Don't worry, we won't have climate change in this universe because we'll be pretty much 97% nuclear/solar by the 1980s between molten salt reactors and orbital solar satelites.
Per Aspera (Space Agency Plan Quest)
- Thread starter Shadows
- Start date
- Original
There's always an element of uncertainty when it comes to how costly things are; every promise we take is a gamble. I guessed that tracking stations 3 would be 300 progress, but instead it's 550, which is why we're probably going to have to take bothering councillors.
The launch centre doesn't count as infrastructure, I don't think.
I don't see why you think we should have to fail any of our promises when we could just do bothering councillors. If we're also looking for a promise to fail, tracking stations is probably the best one to drop, seeing as it has a very high cost and doesn't harm much of our long-term planning (it makes it harder to provide global weather coverage, but a delay of ~6 months is unlikely to be critical)
While the vote is for "Singapore", building the launch complex inside the city itself is out of the question due to noise limits alone. In practice, it'd be on one of the islands of the Riau Archipelago.
Shadows
Sacred Priestess of the Benevolent Dice Gods
- Location
- USS Civilian, DDG-214
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I already gave you the exact progress requirements.
Vote closed
trooperist
Cinnamon Roll AI
And here I was worrying about the space center. Looks like things are going very well in Singapore.
Everything else though....
Dang, that's an average of 39.4
I don't think I've ever seen an average that low with that many dice.
Everything else though....
Dang, that's an average of 39.4
I don't think I've ever seen an average that low with that many dice.
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By the way don't we have an R-2 that's been sitting around since literally forever?
chaotic-logic
possible impossibility
- Location
- unknown
if we do then i say that we put it in a museum or store it to put in one
trooperist
Cinnamon Roll AI
We got past the first phase of the new space center. Which means we lost a facilities dice, bringing us down to 8.
Guess we're going to have to recruit more if we want three shifts of work on three different projects.
I think I did this right.
R-4 Dawn - 18+187+18 = 120/120 103/120
Singapore - 253+30 = 250/250 33/600 NAT 100
Sydney - 103+30 = 133/450
Tracking Stations - 44+30 = 70/550
Human-rated Rocketry (6/8 turns)
Nuclear Power Plant Design Studies (5/8 turns)
Multi-Stage Designs (1/2 turns)
Impactor Designs (1/3 turns)
Strap-on Boosters - 157+134+27 = 318/250
Exploratory Prop - 3+145+27+54 = 200/200 29/?
Photovoltaic Investigations (4/4 turns)
Transistor Computing Investigations (1/6 turns)
Propagandize for Nuclear Power - 155+117+40 = 312/?
+1 R-4 Built
+Weather Satellite Program Activated
+Councilors Bothered
-1 Facilities Dice
Guess we're going to have to recruit more if we want three shifts of work on three different projects.
I think I did this right.
R-4 Dawn - 18+187+18 = 120/120 103/120
Singapore - 253+30 = 250/250 33/600 NAT 100
Sydney - 103+30 = 133/450
Tracking Stations - 44+30 = 70/550
Human-rated Rocketry (6/8 turns)
Nuclear Power Plant Design Studies (5/8 turns)
Multi-Stage Designs (1/2 turns)
Impactor Designs (1/3 turns)
Strap-on Boosters - 157+134+27 = 318/250
Exploratory Prop - 3+145+27+54 = 200/200 29/?
Photovoltaic Investigations (4/4 turns)
Transistor Computing Investigations (1/6 turns)
Propagandize for Nuclear Power - 155+117+40 = 312/?
+1 R-4 Built
+Weather Satellite Program Activated
+Councilors Bothered
-1 Facilities Dice
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pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
Shadows mentioned we will have a museum option at some point. Better to just leave it.
That Nat 100 will be nice, but those other rolls … just … ew.
- Location
- The great frozen north
...Why did we decisively decide against building a space center on a small pacific island, and then decide to build one in Singapore that is closer to civilization but otherwise has all the problems of a small island?
Is 1 unit of payload about 1/10th of a ton then?
Heh, that rocket could be most of the way to the RLA-1 from Sovietquest. We do have the magic engine enamel. Question is how mass producible our design will be. At some point in the next decade we'll hit the point where we need a proper rocket factory rather than artisanal assembly teams.
There's people drawing art of our rockets? Cool, please do post them in the thread once we actually make them! That said, is it not a little early to be planning what the R-5 will be? We just got the R-4a so it will be a few years before in-universe we seriously consider a general launcher and who knows what new tech will come by then.
Is 1 unit of payload about 1/10th of a ton then?
Heh, that rocket could be most of the way to the RLA-1 from Sovietquest. We do have the magic engine enamel. Question is how mass producible our design will be. At some point in the next decade we'll hit the point where we need a proper rocket factory rather than artisanal assembly teams.
That is one nasty oof. The nat 100 may have helped, but it's still a long shot. I'm salty about this one, because a new space center isn't some theoretical design, we already built one (in Mogadishu). So making that promise without any OOC knowledge of how much work it is and then getting a build cost dropped on us that's mathematically impossible to meet feels like it's screwing with us the players since Carter should have an idea of how tight that is.
Yeah, we're probably going to have to give up on getting those Tracking Stations done. Even if we dodge losing that Facilities die courtesy of the crit, we simply don't have the dice to do everything.
Most of the concerns about a small pacific island don't apply to a launch site in the Riau Archipelago? Somewhere within a ~50 km circle of the lower tip of Bintan Island is about the best launch site we could ask for.
I don't think anyone's actually drawn them yet (although I am working on it, but want to get it all correct and that means doing a lot of math for things like inert tank mass estimates).
The R-5 was something @CyberFemme and I were actually sketching out during the hiatus, largely as a fun exercise. It might not be what the voters end up going with, but it's been a long-term goal that I'm woking towards and is pretty obvious when you approach our needs from first principles, i.e.:
- We probably want to put a crewed capsule around the size of current crew capsules into orbit. Soyuz is a good analogue for this. This means around 10 tons to orbit, as a first-order approximation.
- We're planning on being in space for the long haul, and can afford to (hopefully) think on a longer timeframe than "by the end of this decade" stuff where we favour short term, expendable systems and hastily converted ICBMs. This means we probably want to invest in reuse (which also has a lot of other benefits, e.g., we can observe what happens to engines after they've been flown, which will help development). As an aside, if Korolev comes back with another "do something insane in 5 years", I am officially voting we replace him with Glushko; I was always more of a fan of Proton anyways.
- The most technologically-simple way to reuse valuable parts of a rocket is engine pod recovery - it's basically just taking the Atlas ICBM's detachable engine shroud thingy, sticking a parachute on it, and making sure that the anticipated impact point doesn't have anybody standing in it. You don't even need any electronics or control systems beyond a simple time delay built into the parachute ejection charge. There is a bit of added effort in designing the engines so that they have a rated life long enough for this, but overall, not that hard. It also slightly changes the overall launch in that we want to be staging higher and faster than normal, but that's not significant.
- The rocket should be as heavily standardized as possible to encourage mass production.
- We're doing good work with propane, Hank Hill approves, we shouldn't change what works.
And yes, 1 unit of payload is a metric Sputnik, or 100 kg.
That's the plan for the R-5, sorta; it's something that we'd be more-or-less locking in the design of (at least relative to the current "launch a dozen times then do a significant redesign of the rocket"; we'd still be iterating on the details) and churning them out en masse. "You can have the R-5 in any colour as long as it's #4C7F99" type of thing.
Yeah, but it is what it is. I'm hoping we can somehow negotiate it down to only needing stage 3 instead of stage 4, which is far more achievable, but we may not get it.
I think it's more likely that we get some way to drop the progress requirement in exchange for increasing the cost per die. Negotiation Aid logically should only apply to the first phase after all.
Edit: This would have the added benefit of making future base building endeavors easier as well.
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trooperist
Cinnamon Roll AI
I'm thinking taking three different facility dice related promises was a bit much. We should have left some wiggle room.
In a way Singapore rolling so well is kind of bad since it leaves us short a facilities dice when we really can't afford to have any of the three projects slow down. We'll have to spend next quarter making sure we recruit more construction unions.
In a way Singapore rolling so well is kind of bad since it leaves us short a facilities dice when we really can't afford to have any of the three projects slow down. We'll have to spend next quarter making sure we recruit more construction unions.
pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
I mean, do we really want to bring that conflict into our house? IIRC, Glushko was a big enough proponent for hypergolics and salty enough about Korolev disagreeing with him and favoring hyrolox or keralox that he basically sank the N-1 program and arguably the entire soviet lunar program as a result.
I'd rather keep Korolev's brand of crazy, thank you.
ShyPerson
Guardian of the dead’s final rest.
- Location
- Sweden
- Pronouns
- Him/He
Three would have been fine, four was too much (with the hindsight of knowing that tracking stations is 550 progress and not ~300, and that our rolls have been ass). We can only put three dice towards a project at a time, so with nine dice, we should be making facilities three promises per year if we don't have anything else to do with those dice like this year.
The tracking stations is still quite doable; it only requires 480 more progress to complete, and in the 3 turns remaining for that promise, 3 dice would total to an average of 540 progress.
The two launch facilities are the problem; they require a total of 1950 progress to complete all four stages, which the GM indicated would be necessary to complete the promise. But with a total of 24 dice that can be invested over the course of 8 turns, that's only ~1440 progress on average. Even completing stage 3 would require some luck, but for stage 4 it would be necessary to roll 70+ on every single die invested into those projects.
Unless this can be negotiated down to only requiring Stage 2 completion (since, going by the description, at that point the facility would be capable of launching rockets), or extending the amount of time you have available by another year, it might be best to operate under the assumption that both Launch Facility promises will fail, and plan accordingly by allocating dice to more realistically achievable projects.
Shadows
Sacred Priestess of the Benevolent Dice Gods
- Location
- USS Civilian, DDG-214
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hollywood is still a thing, just different from how we knew it. And, yes.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Most of the concerns about a small pacific island don't apply to a launch site in the Riau Archipelago? Somewhere within a ~50 km circle of the lower tip of Bintan Island is about the best launch site we could ask for.
I don't think anyone's actually drawn them yet (although I am working on it, but want to get it all correct and that means doing a lot of math for things like inert tank mass estimates).
The R-5 was something @CyberFemme and I were actually sketching out during the hiatus, largely as a fun exercise. It might not be what the voters end up going with, but it's been a long-term goal that I'm woking towards and is pretty obvious when you approach our needs from first principles, i.e.:
Aside from that, the design is largely up in the air; R-5 in a nutshell is just "rocket with engine pod recovery that we can use as our in-universe Soyuz-U analogue". Cyber and I are currently viciously arguing about the choice of first-stage engine cycle (I think staged combustion is better, she prefers expanders), but that's more a general thing and because we like chatting about rockets - I trust the voters will make the right choice and pick staged combustion when the time comes
- We probably want to put a crewed capsule around the size of current crew capsules into orbit. Soyuz is a good analogue for this. This means around 10 tons to orbit, as a first-order approximation.
- We're planning on being in space for the long haul, and can afford to (hopefully) think on a longer timeframe than "by the end of this decade" stuff where we favour short term, expendable systems and hastily converted ICBMs. This means we probably want to invest in reuse (which also has a lot of other benefits, e.g., we can observe what happens to engines after they've been flown, which will help development). As an aside, if Korolev comes back with another "do something insane in 5 years", I am officially voting we replace him with Glushko; I was always more of a fan of Proton anyways.
- The most technologically-simple way to reuse valuable parts of a rocket is engine pod recovery - it's basically just taking the Atlas ICBM's detachable engine shroud thingy, sticking a parachute on it, and making sure that the anticipated impact point doesn't have anybody standing in it. You don't even need any electronics or control systems beyond a simple time delay built into the parachute ejection charge. There is a bit of added effort in designing the engines so that they have a rated life long enough for this, but overall, not that hard. It also slightly changes the overall launch in that we want to be staging higher and faster than normal, but that's not significant.
- The rocket should be as heavily standardized as possible to encourage mass production.
- We're doing good work with propane, Hank Hill approves, we shouldn't change what works.
And yes, 1 unit of payload is a metric Sputnik, or 100 kg.
That's the plan for the R-5, sorta; it's something that we'd be more-or-less locking in the design of (at least relative to the current "launch a dozen times then do a significant redesign of the rocket"; we'd still be iterating on the details) and churning them out en masse. "You can have the R-5 in any colour as long as it's #4C7F99" type of thing.
Yeah, but it is what it is. I'm hoping we can somehow negotiate it down to only needing stage 3 instead of stage 4, which is far more achievable, but we may not get it.
Point of order: reusable rocket engines actually predate expendable ones. The people who started building these in the beginning came from jet engine manufacturing and used the same methodology.
It wasn't until later than people realized you could eeke out a little more performance by designing engines to last just a bit longer than the mission burn duration.
The launch facility issues are unavoidable; even if that were the sole promise we made this year, we'd still be in the exact same boat.
YMMV but I wouldn't consider the HWK 109-509 or equivalents to be reusable within our standards for "doesn't blow up when you turn it in for the third time". Then again, period jet engines also had a time between overhauls on the order of two dozen hours, so "jet-like reusability" is not a high bar.
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