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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
    • [X] Optimise the rockets mass to ensure delta V. (+1 stress)

    This is why I didn't want to add stress earlier.
     
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    [x] Optimise the rockets mass to ensure delta V. (+1 stress)

    Our rockets are excellent looking birds.
     
    Ash19256 said:
    Wow. Our rockets got big. And they got big in a hurry.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    That's what happens when you want large payloads and/or orbital capacity. The AJAX has something like 4 times the payload and I think greater range, while the IGY proposal is an orbital design and orbit is far harder than just space or significant-range ballistic trajectories.
    Also we should look into rocket engine gimbals, since these carbon vanes are gross and shouldn't be possible on large, efficient engines.
     
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    C4P9: A Close Contest
  • Threadmarks
    • It's optimised. It's ready. In six months, it's going to be a fully fledged design draft and construction document. Eighteen months after that it's going to be going up into space and delivering a few hundred kilograms into the history books. That is, if it can match up against the competition. And you won't know what that looks like until you've submitted your design.

    A design which doesn't even have a name yet, you realise. You should probably change that sometime between now and the deadline, if only so your documents have a title a little more evocative than 'Proposal 8'.

    Proposal 8 First Stage
    7M tank, 140 M fuel; 2x Dougal E-1 (9.04M, 19.56C);
    Explosive Bolts (0.78M, 0.39C), Basic Beam riding (1.57M, 3.14C), Small Fins (0.78M, 0.78C)
    Stage Mass: 157.58/17.58
    Stage Cost: 39.76
    Stage: ISP: 281s
    Stage Thrust: 655.4kN (262.16M loft)
    Stage TMR: 1.65
    Stage dV: ~6000ms-1

    Proposal 8 Second Stage
    1M tank, 20 M fuel; 1x UA LF-1V (2.12M, 5.12C);
    Basic Beam riding (0.23M, 0.46C), Carbon Vanes (0.21M, 0.42C)
    Stage Mass: 23.32/3.32
    Stage Cost: 8.36C
    Stage ISP: 325s
    Stage Thrust: 177.4kN (70.9M loft)
    Stage TMR: 3.04
    Stage dV: ~6200ms-1

    Proposal 8 Full Design
    First Stage Mass: 181.8/41.8
    First Stage dV: 4,048ms-1
    Second Stage Mass: 24.22/4.22
    Second Stage dV: 5,565ms-1
    Payload Mass: .9M
    Total dV: 9,613ms-1
    Launch TMR: 1.43
    Total Mass: 181.8 (45,450kg)
    Total Cost: 48.12

    When the draft synopses come in they're no more surprising than they were the last time around. But this time there are more and they are much more imaginative. In comparison, you have been relatively conservative. While it carries one of the larger payloads, it is heavier and simply larger. Hopefully that doesn't count against it in the coming decision.
    Your eyes flick to the Redstone entry first and they widen in surprise. It's literally just their Ajax rocket with a 25 kilo radio-transponder satellite instead of the three ton payload it was designed for. That's… interesting. It always was the more capable option. The Navy, meanwhile, have apparently submitted a similar payload with a minimum size rocket. It's under ten tons, you read in disbelief. It's smaller than Ajax,and isn't much bigger than MISIT. That's something, for sure. The Army, somewhat like Redstone, have taken one of their nuclear ballistic missiles and strapped an experimental payload to the top.

    And then there's O'Connell and the Air Force. The latter has put forwards a manned flight as the first orbital system. You wonder how they've solved the problems inherent to payload return and atmospheric heating and survival in space. Your earlier recommendation had never thought to go as far as orbital flight, but they have really pulled out all the stops for it. That's threatening enough.

    And then there's O'Connell. A single stage rocket with an extremely advanced 'aerospike' engine design and seemingly little thought given to development time or cost. It's certainly something. But something doesn't win design competitions.

    Name your booster:
    [ ] Write in
    Name your payload:
    [ ] Write in
    Vote for your favourite design:
    [ ] IGY
    [ ] Redstone
    [ ] O'Connell
    [ ] Army
    [ ] Air Force
    [ ] Navy
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • For the booster name, I'm thinking Prometheus? Satellite as Explorer 1 (to crib from RL)

    [X] Prometheus
    [X] Explorer 1

    Also, I'm slightly confused by the vote for your design bit? Do you mean in who we want to win or...?

    EDIT:
    [X] IGY
     
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    [X] O'Connell
    Because it looks so derpy and space agey.

    [X] Prometheus
    [X] Explorer 1

    I like this name.
     
    [X] Prometheus
    [X] Hope 1

    [X] IGY

    I chose our design as my favorite, mostly for the fact that it looks like something that would actually work, and we designed it. That last bit is what kicked it into winning. Other than that, it would have tied with the Navy's Not!Vanguard, just ahead of the Army entry and the Air Force's manned design. I don't really like Redstone's entry, due to how blunt it's nose is, and O'Connel's design just annoys me due to the fact that they are trying to chase a really stupid pipe dream, especially for this era.
     
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    [X] Prometheus

    ... a good name for a rocket.

    [X] Hope 1

    Re-using the name of the real equivalent is fine, but not terribly creative. We can do better. Columbus was too genocidey to be a good person to name things after, and may not even exist in universe. That left picking out my own. Well, the previous connection I drew got me thinking of space filk, and Hope Eyrie is perhaps the most famous, and this maybe captures the optimism I'd like to see from an early space race that is a bit less about the looming threat of global nuclear war than the historical one.

    [X] Army

    Nothing flashy here, just a proven, off the shelf launch vehicle and enough payload to really matter rather than just being a symbolic gesture. If I were an impartial judge, this is the proposal I would select.
     
    [X] O'Connell
    [X] Prometheus
    [X] Hope 1

    I like that payload name.
     
    [X] IGY
    I don't really care for the name of our rocket, but I do have to vote for our vehicle here, mainly because it's very cleanly designed. The army and Navy vehicles are also pretty good, but the Air Force design looks dubious and Redstone is far too blunt. As for O'connell, that thing's not happening any time soon. It's fun, but SSTOs have pretty much never been practical designs even when made as Aerospike designs.
     
    [X] Prometheus
    [X] Hope 1
    [X] IGY

    Can't not vote for the rocket I crafted.
     
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