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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
    • Usili 2.0 said:
    Also I feel obligated to link this song as we are playing a rocket designer. :p
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    You forgot the other song, which is just as important.

    open_sketchbook said:
    I'll point out we know nothing at all about New Alleghany and i wanna knoooooooow
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    I have about half a page of spitballing, which may or may not be accurate. Methinks Gaya might need a worldbuilding
    thread.
    1) Most of the administrative subdivisons are The Commonwealth of X rather than the State of X
    2) There are somewhere between 30-40 Commonwealths
    3) Hawkeye occupies a space roughly analogous to Iowa and most of Minnesota
    3b) The Trans-Hawkeye Canal Company actually built the canal, and it is economically viable
    4) Moutainlight occupies a space analogous to Idaho and parts of Montana
    5) The major demonitaions of Icthysians are Latitudinarians, Martinist, Annointer, and Circutist. (not!Catholic, not!Lutheran, not!Babtist, and not!Presbyterians). May need to come up with better names for the Not!Lutherans and Not!Baptists
    6)The capital is probably named Hamilton or something
    7) Not all the names need to be changed for cities, especially ones named for geographical features. Looking at you, Green Bay, X Bay, X Rapids, X Falls, X Bluffs...

    [X] New Alleghany, a continental superpower.
    [X] A Man

    No option for Ganjay? Mainly because Vyomanaut is such a fun word.
     
    Inserted tally
    Adhoc vote count started by 4WheelSword on Nov 23, 2018 at 12:47 PM, finished with 51 posts and 27 votes.
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    C0P2: Who?
  • Threadmarks
    • Growing up a man in the Federated Commonwealth of New Alleghany was not easy in the early twentieth century, especially not for a black man. Not only had your family, and thus you, faced the trials of the depression but the additional pressures of racial tensions in a land wracked with inequality have made it particularly hard.

    Nonetheless your family recognised your talent and through both struggle and toil they managed to send you not just to school but also to university afterwards. It came with a price, but they considered it a price that couldn't have been more worth paying.

    Three years from the end of your studies, as you are in the depths of a doctorate on the meaning of new aero-physics discoveries in mach flight, there are new developments which change the way the world looks. Nuclear weapons are detonated by several nations, missiles meant for war are flown enormous distances both with wings and without and armies stand at border without a war to fight.

    But that doesn't matter to you. You are neck deep in books at every opportunity. And then, one day, you are approached with a job offer.

    But who are you?
    [ ] Andre Larkin, an engine design specialist (0 Rocket Design, +2 Engine Design)
    [ ] David Dubois, an aerodynamics specialist (+2 Rocket Design, 0 Engine Design)
    [ ] Matthew Suvall, a generalist with talent (+1 Rocket Design, +1 Engine Design)

    Who is the job offer from?
    [ ] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute.
    [ ] Plata Hills Testing Range, a military facility in the Commonwealth of Agadaika
    [ ] The North-East Industrial Conglomerate, a commercial firm on the coast.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] David Dubois, an aerodynamics specialist (+2 Rocket Design, 0 Engine Design)
    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute
     
    [X] Andre Larkin, an engine design specialist (0 Rocket Design, +2 Engine Design)
    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute.

    It's always the engines that get you...
     
    [X] Andre Larkin, an engine design specialist (0 Rocket Design, +2 Engine Design)

    In rocketry, far more so than any other aviation discipline, the engine is what makes the rocket. It determines what is possible, and even the tiniest improvement in the engine can have enormous improvements on the rocket.

    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute.

    Don't feel like building ICBM's, and commercial rockets won't be a thing for another 2 decades or so.
     
    [X] Andre Larkin, an engine design specialist (0 Rocket Design, +2 Engine Design)
    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute.
     
    [X] Matthew Suvall, a generalist with talent (+1 Rocket Design, +1 Engine Design)
    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute
     
    [X] Andre Larkin, an engine design specialist (0 Rocket Design, +2 Engine Design)
    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute.
     
    HMS Sophia said:
    Oh commercial is certainly possible.

    You can fly mail rockets for instance. :p
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    Going full Heinlein is awesome, but let's not assume we can go full Heinlein until we succeed in going full Heinlein.

    Mail rockets are full Heinlein.

    [X] Andre Larkin, an engine design specialist (0 Rocket Design, +2 Engine Design)
    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute.

    Sounds like JPL; will be surprised to learn it's something other than not!JPL...
     
    [X] Matthew Suvall, a generalist with talent (+1 Rocket Design, +1 Engine Design)
    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute
     
    If anyone is wondering what insanity you can do with rocket engines, I suggest people read Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants.

    Here's a short excerpt.

    All sorts of efforts were being made, during the late 50's, to increase propellant densities, and I was responsible (not purposely, but from being taken seriously when I didn't expect to be) for one of the strangest. Phil Pomerantz, of BuWeps, wanted me to try dimethyl mercury, Hg(CH3)2, as a fuel. I suggested that it might be somewhat toxic and a bit dangerous to synthesize and handle, but he assured me that it was (a) very easy to put together, and (b) as harmless as mother's milk. I was dubious, but told him that I'd see what I could do.

    I looked the stuff up, and discovered that, indeed, the synthesis was easy, but that it was extremely toxic, and a long way from harmless. As I had suffered from mercury poisoning on two previous occasions and didn't care to take a chance on doing it again, I thought that it 178 Ignition would be an excellent idea to have somebody else make the compound for me. So I phoned Rochester, and asked my contact man at Eastman Kodak if they would make a hundred pounds of dimethyl mercury and ship it to NARTS.

    I heard a horrified gasp, and then a tightly controlled voice (I could hear the grinding of teeth beneath the words) informed me that if they were silly enough to synthesize that much dimethyl mercury, they would, in the process fog every square inch of photographic film in Rochester, and that, thank you just the same, Eastman was not interested. The receiver came down with a crash, and I sat back to consider the matter. An agonizing reappraisal seemed to be indicated.

    Phil wanted density. Well, dimethyl mercury was dense, all right — d = 3.07 —but it would be burned with RFNA, and at a reasonable mixture ratio the total propellant density would be about 2.1 or 2.2. (The density of theacid-UDMH system is about 1.2.) That didn't seem too impressive, and I decided to apply the reducto ad absurdum method. Why not use the densest known substance which is liquid at room temperature — mercury itself? Just squirt it into the chamber of a motor burning, say, acid-UDMH. It would evaporate into a monatomic gas (with a low Cp, which would help performance), and would go out the nozzle with the combustion products. That technique should give Phil all the density he wanted! Charmed by the delightful nuttiness of the idea, I reached for the calculator.
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    [X] Andre Larkin, an engine design specialist (0 Rocket Design, +2 Engine Design)

    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute.
     
    So, I just found Sketch's worldbuilding notes on New Alleghany.

    New Alleghany
    It's America! Pretty much like the real one. In 1910. Yikes.
    Triad Presidential system with an Eastern, Southern and Western President. Each has a veto and for that veto to be overidden a majority vote from congress must be passed.
    Divided Federated Commonwealth of 41 'states' with massive internal tensions.
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    The obvious note here is "How does this country still exist." This system seems purposely designed to run itself into a complete gridlock at every possible occasion.
     
    10ebbor10 said:
    So, I just found Sketch's worldbuilding notes on New Alleghany.



    The obvious note here is "How does this country still exist." This system seems purposely designed to run itself into a complete gridlock at every possible occasion.
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    ...yeah, that sounds really bad. I can only hope that some sanity has ensued in the past 40 years.
     
    [X] David Dubois, an aerodynamics specialist (+2 Rocket Design, 0 Engine Design)
    [X] Experimental Propulsion Laboratory, a scientific research institute
     
    10ebbor10 said:
    If anyone is wondering what insanity you can do with rocket engines, I suggest people read Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants.

    Here's a short excerpt.
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    For reference, dimethylmercury is literally used as the benchmark substance for toxicity. It is one of the strongest known neurotoxins, and has a remarkable ability to pass through both skin and most substances commonly used for protective equipment like laboratory gloves.
     
    Shebe Zuu said:
    ...yeah, that sounds really bad. I can only hope that some sanity has ensued in the past 40 years.
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    If anything, it should be getting worse. The system as shown can function as long as one party has an absolute majority, and there's no serious regional division. It would be tremendously slow and troubled system, but it would pass stuff. However, the moment that there's any serious division within one party, or worse, a division based within a party based on regional lines, the system will fail.

    So, the moment the civil rights movement happens, it is going to deadlock the governement. This is going to add additional motive to repress and destroy it.

    Anyway, the most logical assumption is that given that the Federal level is completely broken, the actual business of being the government is done by bypassing the governement. This can be done either by having stronger states, or through the creation of large and powerful bureaucracies.
     
    10ebbor10 said:
    If anything, it should be getting worse. The system as shown can function as long as one party has an absolute majority, and there's no serious regional division. It would be tremendously slow and troubled system, but it would pass stuff. However, the moment that there's any serious division within one party, or worse, a division based within a party based on regional lines, the system will fail.

    So, the moment the civil rights movement happens, it is going to deadlock the governement. This is going to add additional motive to repress and destroy it.

    Anyway, the most logical assumption is that given that the Federal level is completely broken, the actual business of being the government is done by bypassing the governement. This can be done either by having stronger states, or through the creation of large and powerful bureaucracies.
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    I mean, realistically speaking the nation should be on the path to civil war right now if it's still under the same system.
     
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