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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
    • I mean, we now need one more of them than we had hoped we would, minimum, so there is that. But even so, I still think we ought to cooperate. The army has been good to us, and we will want allies to help preserve our funding.

    [X] Artemis, limiting your choices
     
    Ash19256 said:
    I think the LES test is a partial success. Which probably means a lot of reworking needs to happen.
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    Well, historically emergency equipment has had not great reliability sometimes because it isn't used as often and is often only tested maybe once or twice if even that under realistic conditions. In this case, it not going perfectly does make some sense, with the switch to smaller rockets as part of the last minute weight reductions.
     
    I wonder what the failure on liftoff was. Spontaneous loss of thrust on one of the Dougals? One of the SRMs having a gimbal lock-up in one position or another, pushing the booster off course? Spontaneous loss of thrust on one of the boosters?
     
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    C10P5: Congressional Hearings
  • Threadmarks
    • Pre-flight showed absolutely no problems, and the roll-out of the very first Artemis to launch pad went so smoothly it could have been like something out of a storybook. On the day of the launch, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky and as the countdown ticked away the seconds it seemed like not a thing could go wrong. Charles the Chimp was strapped into his capsule and video feed showed that he was happy as anyone could expect a hominid to be in his positing. Everything was going perfectly.

    But it was not to be.

    The three Dougal engines, almost a million pounds of thrust, roared into life a moment after the button was pushed, the paired boosters lighting at the same time. The shining new rocket strained against it's clamps but for a moment before they released and allowed it to leap skyward. It accelerated, faster and faster, throwing itself towards space as one of the most powerful things humankind had ever imagined.

    But it was not to be.

    The first shout of alarm went out fifty-seven seconds into the flight. A vibration in the main engines, one that wasn't abating. The shaking spread up the length of the rocket and then, three seconds later, it reached a dangerous level.

    The RSO made the decision to abort the mission a split second before the first failure light ignited. A turn of a key, a push of a button and everything happened all at once. The capsule fairing split into three and fell away. Tiny booster rockets kicked the uppermost section, the tiny ball, away from the rocket even as explosive charges cut the feed lines to the Dougal's and split the fuel tanks along their length. For the briefest of milliseconds, the rocket was hidden in a cloud of vaporized fuel and then the cloud caught the still-firing boosters and the entire mass ignitied. The detonation was low enough for the rumble to reach the Cape - but it took more than a minute for it to do so.

    Charles the Chimp descended back to the surface under the capsules reserve chute, shaken, terrified, but alive.

    Newspapers the next day were… scathing, to say the least. Mocking. If NASA couldn't manage what Akitsukini did, then how could they manage the future of New Alleghanian space flight? If NASA couldn't manage that, should they even be in charge?

    Bradley L. Whittle has been summoned to congress to testify.

    Congress will demand answers. How do you answer?
    [ ] Civilian management is necessary for peaceful research.
    [ ] Every launch is a lesson, even the failures. Not a cent is wasted.
    [ ] Every launch is a lesson and teaches us more. Science can be expensive.
    [ ] Write in.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Every launch is a lesson and teaches us more. Science can be expensive.
    -[X] Every launch has its risks; we work hard to minimize them, but they cannot be removed entirely. The odds caught up to us.
     
    [X] Every launch is a lesson and teaches us more. Science can be expensive.
    -[X] Every launch has its risks; we work hard to minimize them, but they cannot be removed entirely. The odds caught up to us.
     
    Honestly, I wonder if the relative success of our earlier launches has kind of shot us in the foot here. Having the first launch of a brand new rocket go this way isn't terribly surprising even today and should have been commonplace in the 50s. In fact, so far as I can tell, no one else has had a really major failure that we are aware of either. Congress hasn't figured out that space is hard yet.

    [X] Every launch is a lesson, even the failures. Not a cent is wasted.

    On the bright side, we've validated our LES under real-world conditions. The astronauts will be that much safer when the time comes.
     
    [X] Every launch is a lesson and teaches us more. Science can be expensive.
    -[X] Every launch has its risks; we work hard to minimize them, but they cannot be removed entirely. The odds caught up to us.
     
    [X] Every launch is a lesson, even the failures. Not a cent is wasted.

    notgreat said:
    Army has been nice to us so far, we should be nice back. If it wrre the Air Force asking it'd be a very different story.
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    My thoughts exactly.

    And damn, that roll... let's see what I would have gotten.

    ....damn, I'd have been good.
    Strypgia threw 1 10-faced dice. Reason: What might have been Total: 8
    8 8
    Strypgia threw 1 10-faced dice. Reason: What might have been Total: 7
    7 7
     
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    [X] Every launch is a lesson and teaches us more. Science can be expensive.
    -[X] Every launch has its risks; we work hard to minimize them, but they cannot be removed entirely. The odds caught up to us.

    I mean, that's literally what happened, supergood odds followed by superbad odds :V
     
    C10P6: An uncomfortable ultimatum
  • Threadmarks
    • "Mr Whipple, how do you respond to suggestions that the Artemis program was rushed into service ahead of schedule?" A congresswoman asked, looking over her glasses at the man who was feeling very small all of a sudden.

    "Artemis was fully flight ready before she was rolled out to the pad. I wouldn't have possibly risked such a prestigious launch with a design I knew could fail."

    "And yet fail it did. We saw that well enough."

    Brad picture the scene again, the massive fuel explosion and the tiny capsule shooting away from the burning mass to safety. At least the launch escape system had proved itself. Future astronauts could rest easier in that knowledge.

    "Every launch carries risk, Ma'am. We've been incredibly fortunate to have been flying a proven, reliable rocket until now. But EPL had their own failures with Prometheus before it started flying for NASA. It is entirely normal to have a failure such as this."

    "Very well." She looked at her papers, skimming for a new line of attack. "I understand there are two versions of the Artemis rocket, a 'light' version and a 'boosted' version."

    "That's correct."

    "How involved were you in the decision to design for the version with boosters, when options were presented for the variant without?"

    "I sit at the very top, Ma'am. At the end of the day, the final decision rested with me."

    "Do you believe that contributed to the failure?"

    "We haven't finished our investigation yet, but we believe it was vibrations threatening the fuel feed to the main engines that led to the decision to abort the launch."

    "Could the boosters have contributed to that failure?" She asked again.

    "Ma'am-"

    "Answer the question, Mr Whipple."

    "While there is no reason to believe that it was the fault of the boosters, it is certainly possible that they would have contributed to the vibration, yes."

    "Thankyou. Mr Conrad, I believe you had more questions."

    "Yes. Your organisation is dedicated to research, but what are these so-called science satellites doing for defence? How do they protect us?"

    "They do so implicitly, Sir. Every launch is a new discovery and more information. Without that information, we couldn't properly support the military, or the other agencies-"

    "Hmm. Mr Whipple, when the Space Administration was established, it was argued that a military leadership would threaten world peace. Over the last few years, we have seen an explosion of spaceflight from across the more developed nations of this world, some of them under a military command. Do you still believe that it is a threat? And, perhaps more importantly, how do you respond to the assertion that a NASA led by an officer of this great nations armed forces would be more efficient, more capable and more able to complete the mission we have set for it?"

    Choose the congressional decision:
    [ ] Delay manned flight by 1 year. Replace NASA leadership with military officers.
    [ ] Delay manned flight by 1 year. Cannot select Science missions at next objective review.
    [ ] Cannot select Science missions at next objective review. Replace NASA leadership with military officers.

    Please roll 4 x 2d10 for war
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Oh that is bullshit.

    [X] Delay manned flight by 1 year. Cannot select Science missions at next objective review.

    Fuck these short sighted twits.
    Shadows threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Waaagh Total: 7
    5 5 2 2
     
    Ah, Mid-20th Century America, disappointing as usual.

    Still. Space is for science. Even if we have to put the brakes on the science part I do not like the presentation that military NASA puts forward.

    [X] Delay manned flight by 1 year. Cannot select Science missions at next objective review.
     
    [X] Delay manned flight by 1 year. Cannot select Science missions at next objective review.

    I hate the military. No matter the world.
    Jeboboid threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Roll 2 Total: 9
    3 3 6 6
     
    Ugh. Definitely not a fan of swapping to military control, which means we have one option.

    [X] Delay manned flight by 1 year. Cannot select Science missions at next objective review.
     
    [X] Delay manned flight by 1 year. Cannot select Science missions at next objective review.

    Damn them.
     
    [X] Delay manned flight by 1 year. Cannot select Science missions at next objective review.

    Honestly, if I were one of NASA's engineers, I'd probably start quietly trying to convince the others to agree to hand in letters of resignation if NASA transitioned to Military control.

    Of course, if this causes NASA to fall further behind, all we have to do to the press is point at Congress and say "Ask them why they decided to delay (insert area we fell behind in here)".
     
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