Wow, the committee was a bad idea that's gonna end with us giving up on a first Moon landing anyways, with no chance of the first orbit and requiring us to burn a bunch of money and/or political capital! Who could have possibly foreseen this!
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition
- Thread starter Blackstar
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- Alt. History Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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To be more specific, our options seem to be roughly:
-A consensus design that's way safer and more feasible than Glushko's previous pipe dream, but which has no hope of actually being built and ready before like 1970.
-Glushko's ripoff of Yangel's previous proposal with his name slapped on it, except badly rushed to make up for lost time and still not getting the first orbit.
-Cancelling the program.
Discordburo mood is currently towards cancelling the moon program and hard pivoting to space stations instead, since the RLA and space suits both rolled very well.
-A consensus design that's way safer and more feasible than Glushko's previous pipe dream, but which has no hope of actually being built and ready before like 1970.
-Glushko's ripoff of Yangel's previous proposal with his name slapped on it, except badly rushed to make up for lost time and still not getting the first orbit.
-Cancelling the program.
Discordburo mood is currently towards cancelling the moon program and hard pivoting to space stations instead, since the RLA and space suits both rolled very well.
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Sorry, we're now in the "it's so back" swing - the committee allows us to either go for an actually workable landing as long as we give it time or cancel the program entirely with minimum of pain instead of pointlessly spinning around the moon and maybe still losing to Americans.
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Keep in mind, while we might give up the moon race we might not actually lose the space race, as there's always the chance the US's attempt at a moon shot accomplishes nothing but getting astronauts killed (it's fine they lust for death) or that they dial back their own program given they dont have the clout to drop infinity dollars for atlas rockets ttl
"Actually workable" and "after 1970" are incompatible terms, there's zero point to going after the Americans. We could do SO MUCH more science with robots and orbiters for the same money, the only reason to leave an actual bootprint is clout chasing and we have zero chance of getting that clout now. Canceling the whole thing now still looks worse for us than if we'd just gone with Yangel's flyby, which would have done a month of actual surveys and science, now we get to either set money on fire for the next 5 years to lose anyways, or cancel and get nothing when Yangel offered us a perfectly good off-ramp and consolation prize last vote.
Actually as per discord this makes it less politically costly to cancel the race as we now have our own scientists notes criticizing the other proposals to justify our change in course.
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- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
Agreed, but it's not *that* big a loss. Sometimes we make the wrong choice, it happens, no point in being too recriminatory about it - and at least some players had fun spinning the gachapon machine.
To be fair, I'm not sure how great the Yangel option would really have been beyond getting to orbit the Moon first though. Because any mission deep in to the 70s for landing there probably would start suffering major budget cuts and thus risk of cancellation or cannibalizing other project we really wished we could do instead.
Though the consensus design sounds like it might actually work then, even if it will be a bit on the later side. We'll have to see what it exactly is but it's something to ponder. Probably part of the consideration should be if some of the proposed technologies can be reused elsewhere later, like say in a sample return mission from Mars. Which would be a fairly substantial prestige gain as well, and be some what doable to put together with a single full booster RLA launch. It was at least implied the expanded Moon missions would help lead in this direction as well, and I suspect the USA will struggle to manage quite as well here if they're anything like the OTL.
And otherwise I guess we'll have to see what cancelling the Moon program does... and whether we can still reorient to a Space Station program or so at this point. We've for the most part not really put to much time and money in to specialty Moon equipment at this point and the RLA is probably about as good a launcher as you could currently hope for when building and running a Space Station (Or various other things). The power to lift quite large modules with boosters and else capable of sending good resupply missions at a reasonable cost.
Though the consensus design sounds like it might actually work then, even if it will be a bit on the later side. We'll have to see what it exactly is but it's something to ponder. Probably part of the consideration should be if some of the proposed technologies can be reused elsewhere later, like say in a sample return mission from Mars. Which would be a fairly substantial prestige gain as well, and be some what doable to put together with a single full booster RLA launch. It was at least implied the expanded Moon missions would help lead in this direction as well, and I suspect the USA will struggle to manage quite as well here if they're anything like the OTL.
And otherwise I guess we'll have to see what cancelling the Moon program does... and whether we can still reorient to a Space Station program or so at this point. We've for the most part not really put to much time and money in to specialty Moon equipment at this point and the RLA is probably about as good a launcher as you could currently hope for when building and running a Space Station (Or various other things). The power to lift quite large modules with boosters and else capable of sending good resupply missions at a reasonable cost.
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Wasn't the American program running behind OTL, with less political impetus? After 1970 doesn't seem so bad. The yanks landed in late '69 OTL. Anyways, if we're absolutely 100% sure the consensus design is doomed to fail I'm inclined to go with Glushko's totally-not-cribbed-from Yangel plan. Outright cancelling the moon race would probably get our funding cap cut back 50% or more, and I want to keep the 120 budget cap for as long as possible.
Where is chelomei in all of this, if his dice rolled a 62? Was 70 or so the hidden DC, which only Glushko and Yangel passed?
Where is chelomei in all of this, if his dice rolled a 62? Was 70 or so the hidden DC, which only Glushko and Yangel passed?
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
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I'd want to set up a base at the lunar south pole myself; insofar as prime real estate exists on the moon, that's where it is.
It's not. It's actually a perfectly good design, it's just spread out across 3 different OKBs, so if any of them fuck up, the whole program is delayed. Which means either it'll likely be a late one, or we'll rush and the mission gets very dangerous.
His design is the one that is used as the basis of consensus.
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- The great frozen north
Half of us during last vote: Might as well take it slow for now, since our rockets are questionable and our space suits are still shit.
Space suits and RLA: HOLD MY DICE AND WATCH THIS
Welp, rocket dice are a zany wild card as always. Just do whatever keeps our science budget up.
EDIT: Rocket initials fix
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American landing mission is likely to kill them, so as long as we don't super delay, we very well might get the "first one to land and return" trophy, so I would not say we have zero chance of clout. Also, to be honest, I would like to land on the moon in itself, without other considerations. So to me, the vote is very much a win, since we did get a functional design out of it.
DEATH TO THE MOON PROGRAM LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Well, I wouldn't be surprised if there is some science a manned landing could do that a probe would find hard to pull off, if just because with a manned landing you can assume your equipment is being set up and adjusted by trained humans on site with opposable thumbs rather than via remote control robot arm from however long lightspeed delay away, with whatever kind of grabber/attachment point, and only being able to look at it through the camera view. I do agree we can still do quite a lot of lunar science just with robots and sample returns though.
As for Yangel's being a better off ramp to giving up the off ramp, I'm not so sure. If Blackstar's saying in the discord that the committee was the least painful moon landing cancellation route I'm inclined to believe her, and think that there's something in Yangel's plan as a result of that 3 that would cause some friction. Maybe the SupSov being unhappy with us keeping the moon program going and overall spending up just to not land like we said we would? Rather than us just preempting that by saying ourselves that this isn't going to work, we're stopping the program and cutting back?
So if everything goes right, just scraping in under the time limit that we are officially racing, but probably after the Americans who we are unofficially but actually racing...
We were told we could use the Yangel plan if the committee failed. But it seems the problem is, we're so pressed for time that the 6 month delay of passing things off to the committee means there's not enough time to do Yangel's plan safely. Is that right?
It might have been worth it if the Indonesia thing would have caused Kosygin to loose his job or Voz to be summarily fired, but we have no way of knowing for sure if kicking the can down the road would have mattered that much because Voz is so out of touch with political realities...
Mm, but if taking the loss means we retain political support for our ambitious probe programs and keeping 50% of current funding for the next 40 years, we can do alot of stuff in space and fund alot of cutting edge electronics. Whereas if we see out the moonrace with say, landing finishing forever in 1974 and funding then being cut to 25% of current for the next 30 years after that, even though we had 100% funding for the decade between now and 1974, we'd still have less space spending overall over the next 40 years.
The space suit team delivered? Oh dang! Nice!
What's the deets?
I am regretting my switch to kicking it to committee certainly.
But as far as the science value of robots and orbiters, no, we can't get the same value for the same money. The amount of money we'd need to spend on robots to get us the return on investment of landing even a single geologist on the moon with a lander with a decent sample payload would far exceed the cost of a manned program.
The value of robot probes is they can do more with less - to land a geologist you need to spend big to get that first return on investment, robots can be smaller and cheaper. But once you do spend manned mission money, the value of a trained human mind with bloomin' hands on the mission blows away any robot possible today, let alone the 1960s.
But less science for less investment isn't robot probes being BAD, it just makes them not perfect.
It kind of sounds like the American program is a bit ramshackle and cuts corners that OTL's Apollo didn't. But not the corners that would stop them from getting a first landing.
But I would love more detail on the American program. I'm just guessing mostly.
Maybe the Americans are spending more money on their program as a reaction to our far more serious moon program?
Regards,
fasquardon
They are running the Advanced Gemini, pretty much.
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Where did you get that? That's most definitely not the case.
Premilinary Discord blurb seems to suggest ball bearing joints and rear entry. We rolled a 98 for it, and more importantly, a 92 for the RLA.
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- The Surface Of A Hostile Planet
6 months delay on passing to committee, plus a bunch of extra design work which Glushko stapled on so he can pretend that it's a 100% Glushko-original program instead of a reskinned Yangel.
Hm, oh, you mean this? A two man capsule that was more worn than ridden and a one man lunar lander that was pretty much a chair with a rocket on it?
Dang, the Americans are nuts in this timeline! Also, no wonder they can afford this even with less political support. They are seriously cheaping out.
The level of risk there is crazy.
Ahhh, Glushko...
From here:
And... Near certainty of the US beating us aside, it sounds like the committee did actually deliver a substantial upgrade over Glushko's initial proposal. So it isn't that the committee failed, it is that they didn't succeed hard enough to save us from the earlier bad roll.
And dang, ball bearing joints and rear entry is niiiiiice.
Regards,
fasquardon
The space suits is funny too because now we have a space suit perfect for eva (and therefore space station) work to go with our rocket, which has absurd amounts of surplus lift capacity that's perfect for lifting up space station components.
Meanwhile our actual chosen goal of the moon shot keeps hitting snag after snag lmao
Meanwhile our actual chosen goal of the moon shot keeps hitting snag after snag lmao
Apparently the committee route has also given a way to cancel the moon attempt with the least amount of political fall out compared to the other options, due to everyone pointing out flaws in everyone else's ideas. So together with them apparently making a more workable compromise design, the committee has actually made the cancel option less painful as well.
So it's given us some options worth considering, but sadly the moon race might no longer be winnable... Or you know the apparently crazy American plan blows up in their face, that could happen as well.
Well it should be interesting to see what exact options come from this.
Per discord it's also entirely possible that if we cancel the program the Americans will follow suit; it's been repeatedly noted that the US faces the same problems we do and are primarily reacting to our program. While they're now ahead and we've lost the chance at being first, their super Gemini loadout is still sketchy as hell-if we give up moonshot they'll lose the greatest thing keeping their efforts alive: The USSR. Or they push forward anyways just to get a bunch of astronauts killed in pointless dickwaving.
With a bit of luck, no one wins and most importantly no one loses, especially as we're gonna be the ones likely doing the losing if we keep pushing forward.
At least until some jumped up Europeans, Indians or Chinese people try to go to the moon, then it's time to dust off the programs and scrounge up the retirees
With a bit of luck, no one wins and most importantly no one loses, especially as we're gonna be the ones likely doing the losing if we keep pushing forward.
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