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Per Aspera (Space Agency Plan Quest)

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chaotic-logic said:
i would also like for us to be aware of any possible weather that happens at the locations we are choosing.
because i can see from a quick google search that Singapore has two monsoon seasons.
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Atlas rockets could launch in storms, so did most Soviet launchers. (You do not make fair weather ICBMs)

There's some engineering involved, but it seems to be minor enough that nobody sees fit to comment on it when covering those rockets.
 
chaotic-logic said:
i would recommend using the google earth project that i made earlier to calculate and look at everything, having the link should allow you to edit it.

we should look at all of the factors that would affect us launching rockets from our locations ranging from natural disasters, sea restrictions, weather patterns, and anything else you can think of and put them in the descriptions and make marks on the project.

there are a bunch of things that will go into make the decision on where to put the new space center and we want to be sure that this thing is in the best location we can put it.

if you have any questions about the project such as making a dedicated post about it then just tag me in a post.
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What the hell do you want to 'calculate' here? The map doesn't show natural disasters, sea restrictions, weather patterns, or any of that. You've just stuck pins in a bunch of locations and gone 'we need to consider these.'

What the Singapore-boosters care about is a down-range, on-land site to deposit engine pods, maybe farings, and eventually first stages, but you still have a large body of water to drop stages onto if they break. And we're not sparing fuel or control surfaces for cross-range landings of that stuff. You can't do that in Florida, or Kuru, Vladivostok is too high, and Sydney is suspected enemy territory as well as not having an ideal landing location, and being too far south. It has to be Singapore, or more accurately, one of the islands south of it-Bintang, Lingga, maybe Sebangka. Traffic can be directed north or south around the firing range, hopefully. As for storms-well, we'll have to strengthen the design of the R-5 to handle more transverse winds.
 
Vehrec said:
What the hell do you want to 'calculate' here? The map doesn't show natural disasters, sea restrictions, weather patterns, or any of that. You've just stuck pins in a bunch of locations and gone 'we need to consider these.'

What the Singapore-boosters care about is a down-range, on-land site to deposit engine pods, maybe farings, and eventually first stages, but you still have a large body of water to drop stages onto if they break. And we're not sparing fuel or control surfaces for cross-range landings of that stuff. You can't do that in Florida, or Kuru, Vladivostok is too high, and Sydney is suspected enemy territory as well as not having an ideal landing location, and being too far south. It has to be Singapore, or more accurately, one of the islands south of it-Bintang, Lingga, maybe Sebangka. Traffic can be directed north or south around the firing range, hopefully. As for storms-well, we'll have to strengthen the design of the R-5 to handle more transverse winds.
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Actually, the R series so far has been very squat. We're not gonna break a fineness ratio (total height/maximum diameter) of more than 7 on the R-5.
That makes them quite resistant to transverse winds from a structural standpoint. They might need some control law tweaks to account for winds, but they're really not that big or light in the grand scheme of things to be blown off course much.

Our rockets are never gonna flex like a catwalk-model-skinny Falcon 9 - they're built more in the mold of Rosie the Riveter. :cool2:
 
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TortugaGreen said:
I don't think that would be a good idea, as rocket launches from just south of Singapore would require some alarming sea restrictions, being that the straight of Malacca is going to be a busy shipping lane basically at all times and "safe distance from a rocket launch" tends to be pretty far.
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Nah, it'll be fine. Here's an example of a standard maritime exclusion zone for Cape Canaveral for F9 launches marked out on a map of the region with major shipping routes, assuming a launch site on the southern tip of Bintan Island:

The main shipping corridor, which goes to the northeast, is completely unaffected. Shipping heading southeast can detour either further out to the east before turning south, or turn south before Bintan Island. This would be active for about 4 hours, which is a minor inconvenience to shipping; if we launch routinely enough, I suspect the big container ship lines would habitually detour 60 nmi to the east as a matter of routine. At no point is there a significant blockage of traffic unless we're launching north into a polar orbit, and I would personally suggest that we not do that and instead only use the Singapore launch complex for "routine" relatively low-inclination launches (e.g, ferry flights to space stations/propellant depots or EOR architecture lunar programs) and do everything else out of Mogadishu.
Shadows said:
All of them. You've got til 1958Q1.
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Ouch. That's 1950 progress, or an average dice roll of 71.25 if we keep the maximum dice pool active on it from now until the end of the project (by some quick math, P(success)=1.0169706e-13).

Can we scale down/postpone the on-site assembly complex if we intend it only to refurbish the R-5s once they're developed (with the critical subcomponents sent from Mogadishu), and thus rely entirely on more limited fixed tooling?
 
C_Z said:
Nah, it'll be fine. Here's an example of a standard maritime exclusion zone for Cape Canaveral for F9 launches marked out on a map of the region with major shipping routes, assuming a launch site on the southern tip of Bintan Island:

The main shipping corridor, which goes to the northeast, is completely unaffected. Shipping heading southeast can detour either further out to the east before turning south, or turn south before Bintan Island. This would be active for about 4 hours, which is a minor inconvenience to shipping; if we launch routinely enough, I suspect the big container ship lines would habitually detour 60 nmi to the east as a matter of routine. At no point is there a significant blockage of traffic unless we're launching north into a polar orbit, and I would personally suggest that we not do that and instead only use the Singapore launch complex for "routine" relatively low-inclination launches (e.g, ferry flights to space stations/propellant depots or EOR architecture lunar programs) and do everything else out of Mogadishu.
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Interesting! Yeah that could definitely work then. It's still an inconvenience, but if it'd be clear of the bulk of traffic then that'd work great. Ships could fairly trivially avoid it by around either the west side of the island or just not going south until later. We'd probably want to do high inclinations going southbound anyway I suspect, given the area .
 
C_Z said:
Ouch. That's 1950 progress, or an average dice roll of 71.25 if we keep the maximum dice pool active on it from now until the end of the project (by some quick math, P(success)=1.0169706e-13).
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Hopefully there's another option that decreases the progress required per phase next WC meeting.

Anyways, what do you think about putting one die on Infrastructure this turn? We can take it off of Sydney since it needs a bit less dice to complete than the Tracking Stations. It would make crash building that Infrastructure a whole lot easier, especially since we're going to be down a Facilities die sooner rather than later.
 
[X] Plan: So Long, Big Al
-[X] Construct an R-4 Dawn (18/120) (6 dice, -210R)
-[X] Activate Weather Observation Satellites (1 program, -40R)
-[X] Build a Space Center (0/250) (3 dice, -105R)
--[X] Singapore
-[X] Build a Scientific Complex
--[X] Sydney Microelectronics Research Centre (AVIONICS) (0/450) (3 dice, -75R)
-[X] Tracking and Communication Station Construction (Phase 3) (0/550) (3 dice, -90R)
-[X] Human-rated Rocketry (5/8 turns) (1 die, -20R)
-[X] Nuclear Power Plant Design Studies (4/8 turns) (1 die, -25R)
-[X] Multi-Stage Designs (0/2 turns) (1 die, -15R)
-[X] Impactor Designs (0/3 turns) (1 die, -10R)
-[X] Strap-on Boosters (157/250) (2 dice, -20R)
-[X] Exploratory Propellant Research (Phase 2) [CHEM] (3/200) (3 dice, -45R)
-[X] Photovoltaic Investigations (3/4 turns) (1 die, -20R)
-[X] Transistor Computing Investigations (0/6 turns) (1 die, -20R)
-[X] Bothering Councilors (1 die, -10PS)
-[X] Propagandize for Nuclear Power (155/???) (4 dice, -8PS)
 
[X] Plan And Betty When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Al
Ops:
-[X] (6 dice, 210 resources) Construct an R-4 Dawn (35R per dice, 97/120, costs 1 build capacity til complete)
Programs:
-[X] Activate Weather Observation Satellites (1 slot required) (40R/turn)
Facilities:
-[X] (3 dice 105R) Build a new Space Center (Phase 1 (0/250)
--[X] Singapore
-[X] (3 dice, 75R) Build a Scientific Complex (25R per die, opens up new research possibilities, +1d5+5 bonus in the associated field, +1 Education for the region)
--[X] Sydney Microelectronics Research Centre (AVIONICS) (0/450)
-[X] (3 dice 90R) Tracking and Communication Station Construction (Phase 3) (30R per die, 0/550)
Engineering:
(Locked: Human rated Rocketry 20R 5/8 turns, Nuclear Power 25R 4/8 turns.)
-[X] (2 dice 20R) Strap-on Boosters (10R per dice, 157/250)
-[X] Multi-Stage Designs (15R per turn, 1 engineering die locked, 2 turns)
-[X] Impactor Designs (10R per turn, 1 engineering dice locked, 3 turns)
Science:
(Locked: Photovoltaic research 20R 3/4 turns)
-[X] (2 dice) Exploratory Propellant Research (Phase 2) [CHEM] (15R per dice, 3/200, unlocks fuel mixtures and further fuel development)
-[X] Transistor Computing Investigations (20R per turn, 6 turns)
-[X] Closed-Input Life Support Systems (10R per dice, 126/200) -Needed for mmanned capsule design, so it gets a die.
Politics:
[X] Bothering Councilors (-10PS)
[X] (1 die 5R) Propagandize for Space (5R per die) (138/???)
[X] (3 dice, -6PS) Propagandize for Nuclear Power (-2PS per die) (155/???)
 
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Speaking of future Launching Centers: The Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) is a major space research centre of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), focusing on rocket and space vehicles for India's satellite programme. It is located in Trivandrum, in the Indian state of Kerala.

en.wikipedia.org

Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
SAUDA: "...and welcome back to Book Cafe, I am your host
Tatu Sauda and our guest is Sharmaake Ali, a scientist and humorist who's latest book Touch the Earth and Touch the Sky describes his childhood growing up near the IEC complex in Mogadishu. Welcome back Sharmaake."

ALI: "Thank you Tatu"

SAUDA: "So before the break we talked about your parents coming to Mogadishu to work in the growing city, but they were not a highly educated or technical family. So who inspired you to persue the sciences?"

ALI: "So when I was in seventh standard our science teacher Mister Kamau received a Rocket Box from the IEC. Do you remember those? Well to a classroom full of young boys being able to launch rockets was incredible. So for a few months he used this box to show us what we could do with this knowledge. Did you ever wonder in a class when you were going to use this knowledge?"

SAUDA: "Several Times"

ALI: "So Mister Kamau and our other teachers could point to our model rockets and the IEC facility and say 'see, this is what you use Math for. This is what you use Science for.' It was a living example for us to see, not just in a book or film.

SAUDA: 'So it was an inspiration for you.'

ALI: "For everyone. From the young to the old, no matter what background, education or occupation. Remember when I was in school it was fifteen years from the end of the war and the end of the european Empires. For Africa and the former colonies to be the on the stepping stone to space was incredible. This was not something from the pulp magazines or comic books, this was real life."

SAUDA: "So when did you start writing?"

ALI: "When I was in Ninth Standard Literature our teacher wanted us to write an essay on something unique...

Book Cafe Program Archives: 17 April 1977
 
[X] Plan And Betty When You Call Me, You Can Call Me Al

I like the extra die placed on life support systems here. It needs to be done, and this should finish it off. The extra propagandizing for space is just a bonus that may help stave off some ramifications of a failed promise down the line.

I'm thinking we may have finally met our match with the launch complex. We have been over promising consistently and it hasn't bitten us, but this looks like the moment might have come. It looks like we are probably going to have to use "bothering councilors" to meet our infrastructure promises, it's actively worse to spend facilities dice on them. But we also may need them to generate some extra work on the launch complex.

Unfortunately we can't build the launch center in North America. Suboptimal or not, if we did it would neatly bundle our issues into one bag that we could deal with.

I think we might have to make a choice over what promise to fail. Personally, better to fail the launch center rather than our efforts towards the global collective rebuild.

@MSH im pretty sure we established that doing construction/reconstruction support was more cheaply done with personal actions than facilities die.
 
TortugaGreen said:
Interesting! Yeah that could definitely work then. It's still an inconvenience, but if it'd be clear of the bulk of traffic then that'd work great. Ships could fairly trivially avoid it by around either the west side of the island or just not going south until later. We'd probably want to do high inclinations going southbound anyway I suspect, given the area .
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While I voted for this, talking to someone who used to live there has convinced me that no local would be happy ever to see someone take up what little living space they have. Sooo. That might be interesting. (It turns out Singapore stores a lot of it's stuff.. in Australia.)
 
Well if we want to keep our promise of a launch site in easy Asia then it's either Singapore or Vladivostok. Or a write-in.

[X] Plan: So Long, Big Al

I'd say this is my ideal plan.

We're going to lose a facilities dice when we get past phase 1 of the new launch facility. So perhaps we should look into recruiting more labor unions.

When our solar panel stuff gets done we should probably shift the dice into long range comms.
 
Fair. Although, we're going to have to remember that:
  • The ground's terrible there
  • As of right now, everyone's moving their capitals in the region. (Part climate change, part it's not great land to begin with.)
So I think we're likely to face some higher progress totals.
 
If we were likely to face higher progress totals then it'd probably be included in the option as a warning. There's no evidence that building in Singapore will be any different mechanically than building anywhere else.
 
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