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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)
     
    Last edited:
  • Informational
    • [X] Peoples minds are filled with stories of moon bases and science!

    Rolling for ignition.

    E: fucking Christ
    Shadows threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: Ignition Total: 4
    1 1 3 3
    Shadows threw 8 10-faced dice. Reason: Spoiler - disregard Total: 42
    2 2 2 2 2 2 6 6 9 9 8 8 9 9 4 4
     
    Well, at least my rolls can't possibly be worse than my last set

    Also,
    [X] Peoples minds are filled with stories of moon bases and science!
    notgreat threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: 2d10 Total: 10
    6 6 4 4
     
    [X] Peoples minds are filled with stories of moon bases and science!

    Exactly what I wished we did.

    And... I have no idea how you roll dice.
     
    Wow. Are people going to wonder if the Artemis is just cursed or something when you attach the solid rocket boosters?
     
    [X] Peoples minds are filled with stories of moon bases and science!

    Ash19256 said:
    Wow. Are people going to wonder if the Artemis is just cursed or something when you attach the solid rocket boosters?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    This shouldn't need the boosted version, actually. Nothing but the really ambitious stuff using the second stage as a separate impactor did. People should probably be questioning the whole Artemis rocket program right now, not just the boosters.
     
    Yeah, we need to go ahead and move away from corrosive fuels to get more reliability just to reduce the chances of this. even an extra +1 helps
     
    It would help I guess, but probably isn't really the issue here. I don't think we've got numbers on our stability at launch, but it's probably poor since we stretched the stages as far as the TWR would allow. We also don't seem to have done as well on design rolls as we did on the Prometheus. Did we even do design rolls, for that matter? I don't think I remember them.

    In any case, we should be looking at how to fix this thing so it stops blowing up.
     
    We didn't do design rolls. I've been using the core stats as a short cut to make the quest more easily playable.
     
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    C11P5: 1960
  • Threadmarks
    • A failure to launch is, in the modern day of the 21st century, a slang phrase that is utilised to mean many things. A young person not yet managing to move from their parents house. A project that never quite makes it into fruition. But few consider that the phrase first became part of popular parlance thanks to the 1950's, NASA, and the Artemis program. Not only did it display a marked inability to get off the ground, but it did so so violently that the main headline across several major papers in New Alleghany was 'A Failure To Launch' as 1959 came to a close.

    Artemis-Lunar did not make it to the moon. Artemis-Lunar did not make it to orbit. Artemis-Lunar did not even make it off of the ground. A split second after the spark was lit beneath the towering rocket, the flame travelled up into the main tank and turned the entire structure into a bomb which shook the blockhouse several miles away. When the smoke cleared, the pad was a ruin and the largest piece of debris remaining was smaller than a man. The mission was, to say the least, a failure.

    Great Game Progress -
    NASA - Orbital Bio-science
    ESA - Lunar-Flyby
    Caspia - Lunar Flyby
    Akitsukini - Suborbital Bio-science

    An Albian magazine released an article as 1959 ticked away that proposed the future according to the people of the world (though especially those of Albian itself). In it, stories abounded of a future where the four 'Great Players' (as the article called them) had raced for the moon - and had made it. It was the Great Game, the first to the moon and the first to claim it for their own.

    The article claimed that one day there would be multinational bases on the lunar surface. Only time would tell if that were the case, as the so called 'Great Players' took their first steps. By the first month of 1960, all had made it to space - two monkeys in space, two probes around the moon. But what would be the next step in that great journey? And who would be first?

    What will you work on in Q1 1960?
    [ ] Work on the Artemis - A 50% success rate is not good enough but it can surely be made more reliable.
    [ ] Begin development of a new rocket, a larger rocket that can at least lift Astrocaphe Phase 2.
    [ ] Space Camp Development Program - Still a major design goal, even if the people want the moon.
    [ ] Write in.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Work on the Artemis - A 50% success rate is not good enough but it can surely be made more reliable.

    Gotta learn how to reliably put shit in orbit.

    Getting off the ground is a great start.
     
    Going once...
    Shadows threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: ??? Roll Total: 3
    1 1 2 2
     
    Looks like putting an Artemis S2 on a Prometheus S1 would have 10km/s delta-v with a 3.5 mass payload. If that combination can be put together without too much difficulty, it might be a good launch vehicle to complement the bigger ones we are going to want soon. The question then becomes whether the Artemis S1 is so fundamentally broken that this is easier than fixing it.

    [X] Work on the Artemis - A 50% success rate is not good enough but it can surely be made more reliable.

    Anyway, rolling.
    brmj threw 2 10-faced dice. Total: 14
    10 10 4 4
     
    Last edited:
    [X] Work on the Artemis - A 50% success rate is not good enough but it can surely be made more reliable.

    Rolling
    DannyboyZero threw 2 10-faced dice. Reason: ? Total: 6
    3 3 3 3
     
    [X] Work on the Artemis - A 50% success rate is not good enough but it can surely be made more reliable.


    This. Very freaking much this. We need Artemis to be much more reliable, even if we can't necessarily do anything about the corrosive fuel at this stage.
     
    [X] Work on the Artemis - A 50% success rate is not good enough but it can surely be made more reliable.
     
    We can work with the lift of the Artemis, but we can't work with losing half our launches.

    [X] Work on the Artemis - A 50% success rate is not good enough but it can surely be made more reliable.
     
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