People say this with such extreme confidence but we don't know the exact odds. They are worse than original formalization, but I don't see why would they be so bad that just an above average roll - or, well, the set of rolls taken together - would not give us a functional design proposal.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition
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In fact will do just that, vote for Push Forward.
[X]Push Forward
[X]Accept Yangel's Rationalized Mission
Also, thinking about it, I am pretty sure "thrown to committee" has literally been used as an euphemism for a project being DoA in the past in this quest for some of the reforms we did that failed.
[X]Push Forward
[X]Accept Yangel's Rationalized Mission
Also, thinking about it, I am pretty sure "thrown to committee" has literally been used as an euphemism for a project being DoA in the past in this quest for some of the reforms we did that failed.
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[X]Accept Yangel's Rationalized Mission
[X]Back Kosygin
[X]Back Kosygin
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We do know the most likely outcome is it being "a melon of a consensus design we are stuck killing" according to a convo on discord.
Blackstar said:
Like, this is getting a 3 and then picking the option "oh well, lets just let all the different divas in charge of the OKBs throw things at the wall and let them find an agreement". I don't see why there is any confusion on this being the highest risk option. It might work and produce something great, and that is what is attractive about it, but it likely will not.
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As expected, committee design was a shitshow with no cooperation. (The dice order was Indonesia, Chelomei, Glushko, Koralev, Yangel, Cooperation).
So we got two technically viable proposals from Korolev and Yangel, but they're both bespoke and exclusive to one another, and both are politically radioactive.
So we got two technically viable proposals from Korolev and Yangel, but they're both bespoke and exclusive to one another, and both are politically radioactive.
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Its pretty much official we lost the moon race, the US will beat us if they do the bare minimum according to Blackstar. Lets hope they have a mega Nedelin that kills off most of their moon program (won't happen) cause otherwise we are done for. Indonesia went well though, so Kosygin's govt won't explode and make even more of a mess at least.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
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Look, we inherited Russia after centuries of mismanagement by the Tzars and then a Civil War.
We've been doing a lot, but we're not miracle workers.
We had main arterial roads in Moscow that weren't paved until the 50's, the anti road brainworms are extremely potent
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Guess this is goodbye to any chance of winning the moon race.
Woooooooh yes dub for Malik in Indonesia hopefully we got some good concessions even if the roll wasn't amazing
@Blackstar: now the rolls are in, would just choosing Yangel before have been politically worse than, say, picking Yangel now after letting the designers submit ideas for a better landing?
Curious if I was right to want to kick the can down the road, or if that made things worse.
Because pushing forward the frontiers of science is how we deliver awesome plans 20 years from now. The ministry needs to invest in the long term, as well as in what things are needed immediately.
Now, we may be investing too much because we are all nerds, but that's not something we need to say in public!
It might be what Voz's successor uses to justify falling short in their first plan tho.
Regards,
fasquardon
Curious if I was right to want to kick the can down the road, or if that made things worse.
Because pushing forward the frontiers of science is how we deliver awesome plans 20 years from now. The ministry needs to invest in the long term, as well as in what things are needed immediately.
Now, we may be investing too much because we are all nerds, but that's not something we need to say in public!
It might be what Voz's successor uses to justify falling short in their first plan tho.
Regards,
fasquardon
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Nah, the politicians are more likely to look at what kind of mess our moon program committee is shaping up to be and become even more anti-space if anything, unless we get some truly godlike beyond RLA rolls on how the program actually plays out. And that's just the program organization and funding itself, there is also always the chance we get brave Soviet cosmonauts killed in the process.
Space is never really popular right now. That's the whole reason we got forcefully cut back to just 120 max funding after all when we started pushing it too much.
120 rpt is still a big budget. The Lunar program might turn into a big enough mess that people turn actually anti space, but I think the current mood is better described as "pro space, but want the roads and the water supply in their district brought to modern standards too".
And while I am not too hopeful that we'll beat the Americans to first landing, Chelomei, Glushko and Yangel did roll decently, so we might have some options that at least can get us to first orbit.
Plus, there's always the chance that the Americans have some unhappy events. Space is hard and the Americans are using a more risky rocket in TTL.
Regards,
fasquardon
Chimeraguard
We do deserve to exist.
According to Blackstar, the rolls mean that our first orbit is probably a bespoke Glushko-only design that'll be ready in 1970 at the earliest.
Right now, out of all our budget the only things we're spending on doing stuff besides hurling literal tons of extremely expensive alloys and equipment to smash into the ground or fly outwards into deep space never to be seen again are the Comm Sats, PKA-Orbital as the only thing we have doing manned LEO flights right now, FGB-VA as the next gen manned LEO capsule, the Vacuum Electronics for better sats, and the Weather Says we just started. And all of that stuff including the FGB can be put up with just a single RLA-1, meaning that the larger rockets and orbital docking isn't needed for any of them.
Any "pro-space but wants stuff on Earth too" politicians could forcefully kill everything beyond Earth orbit and cut our space budget in half again to fund more roads and water, and we'd still have wiggle room in our space budget to start some new things. That's just how much RpT we're spending on the moon and probes compared to satellites and other stuff that has more tangible impacts on people in the Union. I wouldn't rely on them to back us right now.
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To explain more of what happened/to be a bit nicer broadly your options are a semi-consensus design that will be distributed amongst the bureaus, a bespoke all-Glushko moon orbit program that can be ready earlier at far increased risk, and just using it all as a political excuse to cancel the moon program.
Edit: Its not that all hope of a moon program is gone, its that all hope of a first moon orbit is gone.
It's the other way around. Delays mean we're very unlikely to get first orbit, but we might get first landing if we roll good and/or Americans kill themselves trying their Super Gemini.
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The good news:
The committee has effectively clowned around so hard that we can just point at their notes as they all discredited each others proposals and use that to cancel the moon program altogether with minimal political costs to Voz.
E:
woke leftists want to CANCEL the moon?!
cancel culture strikes again
The committee has effectively clowned around so hard that we can just point at their notes as they all discredited each others proposals and use that to cancel the moon program altogether with minimal political costs to Voz.
E:
woke leftists want to CANCEL the moon?!
cancel culture strikes again
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So a better but later version of the cut down Glushko proposal?
And damn, first orbit was the one I really wanted.
I assume this is from the discord? That's something...
How big a hit to the space budget would winding up the moon program have? I seem to remember that there was a window where if we cancelled the moon race ourselves, we could maintain higher levels of long-term funding (and thus allow us to continue funneling fat stacks of space program money into cutting edge industry as well as garnering prestige from other programs), but that window may have passed already.
Regards,
fasquardon
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Yangel's proposal was the path that had the highest odds of that, as things stand it's no longer possible.