Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

[Crazycryodude]

It sounds like things are going.... pretty well? I expected a bunch of horrible Voznesensky noises under that spoiler but I actually got semi-reasonable economics. It's somewhat disappointing how much The Voz is leaning in the "the people must CONSOOOM PRODUCT" direction, but it's a sad truth that material goods as a representation of progress is well alive in this era, and for many people poverty is a living memory. It's barely 35 years since Sergo started.

Click to shrink...

That spoiler box is direct real life Stalin quotes, so that explains why it doesn't sound like Voz at least

The RLA is an abomination we're stuck with like some cursed artifact, but the RLA is to my understanding a perfectly reasonable, if slightly primitive, space plane design. Only surprise is it working this early on.

Click to shrink...

The RLA is Glushko's fever dream rocket system that has been ruinously expensive to develop but at least (assuming it flies) we can reuse the lighter configurations for decades to do boring satellite trucking etc. The PKA is an oversized shoe that's a technological dead end but somehow is going to manage to simultaneously be a critical stepping stone in our manned space program because fate has aligned to make it ready before a traditional multi-crew capsule. Both were "supposed" to be overambitious failures stuck in development hell assuming average rolls, and then instead went on to roll like God for years and produce something flyable despite the best attempts of the bell curve.

Speaking of farms, the results for Food Supply Provisioning sound better than I expected! I expected weird middle men in the food supply, but instead it seems it's mainly programs making it easier for small farmers to buy goods without needing to go through the same procedures as people who need to order ten tons of seed corn next week.

Click to shrink...

It's Soviet Tractor Supply Co. basically, pretty harmless

 

[DeltaV11.2]

It sounds like things are going.... pretty well? I expected a bunch of horrible Voznesensky noises under that spoiler but I actually got semi-reasonable economics. It's somewhat disappointing how much The Voz is leaning in the "the people must CONSOOOM PRODUCT" direction, but it's a sad truth that material goods as a representation of progress is well alive in this era, and for many people poverty is a living memory. It's barely 35 years since Sergo started.

Click to shrink...

I mean reading the section before the spoiler I got the implication that Voz had the ministry send a bunch of people to perpetual crunch land in an effort to find out what would happen, apparently with enough statistical power to measure the increased accident rate. That's not great but I guess it's not too high on the list of terrible things.

 

[john trask]

People i have a question how powerful we are compared otl soviet union and how powerful is usa ttl

 

[SuperHeavy]

People i have a question how powerful we are compared otl soviet union and how powerful is usa ttl

Click to shrink...

If you are wondering about the balance of power our USSR is both larger and more formidable with a steady rate of growth to look forward to. The US by staying largely out of the OTL's "containment" wars in Asia lacks much military experience with all their new equipment but is economically going strong. Both power blocs are trading with each other a fair amount though not without trade barriers and certain things are no doubt forbidden for security reasons. Overall our communist sphere of influence is in a much better position in the short and long term to keep up with West and avoid political dissolution thanks to economic mismanagement. A direct test of strength is not happening baring some terrible crisi as both sides are nuclear powers.

 

[Simon_Jester]

People i have a question how powerful we are compared otl soviet union and how powerful is usa ttl

Click to shrink...

Define "powerful" rigorously.

 

[Dom Dom]

Question how advance is the technology of the USSR is compared to OTL along with which tech their ahead in than OTL and which are behind OTL. Next how well distributed and consistent their consumer goods is than OTL USSR as from what I've seen from this quest its probably lightyears better than OTL because it much more better distributed.

 

[john trask]

I refer to global influence
I don't know much about the cold war here we can really compete with the United States in all areas not only militarily but culturally and really look like an alternative system to me I think part of what killed the real life soviet union is that it seemed too far away it seemed like it didn't export culture kind of like you know manga movies
I always thought that in real life the ussr was isolated from the world always distant I mean cultural and global influence.

 

[NHO]

We will fly with PKA until 2050s at least, plus possible expendable cargo spaceship because damn thing "mass-producible", reusable and after 20 years of development any attempt to replace it will cost more and fly worse, so it will not die until something truly revolutionary happens.

 

[10ebbor10]

The RLA is Glushko's fever dream rocket system that has been ruinously expensive to develop but at least (assuming it flies) we can reuse the lighter configurations for decades to do boring satellite trucking etc. The PKA is an oversized shoe that's a technological dead end but somehow is going to manage to simultaneously be a critical stepping stone in our manned space program because fate has aligned to make it ready before a traditional multi-crew capsule. Both were "supposed" to be overambitious failures stuck in development hell assuming average rolls, and then instead went on to roll like God for years and produce something flyable despite the best attempts of the bell curve.

Click to shrink...

Though, if either of them had rolled a 1 and we cancelled them, we might have been better off.

We will fly with PKA until 2050s at least, plus possible expendable cargo spaceship because damn thing "mass-producible", reusable and after 20 years of development any attempt to replace it will cost more and fly worse, so it will not die until something truly revolutionary happens.

Click to shrink...

I think it's more likely that the PKA is stuck in the museum within a decade after it's first flight.

It's space plane nature provides a tremendous weight disadvantage and loss of payload, the idea of easy reuseability is going to run into the exact same problems the space shuttle did, and the Lunar program will probably get far enough to create a better conventional launch capsule.

The only thing it'll be good for is retrieving payloads, but there won't be anything to retrieve.

 

[Dwergar]

Do we need to build something while in space?

Because, unless we are assembling, and maybe also welding, a product, it's probably not a good idea to do other kinds of lavorations.

Click to shrink...

Our actual moon vehicle?

Though, if either of them had rolled a 1 and we cancelled them, we might have been better off.


I think it's more likely that the PKA is stuck in the museum within a decade after it's first flight.

It's space plane nature provides a tremendous weight disadvantage and loss of payload, the idea of easy reuseability is going to run into the exact same problems the space shuttle did, and the Lunar program will probably get far enough to create a better conventional launch capsule.

The only thing it'll be good for is retrieving payloads, but there won't be anything to retrieve.

Click to shrink...

Eh, PKA successor is still nifty. Since PKA allows a bit more precision in landing, so cosmonauts flying it (or successor) could land on a dedicated airstrip rather than somewhere in Siberia - saving us expenses and time on retrieving them.

While some PKAs could be stuck in orbit for a while and used as a general-purpose orbital taxis before being deorbited into Pacific a decade (or more) down the line.

 

[Vi'Talzin]

Eh, PKA successor is still nifty.

Click to shrink...

It got cancelled, and I doubt we will get the option to go back to it considering our current commitments. The PKA is what we will get.

 

[10ebbor10]

Our actual moon vehicle?



Eh, PKA successor is still nifty. Since PKA allows a bit more precision in landing, so cosmonauts flying it (or successor) could land on a dedicated airstrip rather than somewhere in Siberia - saving us expenses and time on retrieving them.

While some PKAs could be stuck in orbit for a while and used as a general-purpose orbital taxis before being deorbited into Pacific a decade (or more) down the line.

Click to shrink...

Capsules can actually be landed with significant precision. The primary cause for deviation from trajectory is the wind playing into the parachutes.

Landing them in the middle of nowhere is a safety precaution in case the guidance system fails, and the capsule enters a purely ballistic trajectory.
For a spaceplane, that would mean death.

 

[General_Urist]

We've joked about worshiping Koba's ghost, but with how much we love Numbers Go Up I wonder if our real patron is that spoiler character from Undertale. Anyways... I can't help myself!

[] Proto-plan THE FURNACE ROARS
-[]1955/2015 Resources (60 Reserve), 37 Dice Rolled
Infrastructure (7/5 Dice, 445 R)
-[]Secondary City Metro Lines(Stage 5), 1 Dice (75 R)
-[]Moscow Renovation, 3 Dice (180 R)
-[]Passenger Rail Network(Western SU), 2 Dice (140 R)
-[]Civilian Airports(Stage 2), 1 Dice (50 R)
Heavy Industry (8/8 Dice, 690 R)
-[]Bekabad Metallurgical Plant, 3 Dice (300 R)
-[]Severouralsk MMK(Stage 2), 2 Dice (150 R)
-[]Expansion of the Automotive Plants(VAZ), 3 Dice (240 R)
Rocketry (2/2 Dice, 40 R)
-[]Cosmodrome Expansion, 1 Dice (40 R)
-[]Orbital Docking Systems, 1 Dice
Light and Chemical Industry (8/8 Dice, 470 R)
-[]Consumable Product Initiatives(Stage 1), 1 Dice (50 R)
-[]Air Conditioner Plants(Stage 1), 2 Dice (120 R)
-[]Synthetic Rubber Plants(Stage 1), 2 Dice (150 R)
-[]Textile Industry Modernization(Stage 3), 3 Dice (150 R)
Agriculture (4/4 Dice, 190 R)
-[]Farming Supply Provisioning, 1 Dice (40 R)
-[]Agricultural Diversification, 1 Dice (50 R)
-[]Light Transportation Systems, 2 Dice (100 R)
Services (3/0 Dice, 120 R)
-[]Vaccination Expansion, 3 Dice (120 R)
Bureaucracy (5/5 Dice, 0 R)
-[]Dedicate Focus Towards a Project(Moscow)
-[]Dedicate Focus Towards a Project(VAZ)
-[]Dedicate Focus Towards a Project(Vaccination)
-[]Some weird Voznesensky ideas???, 2 Dice

Boy we're humming, with this we've cleared out most of what we want in heavy industry- I don't think we'll have the steel demand for further mills for a while. In Services I pushed hard on vaccination because that's pretty dang important, but after that perhaps we should switch to commercial services again. No roads yet, but this turn should clear out the non-road transit methods.

The text in the update says Vostok is coming to a close because a new capsule is needed for two-crew launches, which sounds like we might have dual-crew units show up on the docket again. But even if so, Orbital Docking might be more useful. The PKA is almost ready and that lets us yeet two people at once, and we've learnt that a single-launch moonshot is not viable with our rockets so it'll be a good while before a two+ person capsule able to leave orbit is needed. Though I'm not the space guy here, pinging @fasquardon for their thoughts.

 

[fasquardon]

I think it's more likely that the PKA is stuck in the museum within a decade after it's first flight.

It's space plane nature provides a tremendous weight disadvantage and loss of payload, the idea of easy reuseability is going to run into the exact same problems the space shuttle did, and the Lunar program will probably get far enough to create a better conventional launch capsule.

The only thing it'll be good for is retrieving payloads, but there won't be anything to retrieve.

Click to shrink...

Keep in mind what we've been told about the PKA:

The PKA is a very very discount space plane at the end of the day. While it has a hundred kilometers of independent manuvers during/after re entry, that's about it. It has the aerodynamics of a shoe while being shaped like one.

Click to shrink...

I would be super surprised if this thing even had fins, let alone wings. A hundred km of cross-range is about 3 times what the Apollo capsule had, and 1/10th what the Kliper design was to have. That's gonna be in the ballpark of a glide ratio of 0.16:1, compared to the 1:1 glide ratio a human in a wingsuit can manage, the 4.5:1 the Shuttle had, or the 17:1 of a 747.

(Of course, since the PKA, like the Shuttle will be going through a number of aerodynamic scenarios, 0.16:1 won't be exact. I'm not sure which part of the flight the PKA is optimized for, the Shuttle was optimized for the subsonic portion of its flight, since they wanted it to land on a runway. So it's L/D ratio was 1:1 at hypersonic speeds, 2:1 at supersonic speeds and reaching 4.5:1 at subsonic speeds during approach and landing - across its whole re-entry regime it had a L/D ratio of about 1.6:1.)

In any case, Mal and Voz may have been told that this thing was a spaceplane, but I am pretty sure that if you ever actually saw it with your own eyes, you'd call it a capsule.

Also, keep in mind that the Space Shuttle was an 80-tonne monstrosity that was designed to be launched more than 50 times a year and was supposed to be able to return with 20 tonnes of cargo inside. A monstrosity that NASA cut every corner they could on during development, because they thought they could replace and upgrade parts, and that was supposed to be replaced in the 1990s. It was so far from fitting the actual needs of the US during its lifetime, that of course it fell short of its promises. The PKA is more of a sub-scale Zarya, with something like 1/3rd of the cargo capacity and 1/6th of the crew capacity, I'd be surprised if it's heavier than 10 tonnes, even with 1960s technology. That is so, so, so, so much easier to make re-useable it isn't even funny. There's no need for fragile tiles and the like, you can just use titanium. (Which we have way more of than the US of the 1970s, which mostly had to import titanium from the USSR.)

Also, 1 tonne of cargo coming down isn't great for coming back to Earth with satellites. But it is great for carrying cargo back from a space station (which lets you get WAY more bang/buck from a space station program).

The text in the update says Vostok is coming to a close because a new capsule is needed for two-crew launches, which sounds like we might have dual-crew units show up on the docket again. But even if so, Orbital Docking might be more useful. The PKA is almost ready and that lets us yeet two people at once, and we've learnt that a single-launch moonshot is not viable with our rockets so it'll be a good while before a two+ person capsule able to leave orbit is needed. Though I'm not the space guy here, pinging @fasquardon for their thoughts.

Click to shrink...

Hrm. Orbital docking is something that can be left later in the day, since there's way less R&D to do. It's mostly a matter of throwing stuff into orbit and practicing with different kinds of docking adapter.

On the other hand, since to actually do a Lunar landing, we need an EOR/LOR architecture, and that's made easier by a space station, we don't actually need to carry the re-entry capsule all the way to the moon. Instead, we have a "shuttle" that carries men to and from the station (and that shuttle COULD be a Vostok, though it would be terrible at it, compared to the PKA), then a two-room moonship (basically two LEM-style habitation modules with a service module and a landing module so that there's two redundant life-support systems, one habitation module stays in Lunar orbit while the other is carried down by the landing module, and instead of going into a high-energy re-entry on the way back, instead the moonship re-enters the space station orbit, and then can return to Earth on the same "shuttle" that they came up on).

The Vostok is not at all something we want to keep using for a long time. But... We could, if we really needed to, probably make do for a while.

Regards,

fasquardon

 

[Quickshot0]

I think it's more likely that the PKA is stuck in the museum within a decade after it's first flight.

It's space plane nature provides a tremendous weight disadvantage and loss of payload, the idea of easy reuseability is going to run into the exact same problems the space shuttle did, and the Lunar program will probably get far enough to create a better conventional launch capsule.

The only thing it'll be good for is retrieving payloads, but there won't be anything to retrieve.

Click to shrink...

It's more like a lifting body really based on its description, a really bad lifting body, meaning it's a bit intermediate to an extent between true space planes and a capsule. This also means its reusability problems are substantially less if one wanted to try for it. Though I'm not going to bet for now if they will or not.

As @fasquardon mentioned, you quite possibly would not even recognize it as being a space 'plane' and think of it more like a shaped capsule.

Capsules can actually be landed with significant precision. The primary cause for deviation from trajectory is the wind playing into the parachutes.

Landing them in the middle of nowhere is a safety precaution in case the guidance system fails, and the capsule enters a purely ballistic trajectory.
For a spaceplane, that would mean death.

Click to shrink...

So as noted above, you're probably being a bit optimistic on the landing precision of capsules there, though there is another problem in the case of the Soviets, which is that you can't just always choose the most ideal weather to descend your capsule in, of course you won't descend in to a major storm... but not so great weather can still roll in fairly quickly at times, and that is a bit of a problem. (Weather prediction back in the day was quite a bit more limited for instance) And it is something that has occasionally caused some issue in the Soviet program, especially in the early days. Combined with the capsule only having limited time of power left after landing, this isn't great.

Being able to control more of ones entry angle and pathway, would obviously allow one to better land at some place that can recover it nearly, quickly and efficiently.

Also things like lifting bodies need not be particularly much more dangerous in ballistic falls, they should still orient bottom first in to the air flow and just ride it down. At least if they're properly designed that should be the case. So I'm not sure this has to be really that big of a deal.


Finally it is worth noting that space planes for their various advantages have kind of continually been on the reinvent list when one lost access to one. In the case of the USA this means that indeed they built a new one after the Shuttle was retired, most people I think haven't heard of it but the US military as such has a space plane now. No one is completely sure what their main motives for it are, as it's fairly classified. But we do know they run experiments in them which they then recover afterwards, and recently seemed to be experimenting with some kind of in space docking or close approach trick. Some speculation is that perhaps they want to spy on other peoples surveillance satellites... or even perhaps do a bit more then that..., something which interestingly enough the USSR military proposed some interest for in the PLA as well. A reliable recovery of a vehicle at a secure location, with out the big shocks a ground landing capsule has, has its pros in the end.


So overall I think you aren't quite right. Space planes have some interesting capabilities not easily fully replicated by capsules, which causes people to just keep reinventing them if the last one disappears for some reason. Their the PLA is a particularly cheap knock-off version of this, it could actually help save resources from such projects in the near and medium future, while still giving much of the capability people tend to want a space plane for anyway.

 

[agumentic]

I think I've come around to the idea of just sending an orbiter that can drop and pick some stuff up to the Moon instead of landing a manned mission. I rather doubt we will have enough money and/or time to entertain all the lofty ideas about orbital construction and a space station and what not, at least not without burning unnecessary amount of political capital. So, let's instead send a more simple mission, declare victory and then sustainably develop other stuff until we have the technology and infrastructure to make the manned mission both cheaper and more reliable. If US decides to continue their program no matter what to beat us to an actual man on the Moon, well, it's their money and willingness to invest into space to spend.

 

[Terminator57]

Omake : Soviet way of life

Gulin Boris Borisovich opens his eyes painfully as every morning to the shrill ringing of his alarm clock: a gift from his wife for his last birthday.
When you think about it, what a change from the period of his childhood when Stalin was still the general secretary of the Party: instead of the long queues to get your daily ration, now you have access to many cheap products and not only to the basic needs.

Although he would still like to stay immersed in his thoughts, he remembered that he had a job to do. And then he already heard his wife raising her voice to Polivanov and Andrei about their nonsense.

After a quick trip to the bathroom and dressing, he headed to the kitchen for a family breakfast.

After this turbulent moment, the family heads to the door of their apartment to take the stairs of their collective housing to go to their occupations: their work at the industrial combine for the adults and school for the two children.

When Gulin opens the door of their building, he can feel the cold wind of this month of November rushing into the building, whipping his face with its icy brand.

Wrapped up in their winter clothes, they head for the family car, a Pobieda bought with the family savings to facilitate the trips in a city always jammed with public transport and construction works. As if to remind him, their sound environment was soon invaded by traffic noises and jackhammers forming a symphony of the new Soviet modernity brought by Kosigin and the economic boom allowed by his reforms.

Once they arrived in front of their children's brand new school, a gift from the local soviet, after long minutes of waiting in a congested traffic jam, Gulin and Dobronravova had just enough time to exchange quick kisses with their children before hearing the bell announcing the beginning of the school day.

One more day of helping to build socialism, Golin thought before taking the car back to the combine to start a new day of work with his wife.

 

[Crazycryodude]

We will fly with PKA until 2050s at least, plus possible expendable cargo spaceship because damn thing "mass-producible", reusable and after 20 years of development any attempt to replace it will cost more and fly worse, so it will not die until something truly revolutionary happens.

Click to shrink...

Uh, for what? It's not reusable and is essentially a capsule with a cargo bay and slightly more maneuverability on landing, but trades off obscene amounts of mass and volume for those two things that make it pretty objectively worse than a traditional capsule for everything but a tiny subset of payload retrieval missions.

Bringing back spy satellite film is the only thing I can imagine it regularly flying for, and even that will only keep it in service for a decade or less. Especially because the army will be frantically developing a way to get the satellites to return their film automatically rather than having to send up a giant ruinously expensive crewed mission every single time you want to develop some pictures. There's a small window before automatic film return becomes feasible but after the PKA is predicted to be functional where it might fetch some rolls of film, but once a multi-crew ballistic capsule is developed for the civilian program and the army figures out another way to return film the PKA is going straight to a museum.

 

[aja318]

Uh, for what? It's not reusable and is essentially a capsule with a cargo bay and slightly more maneuverability on landing, but trades off obscene amounts of mass and volume for those two things that make it pretty objectively worse than a traditional capsule for everything but a tiny subset of payload retrieval missions.

Bringing back spy satellite film is the only thing I can imagine it regularly flying for, and even that will only keep it in service for a decade or less. Especially because the army will be frantically developing a way to get the satellites to return their film automatically rather than having to send up a giant ruinously expensive crewed mission every single time you want to develop some pictures. There's a small window before automatic film return becomes feasible but after the PKA is predicted to be functional where it might fetch some rolls of film, but once a multi-crew ballistic capsule is developed for the civilian program and the army figures out another way to return film the PKA is going straight to a museum.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, there will be technology to get back film from our satellites but if we want to liberate some from grasp of capitalism we will need to get it in space.

 

[Manowl]

I don't know nothing about fancy space stuff only thing I can imagine that is still going to happen is that our cosmonauts are going to have a gun in the return capsule still.

 

[Dwergar]

Uh, for what? It's not reusable and is essentially a capsule with a cargo bay and slightly more maneuverability on landing, but trades off obscene amounts of mass and volume for those two things that make it pretty objectively worse than a traditional capsule for everything but a tiny subset of payload retrieval missions.

Bringing back spy satellite film is the only thing I can imagine it regularly flying for, and even that will only keep it in service for a decade or less. Especially because the army will be frantically developing a way to get the satellites to return their film automatically rather than having to send up a giant ruinously expensive crewed mission every single time you want to develop some pictures. There's a small window before automatic film return becomes feasible but after the PKA is predicted to be functional where it might fetch some rolls of film, but once a multi-crew ballistic capsule is developed for the civilian program and the army figures out another way to return film the PKA is going straight to a museum.

Click to shrink...

Vostok is on the way out, and we could either expend a lot on a clean-slate multi-crew capsule... Or we could spend a limited amount of resources and, more importantly, time to refit 2-crew PKA into multi-crew one while removing the cargo capability (or just use it as-is for launching two cosmonauts). At some point, automated cargo variant could probably follow.

It'd be a quick and dirty way of making our moonshot and space program in general stays ahead of competition, since it's already in testing, when any 2+ crew capsule we could use for, say, space stations or moonshots is not.

 

[General_Urist]

The Vostok is not at all something we want to keep using for a long time. But... We could, if we really needed to, probably make do for a while.

Click to shrink...

Given the hard cap on our R&D budget, I am inclined to keep using Vostok for a while and use the PKA for when we absolutely need to send up multiple people at once. Not fun, but such is life. Thanks for the input on orbital docking probably being quick. But there's always the risk of a low roll causing chaos, and plus the docking sounds like a bottleneck to any sort of orbital infrustructure, so perhaps we should do it soon.

How useful would the Expanded Luna Program be? might give us more insight into the technical challenges associated with heading to the moon and back, especially if they do a sample return mission. Though this is one of those programs where if the initial quality roll is bad we're better off cancelling it immediately rather than pushing through with a bad idea, like we did with communication satellites.

Omake : Soviet way of life

Click to shrink...

Given it's november I can forgive using a car as them wanting to minimize exposure to the elements, but I hope it's not something they are forced to do and that Polivanov and Andrei have the means to go to school without their parents driving them.

OK, urban planning salt aside, a pretty nice omake. Shows the optimism.

 

[Drieder]

State of the Seventh Five-Year Plan:
60% Increase in MFPG Production Value: Ahead of the Moving Target
20% Increase in Capital Goods Production Value: At the Moving Target
150% Increase in Consumer Goods Production Value: At the Moving Target
30% Increase in Agricultural Sector Production Value: Behind the Moving Target

Eh, from what i can see we are doing Alright, but, is there anything we can do to catch up when it comes to agriculture? Because it doesnt seem to catch up no matter how many Agri-Projects are completed. Remember we are "Attempting to Fufill the Plan" so this should be quite important.

 

[Nervos Belli]

State of the Seventh Five-Year Plan:
60% Increase in MFPG Production Value: Ahead of the Moving Target
20% Increase in Capital Goods Production Value: At the Moving Target
150% Increase in Consumer Goods Production Value: At the Moving Target
30% Increase in Agricultural Sector Production Value: Behind the Moving Target

Eh, from what i can see we are doing Alright, but, is there anything we can do to catch up when it comes to agriculture? Because it doesnt seem to catch up no matter how many Agri-Projects are completed. Remember we are "Attempting to Fufill the Plan" so this should be quite important.

Click to shrink...

Not a ton. We're reaching the limits on increasing production of basic food goods, there's just too much grain available to be worth growing more. Diversifying agriculture is expensive and takes time to pay off, but it's the best option we have.

 

[SuperHeavy]

I don't know nothing about fancy space stuff only thing I can imagine that is still going to happen is that our cosmonauts are going to have a gun in the return capsule still.

Click to shrink...

That was for bears and such after landing, Captain Cosmovolv is not leaning out the capsule hatch flashing his Makarov at the Mercury astronauts sadly.