Per Aspera (Space Agency Plan Quest)

[Derpmind]

It doesn't really contribute to any of our current goals tho.

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A bit of early progress won't hurt, and it won't disappear. Meanwhile, 2 dice on Engine Cycles has a goo 59% chance to finish this turn anyways. And I'd rather bet on getting good luck than hedging against bad luck, especially since we're not in a hurry here.

[X] Plan: Political Sausage-making + Reasonable Paced Engineering
-[X] Construct a 2-Stage Sounding Rocket (15R per dice, 0/50, costs 1 Build Capacity until complete)
--[X] And use it for Weather Studies
-[X] Construct a Computational Research Facility (20R per die, 0/180, +3 to all projects)
-[X] (2 Dice) Engine Cycles (Tech) [MATSCI, CHEM, PROP] (10R per die, 114/250, unlocks further engine development options)
-[X] Conduct Design Studies (Alternative Launch Systems) [AERO, PHYS] (5R per die, 0/300, ???)
-[X] (3 Dice) Weather Studies (Phase 2) (10R per die, requires a Sounding Rocket, 67/160) (+5 PS on complete) (High Priority)
-[X] There is Power in a Union (0/100, 5R per dice, -5 PS on completion. Gain +1 Facilities dice, +5 to Facilities rolls)
-[X] (2 Dice) Rocket Boxes (Phase I) - (5R per die, 175/200. Gives Rocket Boxes to every middle-school, high-school and university or equivalent in Africa. Encourages future African scientists and engineers - some of whom will even come work with the IEC.)

 

[pbluekan]

[X] Plan: Political Sausage-making

 

[pbluekan]

Yeah, that's right.

A gas generator cycle is what we should aim for IMO. We're still in the very early days of rocketry so anything more complex is probably beyond us. As for propellants, I'm inclined to go with either methane or hydrazine*.

*Gods bless the 60s, when we had no idea hydrazine was a carcinogen. Also hydrazine and LOX isn't a hypergolic combination - through it's close.

(The reason I like hydrazine-lox is because it gives you better Isp than methane, with higher density than kerosene - it's actually as dense as water, with no engine sooting/polymerization, and its combusiton products are not hazardous. It's a godlike propellant mix.)

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Personally, I'd rather just focus on Methane and only methane until we move on to Nervas for work outside the atmosphere. It's meta as hell, I know, but the minmaxer in me doesn't want to go down all the other paths with things like hydrazine which will be inevitably verboten.

 

[CyberFemme]

Personally, I'd rather just focus on Methane and only methane until we move on to Nervas for work outside the atmosphere. It's meta as hell, I know, but the minmaxer in me doesn't want to go down all the other paths with things like hydrazine which will be inevitably verboten.

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Honestly even without staged combustion memes, methane is a good propellant for a civilian spacecraft, so it's not like we're even metagaming.

 

[C_Z]

Hydrazine isn't inevitably verboten; it's very likely we'll end up using it anyways for OMS/RCS. I do think there's a possible issue with hydrazine's freezing point and that it may fall under exotic propellants. I'm not sure if that was solved IRL?

The expander-cycle methalox engine that was mentioned sounded very promising for lightweight upper stages, and making something like a very-scaled-down RD107 that burns methane could be a decent first orbital engine. Take something like a regeneratively-cooled XLR10, throw 4 combustion chambers around a common turbopump, and that should work well enough at fairly low risk for a 30 ton launcher?

Of course there's also the two aforementioned staged-combustion engines, but lol staged combustion in 1952. This Machine Kills Turbomachinery.

 

[General_Urist]

[X] Plan: Political Sausage-making + Reasonable Paced Engineering

I've been convinced, if there's no time pressure better to play the long dice odds in a planquest.

 

[CyberFemme]

Hydrazine isn't inevitably verboten; it's very likely we'll end up using it anyways for OMS/RCS. I do think there's a possible issue with hydrazine's freezing point and that it may fall under exotic propellants. I'm not sure if that was solved IRL?

The expander-cycle methalox engine that was mentioned sounded very promising for lightweight upper stages, and making something like a very-scaled-down RD107 that burns methane could be a decent first orbital engine. Take something like a regeneratively-cooled XLR10, throw 4 combustion chambers around a common turbopump, and that should work well enough at fairly low risk for a 30 ton launcher?

Of course there's also the two aforementioned staged-combustion engines, but lol staged combustion in 1952. This Machine Kills Turbomachinery.

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Hah! I have foreseen the issue you speak of, and the answer is to do a eutectic mixture of 12% hydrazine and 88% monomethylhydrazine (MMH). That gives us 98% of the performance of straight hydrazine while making it much easier to use for Regen cooling without blowing up our engine with spontaneous thermal decomposition.

And yeah, staged combustion, lmao. The reason the Soviets managed it so early was that they ran a - shall we say - hardware rich development program.

 

[trooperist]

I'll admit I have no knowledge about building rockets. But I'd really like to research new materials and fuels before we push our program any further than the heavy sounding rocket.

 

[CyberFemme]

Actually wait. If we go the methane route it does eliminate a lot of the issues with staged combustion, since it's easier to do fuel rich with methane compared to kerosene, and we don't have to get mired in the swamp of oxygen hot corrosion that oxygen rich versions have to deal with.

 

[C_Z]

Hah! I have foreseen the issue you speak of, and the answer is to do a eutectic mixture of 12% hydrazine and 88% monomethylhydrazine (MMH). That gives us 98% of the performance of straight hydrazine while making it much easier to use for Regen cooling without blowing up our engine with spontaneous thermal decomposition.

And yeah, staged combustion, lmao. The reason the Soviets managed it so early was that they ran a - shall we say - hardware rich development program.

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Hah! I have foreseen the solution you think of, and the rebuttal is that MMH is almost certainly an exotic propellant! Without a missile program to drive the need for a freezing point-depressed version of hydrazine, MMH likely isn't an option.

I'll admit I have no knowledge about building rockets. But I'd really like to research new materials and fuels before we push our program any further than the heavy sounding rocket.

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The problem is that we have a set deadline for an orbital rocket. IMO, we need to use what we have more-or-less this year to get to orbit, even if we have nearly zero payload mass. Our "modern", general-use workhorse rocket analogous to the R-7 family can be developed after that with less time pressure. We can actually take the time to get it right and build a rocket that'll be useful for decades.

 

[trooperist]

The problem is that we have a set deadline for an orbital rocket. IMO, we need to use what we have more-or-less this year to get to orbit, even if we have nearly zero payload mass. Our "modern", general-use workhorse rocket analogous to the R-7 family can be developed after that with less time pressure. We can actually take the time to get it right and build a rocket that'll be useful for decades.

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We still have plenty of time for the orbital deadline, like 4 years (16 turns). We don't need to rush it.

 

[C_Z]

We still have plenty of time for the orbital deadline, like 4 years (16 turns). We don't need to rush it.

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Sure, but what do we gain by delaying it? We can take a few more years and get a really solid orbital launcher that'll serve us well for decades.

 

[CyberFemme]

Hah! I have foreseen the solution you think of, and the rebuttal is that MMH is almost certainly an exotic propellant! Without a missile program to drive the need for a freezing point-depressed version of hydrazine, MMH likely isn't an option.


The problem is that we have a set deadline for an orbital rocket. IMO, we need to use what we have more-or-less this year to get to orbit, even if we have nearly zero payload mass. Our "modern", general-use workhorse rocket analogous to the R-7 family can be developed after that with less time pressure. We can actually take the time to get it right and build a rocket that'll be useful for decades.

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You know I actually can't find any information on when MMH was first synthesized. I expect it would be fairly early on since it's a derivative process of the one used to make straight hydrazine but I don't actually know for sure.

Alas, it's toxicity is probably enough to make Korolev hate it anyway.

We still have plenty of time for the orbital deadline, like 4 years (16 turns). We don't need to rush it.

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That's not as long as you think. One year is past, we need one year for materials research, one year for fuel research, and probably one year to do develop an orbital launcher infrastructure. Leaving us only one year in reserve to guard against unexpected delays. It's not a lot of slack.

 

[Balmung1]

And yeah, staged combustion, lmao. The reason the Soviets managed it so early was that they ran a - shall we say - hardware rich development program.

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So I'm guessing they threw a lot of money at he problem similarly to the american methos of throwing a fuckton of money at the goal for decades until you get cool stuff like GPS and the internet?

 

[grimely]

That's not as long as you think. One year is past, we need one year for materials research, one year for fuel research, and probably one year to do develop an orbital launcher infrastructure. Leaving us only one year in reserve to guard against unexpected delays. It's not a lot of slack.

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And that's before any future promises too.

 

[CyberFemme]

So I'm guessing they threw a lot of money at he problem similarly to the american methos of throwing a fuckton of money at the goal for decades until you get cool stuff like GPS and the internet?

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In essence, yes. Coupled with the fact that the Soviets had heavier, larger nukes, and needed the extra performance of liquid rockets to sling them around.

 

[C_Z]

You know I actually can't find any information on when MMH was first synthesized. I expect it would be fairly early on since it's a derivative process of the one used to make straight hydrazine but I don't actually know for sure.

Alas, it's toxicity is probably enough to make Korolev hate it anyway.



That's not as long as you think. One year is past, we need one year for materials research, one year for fuel research, and probably one year to do develop an orbital launcher infrastructure. Leaving us only one year in reserve to guard against unexpected delays. It's not a lot of slack.

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Not sure when it was first synthesized, but we do know when it was first considered for rocket use in the West:

It was a Navy program that led to the breakout. At the beginning of 1951 the Rocket Branch of the Bureau of Aeronautics granted contracts to Metallectro and to Aerojet to synthesize certain hydrazine derivatives, and to determine their suitability as rocket propellants.
The three derivatives were monomethylhydrazine, symmetrical dimethyl hydrazine, and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine. The hope was that a very slight alteration to the structure-and you can hardly alter it less than by adding a methyl group -might give it a reasonable freezing point without changing its energetics enough to matter.

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From Clark's Ignition!, p.42-43.

Speaking of, if you haven't read it, I would highly recommend the book.

 

[CyberFemme]

Not sure when it was first synthesized, but we do know when it was first considered for rocket use in the West:

From Clark's Ignition!, p.42-43.

Speaking of, if you haven't read it, I would highly recommend the book.

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*looks at the copy that has been sitting on my hard drive for a month, then looks at a mournfully long ready list*

 

[Dragontrapper]

Speaking of, if you haven't read it, I would highly recommend the book.

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Seconding this; not only does it have a great section about flourine-based propellants, it also has some amazing anecdotes about various labmishaps and incidents that would make excellent omake fodder.

 

[neutronium95]

Seconding this; not only does it have a great section about flourine-based propellants, it also has some amazing anecdotes about various labmishaps and incidents that would make excellent omake fodder.

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Unfortunately, the book is mostly about developing hypergolic propellants for missiles, so we are unlikely to replicate many of the fun and exciting anecdotes. It is a fun read though, and it talks about some other interesting engines. Like the highest isp chemical rocket ever fired, which used a tripropellant of Fluorine, Hydrogen, and molten Lithium.

 

[CyberFemme]

Unfortunately, the book is mostly about developing hypergolic propellants for missiles, so we are unlikely to replicate many of the fun and exciting anecdotes. It is a fun read though, and it talks about some other interesting engines. Like the highest isp chemical rocket ever fired, which used a tripropellant of Fluorine, Hydrogen, and molten Lithium.

Click to shrink...

 

[Dragontrapper]

Unfortunately, the book is mostly about developing hypergolic propellants for missiles, so we are unlikely to replicate many of the fun and exciting anecdotes. It is a fun read though, and it talks about some other interesting engines. Like the highest isp chemical rocket ever fired, which used a tripropellant of Fluorine, Hydrogen, and molten Lithium.

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which, to be fair, makes sense - working out non-hypergolics didn't take long from a chemistry perspective: Hydrocarbon+LOX or LH2+LOX; done. All the interesting stuff was more... niche.

 

[CyberFemme]

which, to be fair, makes sense - working out non-hypergolics didn't take long from a chemistry perspective: Hydrocarbon+LOX or LH2+LOX; done. All the interesting stuff was more... niche.

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Yeah, that's basically what it boils down to. All the trades between hydrocarbons are pretty niche vis a vis performance. It's usual logistical considerations that end up being the deciding factor.

 

[Dragontrapper]

While on the matter of propellants - would there be any benefit to developing an upper-stage Hydrolox engine just to get used to handling LH2 before we start trying to run it over nuclear reactors for Ludicrous ISP?

 

[CyberFemme]

While on the matter of propellants - would there be any benefit to developing an upper-stage Hydrolox engine just to get used to handling LH2 before we start trying to run it over nuclear reactors for Ludicrous ISP?

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Yes. Sort of.

It's not very useful for a LV that just throws stuff into LEO, but it would be a much better fuel for an orbital tug.

I think the best combo would be to use an orbital propellant depot with onboard electrolysis, so that we can ship up propellant in the form of water (safe, dense) and then turn into into LH2 and LOX in orbit.

I also really want us to do IVF for our methalox LV. Use the LOX and Methane for autogenous pressurization, RCS with ulage gas, and power generation with a onboard piston engine running on boil-off.