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Rocket Design Agency - A Playtesting Quest

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Cast and Characters
  • Informational
    • NASA
    Brad L. Whipple - Director, New Alleghany Space Administration

    Payload Design - +1
    Rocket Design - +2
    Engine Design - +3
    Mission Planning - +1
    Flight Control - +2
    Damage Control - +0
    Spacecraft Activity - +0
    Extravehicular Activity - +0
    Experimental Activity - +2

    Flight Objectives
    - Continue scientific launches, progressing to probes into the space beyond orbit by year end 1959.
    - Begin experiments which will allow a progression to human spaceflight before year end 1960.
    - Cooperate with the Armed Forces in developing their abilities through the application of spaceflight.

    Mission Schedule - Current Date: January 1960
    - Low Orbit 1 (Summer 1958) - Hope-2 (Partial failure)
    - Re-entry test 1 - Sub-orbital - Full Success, August 1958
    - Low Orbit 2 - Partial Failure, Hope-3 , October 1958
    - Re-entry test 2 - Failure, November 1958
    - Military Communications - Success, ARTS, December 1958
    - High Orbit 1 - Success, Hope-4, January 1959
    - Re-entry test 3 - Success, March 1959
    - Bio-sciences - Launch Failure, July 1959
    - Discovery 1, Success, September 1959
    - High Orbit 2 - Success, Hope-5, October 1959
    - Lunar Probe - Launch Failure, Artemis-Lunar, November 1959
    - Bio-sciences - Success, Astrocaphe-Chuck, December 1959
    - Discovery 2 - Failure, January 1960
    - Astrocathe test - Success, animal in space, February 1960
    - March lost due to Artemis redesign
    - NAN payload - April 1960 - First Hermes Flight
    - Crown 3 - Spring/Summer 1960
    - Commercial payload - Summer 1960
    - IRVOS 1 - Summer 1960
    - NAA Communications - Summer/Fall 1960
    - Space Camp test - Summer/Fall 1960
    - NAN payload - Fall/Winter 1960
    - Commercial payload -Winter 1960
    - Astrocathe test - Winter 1960
    - NAA Communications - Spring 1961

    - Astrocaphe phase 1 (3 crewed flights)
    - Astrocaphe phase 2 (3 crewed flights)

    Hardware
    - Prometheus (1M to LEO)
    - Hermes-L (6M to LEO)
    - Hermes-B (8M to LEO)

    Andre Larkin - Team Lead at EPL
    Rocket Design 0
    Engine Design +2


    EPL Design Team
    Antony Miratha, Aerodynamics
    Susan Stone, Astrophysics
    Michael Cole, Rocket Engineering
    Amy Mathews, Trajectory Planning
    Simon T. Harrison, Chemical Engineering

    +2 Rocket Design, +2 Payload Design +1 Engine Design, +1 Fuel Selection, +1 Flight Planning

    Side Characters
    Dr. Evan Hart - Research Director at EPL
    Arthur Ley, proponent of Lunar flight.
    Franz Haber, Doctor and researcher.
    Dieter von Markand, Pacifist and astrophysicist.

    EPL Facilities
    Design workshop
    Chemical research laboratory
    Launch analysis equipment
    (Please note that EPL has neither rocket nor engine manufacturing facilities)
     
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  • Informational
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    C2P5
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    • How indeed. An aircraft seems the most obvious, with rocket engines instead of the usual jets or propellers. But then, is a rocket plane the sort of thing that is going to capture imaginations? No, it's just another step along the road, it's not the leaps and bounds that you love so much.

    So something else then. And while pondering what something else could be, you consider the recent papers you've seen published about heating effects and aerodynamic shapes. If you designed a pod that could fly nose forwards in space to your base camp and then fly backwards on its return, it would be able to have the most efficient shape from the studies that you'd seen without it being particularly problematic.

    Three crew, of course, you think as you pick up a drafting pencil, and you'll have to tuck them in as tightly as possible. They should be lying on their backs with their feet together, a trilateral design internally to balance the weight. The crew would need a hatch forwards so that they can transfer between the capsule, and the base camp. Windows all around so any crew member can check visually on their progress towards making contact with their two-week holiday home in space.

    Then the other things. A ton of environmental equipment, batteries for power, and so on. All the sundries and essentials to keep three scientists alive while they move from the ground to the base camp in space. Communications equipment. Space for any luggage they might need. You can't imagine wanting to spend two weeks in the confines of the base camp without at least one change of clothes. That would be quite horrid.

    As a thought experiment you sketch out an aerodynamic cover for the nose, to keep it flush, and add a rocket engine aft. Four detachable fuel pods would be its supply, allowing the scientists to use it for expeditions if they need to. You can quite easily imagine three people needing to travel further out into space to perform experiments - perhaps even to the moon!

    And then what if they needed resupply. They could have a cargo vehicle, perhaps, bringing supplies and clean clothes and new fuel tanks for the capsule, the 'space taxi' as it were.

    But those are simply ideas. You only take the capsule drawings with you, and a sketch of one docked with the base camp.

    "Excellent." Alison grins at the plans, and at you. You smile back. "No, these are really very good. I appreciate the design for this craft, it's… unique."

    "I assumed that falling backwards on return would be the least stressful for the crew."

    "So they don't have to bail out? I'm not seeing wings or a motor on this landing configuration. How long a runway would it need?"

    "A runway?"

    "Yes, Whipple, a runway. Long tarmac thing. How does it land?"

    It lands using;
    [ ] Parachutes and a booster (Land)
    [ ] Parachutes and floats (Sea)
    [ ] Powered Landing (Land/Sea)
    [ ] Folding Wing and skids (Land)
     
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    Usili 2.0 said:
    I admittedly love it, but I'm just a wee bit confused why you'd separate the uh, covering of all the stuff in the Service Module...

    and oh my god, this is like a dream I had a couple months ago.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Because that's just an aerodynamic shell! Why would you need that in space. And this way you can swap fuel pods in and out, and so on.

    A dream?
     
    [X] Parachutes and floats (Sea)

    Simple and forgiving. I'm not opposed to the parasail scheme they wanted to do for Gemini necessarily, but it doesn't seem actually useful enough to justify the risk and complexity.
     
    [x] Parachutes and floats (Sea)

    I love the pixel art, as ever. I'm a sucker for rockets and space ships anytime, mind.
     
    Love the art, it gets across the dream super nice. Also Sploooosh.

    [X] Parachutes and floats (Sea)
     
    That art is very good, and certainly resembles some of the more grounded ideas from the 50s about what space stations would operate and appear like. That said, the rocket enthusiast in me is annoyed by the protruding and probably heavy bracing around the fuel tanks, which could probably be reduced sharply by using a large, thick-walled central tank for most life support and such (excepting the few minutes provided for reentry) as well as what fuel can be fit, on which the drop tanks would be attached by minimally sized ejection systems resembling those used to remove the MISIT(Boosted)'s boosters, if much smaller. Everything else is close enough to be excusable (such as the miserably small solar panels and weirdly long capsule) as inexperience and a lack of institutional knowledge on station design.
    Edit: On the other hand I strongly support the removal of the structural covering from the service section as such is an exceedingly clever way to reduce the amount of mass needed for tankage by shielding it from aerodynamic effects that would require a thicker structure to block, while still doing away with that once there was little enough atmosphere to be a concern.
     
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    [X] Parachutes and floats (Sea)

    One potential advantage here is that we can swing it as minimizing the amount of hardware investment and development work needed - why fiddle with the massively precise returns needed to land a glider, especially one as constrained as our capsule, on a small runway, when you can design your capsule to safely land on something that freely covers more than 70% of the surface of the Earth? Not to mention, if well designed, this landing mechanism could allow capsules to be easily re-used, something which would drive the costs of delivering men and supplies to these base camps.
     
    C2P6
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    • "If there's anything we're not lacking in, it's coastline. Parachutes and airbags will provide a soft landing on the ocean and it'll be recovered by ship."

    "Navy? They have their own projects, I doubt they'll want to help us much."

    "I was actually thinking coastguard. Smaller, more willing to throw their hand in and just as used to rescue operations."

    "Yes I suppose they are." Devrie seems to think for a moment, "Well, you keep developing these, yes? These are good, but they're hardly on the scale that your talk promised."

    "I didn't think you'd seen my talk."

    "I read a transcript." she says with a wave of a hand, "I'm not the only one that you made an impact on, however. I have a letter here from Colliers, the magazine? Apparently they'd like you to be involved in a new series of there."

    "Me? Well I won't object."

    "With a national audience? No, I didn't imagine you would somehow. Apparently they're planning to call it We Will Conquer Space Soon or something equally ridiculous."

    "Yes. Ridiculous." You agree without thinking. Already your mind is on just how much reach you're going to get if this works out. "May I?" You gesture to the door, already looking forward to the phone call.

    "Go ahead." She says. "And no working on it on my time!" She snaps as the door shuts behind you.


    January, 1951, is a bitterly cold month as you and your team prepare for the first every launch of the MISIT design. It's a strange feeling, seeing something that can only be described as truly yours standing out there on the pad, supported by launch clamps and a thin tower that rises to just above the rockets nose.

    "Andre!" Someone calls and you turn eagerly towards the nearby tracking vehicles. A pair of trucks now outfitted to track a rocket's flight through all the instrumentation you've packed between the things thin skin and its fuel tanks. You can't wait until the entire thing is abuzz once the motors are lit.

    "Are we ready?" You call back, seeing Amy hanging out of the back door of one of the vehicles.

    "Ready as we'll ever be." She offers you a hand to help you clamber up into the box of a control room as a recording booms "Clear the launch site, Clear the launch site" over and over again as something of a warning.

    You check your watch. Two minutes until the agreed time.

    It's so close. Space is so close. You can almost taste it.

    Roll:
    Pre-Flight: 2d10+1
    Ignition!: 2d10
    Lift-Off: 2d10+2
    Booster Separation: 2d10+2
    Max-Q: 2d10-1
    Payload testing: 2d10+2
     
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