hope later research on the moondust will make our people decide they can re-use them after all?
No, I think you missunderstand - our eggheads tried to make a suit that wouldn't get much dust inside the airlock, due to most of the suit staying outside all the time, but felt that a hatch-backed suit would still get alot of dust inside. So they went "screw it, let's make this a problem for the base designers or the launch planners" and are saying the base should have an airlock that can scrub dust off the suits, or that suits should be treated as disposable items.
So our moon base will be more complicated than it would have been with a good roll.
Anyway, for my vote I'll approval vote one plan, and also introduce my own plan for more infra:
[X] Plan Knifing Zimyanin
-[X] RLA-3 Minimal Stack: (-40 RpY)
-[X]Modify Recoverability Information
-[X]Prioritize Internal Unity
-[X] Long Term Growth Emphasis (+4 Infrastructure Dice +2 Heavy Industry Dice)
[X] Plan I like big roads
-[X] RLA-3 Minimal Stack: (-40 RpY)
-[X]Modify Recoverability Information
-[X]Prioritize Internal Unity
-[X]Stabilization of Infrastructure (+6 Infrastructure Dice)
Regards,
fasquardon
