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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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    C10P9: Second Phase
  • Threadmarks
    • Pre-flight was filled with problems, from blocked pumps to bad weather to a misconnected clamp that meant the entire rocket had to be re-sited hours after it had first been rolled into place on its launch stand. But eventually she was ready for launch and, as the sky began to clear, the motors were lit.

    The second ever Artemis swayed on its pad as the rocket engines strained to come up to full power and, as the clamps released, it seemed to hang for the longest moment on its own thrust. But then it began to ascend, straining against the fullness of the atmosphere. It would make it to orbit. Surely it would.

    Artemis-Discovery Phase 2

    Max-Q - 2d10+3
    Staging Event - 2d10
    Orbital Insertion - 2d10+3
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Ch11P1: The War expands
  • Threadmarks
    • The vibration that had been so deadly to the boosted Artemis was entirely missing from the flight of the Light variant as it passed through the flights maximum dynamic pressure phase, and a few of the less focused team members shared dark looks at the realisation that those same boosters may have been the cause of the sudden and rapid disassembly of the first flight.

    Everyone held their breath as the first stage ran dry and the three Dougal engines stopped firing. Explosive bolts blew the centre pins in two and the huge first stage dropped elegantly away from the much smaller second. Then the second stage rocket motor started burning.

    Artemis-Discovery One made orbit not long after and, after the first orbit, control was handed off to the Army.

    "Doesn't look quite perfect." Said the voice at Army Station Florence, one only identified as Major Winters, "But hey, after your monkey fiasco, we didn't entirely think our baby would make it up there at all. Thanks. Florence out."

    It was safe to say the team burned with indignation.

    With the first solid flight of the Artemis, it was safe to say the future was within reach. But the future was uncertain. There was a war on after all.

    What role will New Alleghany take in the ongoing Cathayan conflict?
    [ ] Impartial Isolationists - New Alleghany has no interest.
    [ ] Neutral observers - We should ensure the war is conducted with care and civility.
    [ ] We stand for freedom! - New Alleghany will pressure the Europan forces to depart or threaten active involvement.
    [ ] We stand with the West! - New Alleghany will send aid, support - even military forces to help end the war.

    Roll 4d10 for the war.
     
  • Threadmarks
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    Torn between Freedom and Observers.

    Rolling.
    Shadows threw 4 10-faced dice. Reason: War Total: 20
    3 3 5 5 4 4 8 8
     
    [X] We stand for freedom! - New Alleghany will pressure the Europan forces to depart or threaten active involvement.
     
    C11P2: Going to the moon
  • Threadmarks
    • War Progress - Slight advantage Cathay
    New Alleghany deploys observers to Cathay in cautious move towards involvement!
    August 1959 saw the first NA developments overseas. A large group of observers, mostly made up of officers from the Navy, Air Force and Army, deployed to the region with a small security detachment. Their stated objective was to observe the conflict and to ensure that Europan forces were conducting the war with the proper civility. Protests were lodged at the Dyskelande, Akitsukini and Caspian embassies about the deployment as it was claimed that it would threaten stability in the region if the developing nation became involved in 'the business of Empires'.
    The later months of 1959 also saw the first cities recaptured by Cathayan insurgents. Declaring themselves independent from both Cathay proper and Europan controls, these 'Free Cities' were the location of grim massacre and brutal oppression in the opening days of local control.
    At the same time, Akitsukini forces in the region continued to expand, and the first confirmed shoot-downs of aircraft by missile were achieved. In terms of technological progress, the Cathay conflict was a proving ground for many of the last decades developments.

    Meanwhile, NASA was busy placing another satellite into high orbit. One of the last planned scientific launches, the Prometheus launcher and payload both functioned perfectly.

    But there was still planning to do for the soon to be flown lunar mission. Could NASA catch up with the Caspians? Only time would tell.

    What sort of flight is this?
    [ ] Lunar Flyby
    [ ] Lunar Orbiter
    [ ] Lunar Impactor
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Lunar Orbiter


    I really hope we can avoid getting dragged into this mess. I should have voted for no involvement whatsoever; I foolishly allowed myself to take the vote that won at face value rather than what it would actually mean filtered through American style foreign policy. At this rate, how long before those observers turn into a force of tens of thousands of "advisers", and there's a clear and pressing need to support whoever is more useful from a maximally cynical geopolitical perspective? For legitimate humanitarian reasons, obviously. How dare you suggest otherwise?
     
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    Re: impactor:

    It's not entirely clear to me that we have access to the kinds of instruments we'd need to learn anything really interesting from this, beyond just how big a cloud of debris it makes, what it's albedo is, and just maybe what the spot left behind looks like if it can be imaged from the ground. That said, maybe, just maybe, we can have our cake and eat it too. Have the upper stage do the TLI on a trajectory that would result in an impact, disconnect an orbiter, have it make a small correction, and then have it observe the impact up close and do the orbital injection itself. It looks like it may be just barely possible with a really small orbiter.

    I really wish I had a convenient way of calculating delta-v for stuff beyond the absolute basics, but it looks like this is a thing we can do. I can fit a super minimal orbiter with good scientific equipment and 900m/s delta-v in .95 mass plus just short of .25 in fairing discarded at staging. An Artemis upper stage launched from the boosted version should have in excess of 12000m/s with that size payload, though I can't tell you by how much since my spreadsheet doesn't know how to handle the boosters. High lunar orbit takes 12,600 (though maybe we can do better if we don't care how elliptical it is?), and the orbiter section of a proposed orbiter + impacter mission needed 700m/s to end up in orbit, giving us a ballpark for what it takes to arrange for an impact. It's pretty tight, but it looks like the numbers work out.
     
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    Fair enough. Changing my vote via post editing. Regarding what our orbiter should be set up for, it depends on how much delta-V is needed to circularize at the moon. If it's small enough, it might be worth it to just stick a thruster pack under a Hope series scientific payload and give it YPR control plus forward translation capability.
     
    Ash19256 said:
    Fair enough. Changing my vote via post editing. Regarding what our orbiter should be set up for, it depends on how much delta-V is needed to circularize at the moon. If it's small enough, it might be worth it to just stick a thruster pack under a Hope series scientific payload and give it YPR control plus forward translation capability.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    That comment was semi-joking, though with a large element of truth to it. If you want to vote flyby, by all means do so.

    That said, payload. I think this deserves to be something new. It will need a more serious engines then a thruster pack to circularize, adding YPR isn't trivial, different instruments might be optimal for this (and we can maybe fit more of them), and if we're doing an orbiter, solar power starts to make a lot of sense so it can stick around and produce better data. If we were to derive this from something else, an astrocaphe service module with all the superfluous stuff ripped out is arguably even a better starting point, since it already comes with YPR.

    Here's what my working design for the impactor-orbiter combo mission would look like:

    Orbiter engine

    A generic very small, very simple, pressure fed hypergolic engine with good fuel and a vacuum nozzle. Not technically challenging, and perhaps derivable from something that exists, like the sustainer engine on a surface to air missile. Some of those were liquid fueled, especially early on. This engine is actually oversized if anything; even a 0.01 cycle mass version is good enough for this

    Aerozine/N2O4 fuel
    Pressure fed cycle
    Duel impingement injector
    Vacuum nozzle
    .05 cycle mass

    Vacuum ISP: 353.97
    Thrust: 5.85 kN
    Mass flow: 0.0075
    Mass: 0.08
    Cost: 0.096

    Minimal orbiter

    Fairly solid scientific payload, and should be able to put itself in lunar orbit if something else supplies TLI. A nice, capable lunar probe in under 1 mass that doesn't call for anything groundbreaking.

    Distributed design
    1x orbiter engine
    .292 mass fuel
    .0146 mass structural tank
    5x basic experiment
    1x complex experiment
    1.5 power solar panels
    basic antenna
    YPR
    spin stabilization

    Delta-v: 900.832
    Mass: .9327
    Cost: 8.972

    Explosive bolt separator (left on S2)
    .035 mass
    .0175 cost

    Fairing (discarded during launch)
    .244 mass
    .121 cost

    A pure orbiter would have a larger tank and could have plenty of room for even more science and/or whatever extras we care to give it.

    Edit: If we want to go really far out there, we could send something on a free return trajectory, give it a spy satellite style camera and recover the film. That would be much better images than we could expect to transmit at this stage. Unfortunately, I don't think I can find enough delta-v to have the second stage impact the moon, then put a probe with a reentry capsule on a free return trajectory. Which is rally a shame, because that could bet us better data about the impact, and maybe even a sample of moon dust if the pass was sufficiently low and well timed.

    Adding the camera and reentry capsule more or less doubles the mass of the probe if we treat it the same as one on a spy satellite. Apollo 11's TLI to a free return trajectory was 3185.5 m/s, though lower energy ones are presumably possible. As a ballpark, it isn't going to be more than getting into orbit since it lacks the orbital insertion burn.
     
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