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Per Aspera (Space Agency Plan Quest)

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BurnBright said:
Next turn, or automatically? Because honestly, I feel like either way you should formalize it to make things clearer...
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Automatically.

If there had been a nat 1 involved won't let anything autofinish. If it just shows up and it's 1 off I'm probably going to give it to you because I like to write about stuff and there are only so many ways you can make a near completion interesting.
 
Shadows said:
Automatically.

If there had been a nat 1 involved won't let anything autofinish. If it just shows up and it's 1 off I'm probably going to give it to you because I like to write about stuff and there are only so many ways you can make a near completion interesting.
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You can also subtract the difference from one of the facility rolls next turn.
 
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March 31st, 1952//Q1 1952 Results
  • Threadmarks
    • The three-ish months following the World Council were equal parts hectic and strangely sedate, with great amounts of effort being expended on relatively few things concurrently. Chief among them was getting a new construction union on your Facilities team - it would be very useful to be able to expand your efforts, constrained as you were now by the need for better infrastructure. You could already all but hear your Facilities lead salivating over the prospect of being able to work multiple projects at once.

    Resources:
    105 (+160R/turn)
    30 Political Support

    Facilities:
    1 Launch Stand (0-5 tonne) (+1 Operations die)
    1 Assembly Complex (+1 Build Capacity)
    1 Engineer's Hall (+2 Engineering Dice)
    1 University Affiliate (+2 Science Dice)
    1 Materials Lab (+5 bonus to projects tagged [MATSCI])
    1 Chemical Plant (+5 bonus to projects tagged [CHEM])
    1 Electronics Cooperative (+5 bonus to projects tagged [AVIONICS])
    2 Construction Union Halls (+2 Facilities die)
    1 Publications Office (+1 to all science and engineering fields; coinflip each year to get an additional +1)
    1 Hardened Tracking and Observation (T&O) Complex (+3 to Operations)
    1 Engine Test Stand (+2 to PROP projects)
    1 Isotope Separation and Nuclear Science Facility (Enables Nuclear Technology tree) (fully unlocks 1954Q1)

    Scientific Advances (name TBD)
    Improved Instrumentation (Gain +1d2 bonus to a random field every 2 launches. Gain +1 to AVIONICS immediately.)
    Regenerative Cooling (Starts down the path to more powerful and advanced rocket engines
    Second Stages - Can now build 2-Stage Sounding Rockets
    Combustion Instability Research - Turns the initial success roll for a rocket from a >60 to >50.
    Engine Cycles - Enables Early Orbital engines.

    Scientific/Engineering Specific Field Bonuses
    AERO - +3
    AVIONICS - +6
    CHEM - +7
    CREW - +0
    COMP - +0
    MATSCI - +5
    PHYS - +0
    PROP - +4

    Penelope Carter [The Director] - [+10 to Politics rolls, +2 Politics die, +5R/turn in funding from Connections, reroll 1 failed politics roll per turn]

    Sergei Korolev - [+5 to Science and Engineering rolls (unless researching [HGOL][FUEL] projects, then it becomes a -15), +1 Science dice, +1 Engineering Dice. Request: Build an Orbital Rocket within 5 years; build a Scientific Complex in former Ukraine within 10 years.]

    [ ] Construct a 2-Stage Sounding Rocket (45/50+15=60/50)
    --[ ] And use it for Weather Studies
    [ ] (3 Dice) Weather Studies (Phase 2) (224/160) (+5 PS on complete) (High Priority)

    The IEC's production team kept up their forward momentum this quarter, hammering out yet another two-stage sounding rocket for the scientists to usefor their research. This time, it was the Meteorology Group's turn to get their payloads lofted into space, carrying up a specialized film camera to take photographs of a large storm system south of Mogadishu, off the coast of Mombasa.

    The photographs revealed the nature of a tropical cyclone for the first time - not merely a wall of storms but a massive formation with its own structure quite unlike your average squall. The whole eye of the storm was photographed, and as luck would have it the downward trajectory of the payload would have it punch through the eyewall to land in the eye, enabling the onboard thermometer and barometer to record the conditions at the most intense part of the storm.

    Recovering the capsule was made trickier by that happenstance, though the scientists working on the project were almost universally of the opinion that the data collected, once it had begun to be analyzed, had been very well worth the effort. The various institutions copies of the data had been sent to were also overjoyed by the returned information. There were talks, now, of setting up a dedicated Program of weather observations, especially if the IEC should master orbital spaceflight…

    [ ] Construct a Computational Research Facility (19/180)

    Work began on the new Computational Research Facility with steam shovels breaking ground early in the quarter and the first concrete and rebar being laid shortly thereafter. The progress on the building's actual structure progressed about as swiftly as anyone could desire, but the internals proved incredibly frustrating.

    Sourcing the appropriate electronic components for the high-performance mainframe computer was an exercise in futility, as the assemblies simply did not exist. The whole artifice would have to be built from scratch - not exactly uncommon for computers, to be certain, but finding suppliers for the vacuum tubes especially was tricky, as a good number of them had been destroyed in various atomic bombings and the remainder were up to their eyeballs in back-orders as various groups sought to acquire computer power to solve their problems.

    All was not hopeless - Dr. Turing had contacts that he intended to talk to to get either the assemblies you need or the tools to make them. But the delay would cost the IEC a schedule slip.

    [ ] (3 Dice) Engine Cycles (Tech) [MATSCI, CHEM, PROP] (336/250)

    Work continued on the engine cycle study, and near the end of the quarter you received a visit from your engine team's representative, along with Korolev. They have settled onto a propellant, abundant and nearly free - methane. A byproduct of oil refining, refineries usually ended up just burning it off because there weren't many uses for it. In a test engine, the fuel didn't cause coking as enthusiastically as other hydrocarbon fuels, and its incredibly low freezing temperature meant that in liquid form it could share a common bulkhead with a liquid oxygen tank.

    For the cycle, they chose a simple gas generator design - where a small rocket engine was ignited to power the turbopump driving the whole assembly, with the exhaust either pumped into the existing bell or off to the side, negligibly decreasing the performance of the engine in its entirety. There were other, better cycles, that the scientists wanted to explore later, as time and resources permitted, but they thought their design would work for the IEC's present purposes.

    [ ] There is Power in a Union (99/100+5= 104/100)

    A large chunk of your personal time was spent in negotiations with the Local 470 African Builders Union out of Cairo. The IEC was resource-rich and labor-poor after the recent budget negotiations and with all the new obligations the Cooperative had, now was the time to start branching out and increasing its capabilities. The biggest problem you had was that the local union was already working with the IEC, forcing you to look further away for experienced hands. Most unions closer than Cairo were either too small to be of help or too busy being contracted out to the regional government doing extensive projects to improve the area.

    Local 470 had agreed to the IEC's contract fairly quickly and were eager to start, but had almost been unable to arrive in time for the end of the quarter thanks to a series of unfortunately timed storms and partisan attacks turning the trip hazardous. With a bit of extra funding thrown into securing transportation on a longer, safer route, you were able to get them moved to Mogadishu by the end of March.

    (-5 extra R, gain 1 Facilities dice)

    [ ] (2 Dice) Rocket Boxes (Phase I) (303/200) -> (Phase II) (103/300)

    The workshops making the Rocket Boxes were churning full tilt by the end of the quarter, putting out pallet after pallet of the informational packets, the rocket bodies and motors, and the boxes themselves where necessary. The IEC took a week off in early March, the various rocket scientists and engineers going out into the hinterlands to even the most remote of schools to give lessons on space, rockets, and rocket construction, with interpreters where necessary. Still others went to the continent's universities and hosted lectures, followed by outdoor events where those students got to do the same as their younger counterparts.

    The program was a smashing success. An uptick in the number of visitors to the space center coincided with a rise in letters as well, as people of all ages experienced a burst of curiosity that the IEC was all too ready to sate.

    The program, of course, kept going, now setting its sights on Oceania and Asia. While the rocket motors themselves would probably continue to be manufactured in Africa, every other component was going to be made as locally as possible to the destinations they were bound for.

    (+1 Education to Africa)
    (???)
     
  • Threadmarks
    • It's a rough start on the computer facility, but with the construction union we should still be able to get it done. Methane engines at this point are an unexpected bonus - we may run into unexpected cost and refining issues since there's not much infrastructure, but it's certainly solid for our rockets now. What we develop here will, unless something really goes wrong, be a solid base for the orbital rocket.

    And it's definitely nice to see people being excited about the weather launches and rocket boxes.
     
    Mmmmm, yess, GG Methalox is a good cycle to cut our teeth on. Good long term potential there.

    Frankly it's more complicated than I would have expected them to pick - I was thinking they'd end up settling on an expander cycle, but I guess Korolev wanted that sweet, sweet TWR. We can do incremental improvements on our methalox GG engines until we're established enough to explore a double expander aerospike engine - setting up a metalurgical shop in Ukraine to figure out a stainless steel formulation that will handle the oxydizer loop would be good.
    Those would be a neat 'path not taken' that we can go down, because they pair beautifully with cryogenic propellants and give fantastic TWRs while keeping the turbomachinery simple and reliable. They also make it a lot easier to mount heat shields on the bottom of your rocket, which is very nice for reuse.

    It also means that we don't really have to do propellant investigations, which does nice things for our action economy in terms of preparing an orbital LV.
     
    We should still probably do propellant research before too long - maybe start trickling dice into it after the orbital rocket, or when there's a convenient time to take it as a promise. If nothing else we'll need monopropellants, storable propellants for probes and assorted small solid rockets to do much once we get to space.
     
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    Long, long term stuff but I really want to do some sort of big space lift system... Eventually
     
    So, right now, our first orbital rocket probably looks like:

    • 30 tons (the most we can support with our current pad)
    • Methalox first stage, likely derived from this universe's equivalent to a V-2 that's been scaled up. I would suggest that we have one engine for our ~15 t sounding rockets, and pair up two of those for our orbital launcher. That way, we have the history of test flight data and pre-existing tooling.
    • Presumably a methalox second stage for commonality? It's a shame we didn't get the aforementioned expander-cycle engine working, that'd be a fantastic engine for that role. Whatever we're using for our current sounding rockets could also be used; sticking a 1 ton sounding rocket with a bell extension on top of our V-2 derivative could work if we need to rush things.
    • Ideally, around 100 kg in orbit so we can put up a weather satellite
    • Launched in 3 and a half years (fingers crossed)
    Alternatively, it might be worthwhile to see if any of the various militaries have spare solid-fuelled rockets - a cluster of surplus motors could provide the initial kick to a lengthened V-2 analogue while still using the same engine as our heavy sounding rocket (what's the in-universe German name, and please tell me it's easier to say than "V-2 analogue"?)

    Anyways, it looks like we'll be right on the borderline with the rocket boxes. It'll probably be 400 points for the last stage if the pattern holds, which means we'll need 597 points, or an average per quarter of 199. By my math, with our current 4d100 drop lowest (is that what the "reroll failure" does?), we have a ~40% chance of failing rocket boxes if we throw everything at it.

    That said, we have managed to more-or-less guarantee that we'll finish the Computational Research Facility this year, so that's excellent.
     
    Seems things went well, that was a sweet move we pulled dropping a rocket through the eye of a hurricane.

    Shadows said:
    [ ] There is Power in a Union (99/100+5= 104/100)
    (-5 extra R, gain 1 Facilities dice)
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    Interesting. So just barely failing the DC completes it, at a small extra penalty? Seems a fair exchange to avoid having to spend an entire die for two more progress.
    C_Z said:
    Anyways, it looks like we'll be right on the borderline with the rocket boxes. It'll probably be 400 points for the last stage if the pattern holds, which means we'll need 597 points, or an average per quarter of 199. By my math, with our current 4d100 drop lowest (is that what the "reroll failure" does?), we have a ~40% chance of failing rocket boxes if we throw everything at it.
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    Man, looks like we've bitten off a little too much eh? Well, guess it's up to the random number god. And thanks for running the numbers.
     
    C_Z said:
    So, right now, our first orbital rocket probably looks like:

    • 30 tons (the most we can support with our current pad)
    • Methalox first stage, likely derived from this universe's equivalent to a V-2 that's been scaled up. I would suggest that we have one engine for our ~15 t sounding rockets, and pair up two of those for our orbital launcher. That way, we have the history of test flight data and pre-existing tooling.
    • Presumably a methalox second stage for commonality? It's a shame we didn't get the aforementioned expander-cycle engine working, that'd be a fantastic engine for that role. Whatever we're using for our current sounding rockets could also be used; sticking a 1 ton sounding rocket with a bell extension on top of our V-2 derivative could work if we need to rush things.
    • Ideally, around 100 kg in orbit so we can put up a weather satellite
    • Launched in 3 and a half years (fingers crossed)
    Alternatively, it might be worthwhile to see if any of the various militaries have spare solid-fuelled rockets - a cluster of surplus motors could provide the initial kick to a lengthened V-2 analogue while still using the same engine as our heavy sounding rocket (what's the in-universe German name, and please tell me it's easier to say than "V-2 analogue"?)

    Anyways, it looks like we'll be right on the borderline with the rocket boxes. It'll probably be 400 points for the last stage if the pattern holds, which means we'll need 597 points, or an average per quarter of 199. By my math, with our current 4d100 drop lowest (is that what the "reroll failure" does?), we have a ~40% chance of failing rocket boxes if we throw everything at it.

    That said, we have managed to more-or-less guarantee that we'll finish the Computational Research Facility this year, so that's excellent.
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    On the orbital rocket, it's probably going to be a distinct design from the new heavy sounding rocket because we'll really want to incorporate better materials/structure, which we won't get in unless we delay the first heavy sounding rocket another few quarters or more. But we can hopefully put the gas generator engine on the sounding rocket given it's early state of development.

    We have an average of 504 points in science (plus a bonus for any CHEM projects) for the rest of the year. Assuming Weather Studies 3 is going to be at 64/320 next turn, it might be a good course to put two dice in that and start the Tracking Station Survey next turn, alongside starting the new sounding rocket, so that we can move towards making the best use of its range. After that maybe put anything left into propellant research, and look at making a major material science commitment effort next year?
     
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    Dessard said:
    We should still probably do propellant research before too long - maybe start trickling dice into it after the orbital rocket, or when there's a convenient time to take it as a promise. If nothing else we'll need monopropellants, storable propellants for probes and assorted small solid rockets to do much once we get to space.
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    I think we can probably get by with pressure fed bi-propellants for our bigger rockets, and methalox is a soft cryogen so it's pretty storable on our larger spacecraft.

    But it is really hard to beat hydrazine for smaller satellites. You can try Cavea-B which offers slightly better performance and less toxicity, but requires a hypergolic slug ignition system.

    There's also HAN (Hydroxylammonium nitrate) but that's a very modern monoprop from what I can tell. Not sure that would be available in the 50s - I'm not very plugged into the chemistry side of things.

    Rockeye said:
    Long, long term stuff but I really want to do some sort of big space lift system... Eventually
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    Unfortunately, it's more economical to launch more smaller rockets than fewer big rockets. I've heard 24 rockets/year as a good rule of thumb for how many LV you want to build to keep per unit prices low - because there's a lower floor on the amount of infrastructure you need to build rockets, and if you build fewer than that, your factory is just laying fallow in the meantime.

    And for the ocasional 50+ tonne to orbit payload, you strap a few medium launch vehicles together Falcon Heavy style.

    Dessard said:
    On the orbital rocket, it's probably going to be a distinct design from the new heavy sounding rocket because we'll really want to incorporate better materials/structure, which we won't get in unless we delay the first heavy sounding rocket another few quarters or more. But we can hopefully put the gas generator engine on the sounding rocket given it's early state of development.

    We have an average of 504 points in science (plus a bonus for any CHEM projects) for the rest of the year. Assuming Weather Studies 3 is going to be at 64/320 next turn, it might be a good course to put two dice in that and start the Tracking Station Survey next turn, alongside starting the new sounding rocket, so that we can move towards making the best use of its range. After that maybe put anything left into propellant research, and look at making a major material science commitment effort next year?
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    I don't think we need to do propellant research. Methalox will probably be the standard for launch vehicles going forward, and we don't yet have to mess with monoprops - that's for after our first orbital launch.
     
    Dessard said:
    On the orbital rocket, it's probably going to be a distinct design from the new heavy sounding rocket because we'll really want to incorporate better materials/structure, which we won't get in unless we delay the first heavy sounding rocket another few quarters or more. But we can hopefully put the gas generator engine on the sounding rocket given it's early state of development.

    We have an average of 504 points in science (plus a bonus for any CHEM projects) for the rest of the year. Assuming Weather Studies 3 is going to be at 64/320 next turn, it might be a good course to put two dice in that and start the Tracking Station Survey next turn, alongside starting the new sounding rocket, so that we can move towards making the best use of its range. After that maybe put anything left into propellant research, and look at making a major material science commitment effort next year?
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    Ideally we'd have better materials for the orbital rocket but I'm concerned we won't have time. There'd definitely be a big improvement through using Al, isogrid tanks, or balloon tanks, but it'd also delay things. If we can afford the time delay, then it's a good idea, but I'm being conservative in my estimates for now.

    CyberEnby said:
    Unfortunately, it's more economical to launch more smaller rockets than fewer big rockets. I've heard 24 rockets/year as a good rule of thumb for how many LV you want to build to keep per unit prices low - because there's a lower floor on the amount of infrastructure you need to build rockets, and if you build fewer than that, your factory is just laying fallow in the meantime.

    And for the ocasional 50+ tonne to orbit payload, you strap a few medium launch vehicles together Falcon Heavy style.
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    While I agree that medium launchers are more economical for routine payloads, there is a pretty significant advantage in being able to launch massive payloads all at once. If we're establishing a serious human presence in space, something which can put entire hundreds of tons into orbit with single launches is advantageous. It means we can build large, monolithic structures on Earth (where all the fancy production equipment and skilled workforce is) and launch it in one go, instead of having to make things dissassemble and then put it back together in orbit over dozens of launches with a smaller vehicle.
     
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