Rocket Design Agency - A Playtesting Quest

Cast and Characters
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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Submarine tech or surface resources. Their little solid fueled things don't do much to convince me they can be useful for rocketry.

On submarine tech, life support and power are the obvious relevant subsystems, but a lot of the constraints that are being opperated under are quite different due to a sub having gravity and water avaliable and not being as mass constrained. The life support in a full navy sub is presumably more sophisticated than that in a tiny research submersible, but we do technically already have sub tech to build on here. Of course, the elephant in the room is nuclear power. Nuclear subs are already a thing if this matches our timeline, and their reactors are almost certainly the smallest practical reactors anyone has built at this point. This would be a big ask since it would be for help on a major development project rather than something we could apply directly, but there is a lot we could eventually do with nuclear power in space if political considerations don't prevent it. This wouldn't be unprecedented, either. There were twenty something fision powered satellites, all but one of them soviet.

On surface resources, I think throwing more ships at the problem is a bad approach. Better to use a similar, or even smaller, amount of resources more intelligently. I still quite like my seaplane idea as a way to get on the scene faster in case of an off target landing, which will be an ocasional fact of life with uncontrolled reentry, not ti mention if there was an abort. Unless someone has a reason why not ti go that route? This would be in combination with ships, as a way to get on scene faster while outside of helicopter range, rather thab replacing them all together. I think it could be made cheaper and more effective than the current approach.

Honestly, I think we should redesign the capsule for ground landings. the soviets did it for decades without a problem.

They also had a giant flat expanse of nothing to land in, which we do not, at least not on the same scale. And they had some nasty close calls and incidents.
 
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[X] Missile tech - Help developing a new rocket, a heavy launcher.
[X] One of each Astrocaphe phase flight.
We need to experiment with a bigger launcher if we are indeed actually going somewhere
 
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Submarine tech or surface resources. Their little solid fueled things don't do much to convince me they can be useful for rocketry.

On submarine tech, life support and power are the obvious relevant subsystems, but a lot of the constraints that are being opperated under are quite different due to a sub having gravity and water avaliable and not being as mass constrained. The life support in a full navy sub is presumably more sophisticated than that in a tiny research submersible, but we do technically already have sub tech to build on here. Of course, the elephant in the room is nuclear power. Nuclear subs are already a thing if this matches our timeline, and their reactors are almost certainly the smallest practical reactors anyone has built at this point. This would be a big ask since it would be for help on a major development project rather than something we could apply directly, but there is a lot we could eventually do with nuclear power in space if political considerations don't prevent it. This wouldn't be unprecedented, either. There were twenty something fision powered satellites, all but one of them soviet.

On surface resources, I think throwing more ships at the problem is a bad approach. Better to use a similar, or even smaller, amount of resources more intelligently. I still quite like my seaplane idea as a way to get on the scene faster in case of an off target landing, which will be an ocasional fact of life with uncontrolled reentry, not ti mention if there was an abort. Unless someone has a reason why not ti go that route? This would be in combination with ships, as a way to get on scene faster while outside of helicopter range, rather thab replacing them all together. I think it could be made cheaper and more effective than the current approach.



They also had a giant flat expanse of nothing to land in, which we do not, at least not on the same scale. And they had some nasty close calls and incidents.

p sure the midwest is big
 
[X] Submarine tech - Help developing the first base camps for orbit.
[X] One of each Astrocaphe phase flight.
 
[X] Submarine tech - Help developing the first base camps for orbit.
[X] Nothing. You give them enough.


Giving the navy two of our six currently planned flights is not okay, and is an ask out of proportion with the expected reward. Especially when they currently want something from us, and we're already helping them out in other ways, and they failed to recover Chuck.
 
[X] Submarine tech - Help developing the first base camps for orbit.
[X] One of each Astrocaphe phase flight.

 
Giving the navy two of our six currently planned flights is not okay, and is an ask out of proportion with the expected reward. Especially when they currently want something from us, and we're already helping them out in other ways, and they failed to recover Chuck.
Sorry for not being clear. These are additional flights.
 
[X] Submarine tech - Help developing the first base camps for orbit.
[X] One of each Astrocaphe phase flight.
 
[X] Submarine tech - Help developing the first base camps for orbit.
[X] Nothing. You give them enough.


Going with this, unless the vote system here is known to work with just voting for someone's name, at which point I'm just going to vote for brmj's plan.
 
I finally found a way to optimize interplanetary trajectories that can handle gravity assists, works for what we are doing and has a learning curve shallower than Dwarf Fortress. Still not the simplest thing ever, but not bad if you read the documentation. I can confirm it works on linux with wine.

https://www.orbithangar.com/download.php?ID=5418
 
I finally found a way to optimize interplanetary trajectories that can handle gravity assists, works for what we are doing and has a learning curve shallower than Dwarf Fortress. Still not the simplest thing ever, but not bad if you read the documentation. I can confirm it works on linux with wine.

https://www.orbithangar.com/download.php?ID=5418
One thing I might suggest, find either a different hosting site, or one that allows you to manually say "yes, I would like to download this" - my anti-virus freaked out at the site, although I don't suspect that you would have put malware in the thing you linked.
 
One thing I might suggest, find either a different hosting site, or one that allows you to manually say "yes, I would like to download this" - my anti-virus freaked out at the site, although I don't suspect that you would have put malware in the thing you linked.
I'm linking it, but I'm not the one who uploaded it. That's the download link from where I found it. Here's the original context:

Trajectory Optimization Tool v2.1

You'll have to install the matlab compiler runtime included with it first, unless you already have one. After that it should just run.
 
[X] Submarine tech - Help developing the first base camps for orbit.
[X] One of each Astrocaphe phase flight.
 
[X] Submarine tech - Help developing the first base camps for orbit.
[X] One of each Astrocaphe phase flight.
 
C12P2: What the base camps will be
With a sudden boost in the number of Astrocaphe flights to plan and a new team of Navy boys and girls appearing around the Cape, the months gap in the frenetic flight pace was almost welcomed by the NASA. With the first Hermes tanks appearing around the launch centre and the pad - one of the less damaged ones - undergoing reconstruction work to modify it for the new rocket there was a solid four weeks where not a lot could be done.

So instead, they got to work on designing for the future. Ever since day one, part of NASA's mission had been to work towards the Alleghanian dream of the 'Space Camp', a long term crewed platform in orbit around the earth. Now, finally, with Astrocaphe plans being finalised and functional, the last failure notwithstanding, they could start looking at it properly.

But there was an awful lot of decisions to make between now and the first one being launched. It would be several years at least. But surely that was just enough time to put together a solid plan?

What mass will you design for?
[ ] 5 tons - 20 Mass
[ ] 10 tons - 40 Mass
[ ] 20 tons - 80 Mass

What Endurance will you design for?
[ ] 2 weeks
[ ] 3 weeks
[ ] 4 weeks

This is just phase 1. What is phase 2?
[ ] A long stay camp
[ ] A lunar station
[ ] A refuelling dock
 
[X] 10 tons - 40 Mass

[X] 4 weeks

[X] A refuelling dock

4 weeks, and 10 tons lets us get the most out of every launch. And half the trouble of putting up ships in orbit is hauling the weight up there. So a refueling station will help with all of that.
 
[X] 10 tons - 40 Mass

I can do a 4-week station for a single astroscaphe crew in this with plenty of room to spare. For two crews, it gets tighter but is still doable, especially if we get better life support between then and now.

[X] 4 weeks
Since we can do it, why plan for less?

[ ] A tollbooth in highly elliptical near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon.
The obvious next step in manned space exploration. All who venture beyond LEO must stop and pay the delta-v toll! :V

More seriously, I am thinking long stay sort of by default. A propellant depot isn't very useful without a way to produce or launch propellant cheaply, lunar ISRU is a pipedream right now, and if we had a way to launch fuel cheaply, we could either launch it inside of the thing that needed it or refuel that directly without a propellant depot in between. A lunar orbital station isn't good for much of anything short of supporting the construction of a permanent surface base and serving as a propellant depot once you have some ISRU going on. For just about anything else, LEO is just as good or the station is kind of superfluous when unmanned spacecraft and however astronauts would be getting to it are both alternatives. A lunar surface base is a whole other thing, but it seems a bit premature at this stage.

[X] A long stay camp

Edit: @4WheelSword for resupplying a station with life support consumables, RCS fuel or whatever else, is there a mass discount relative to launching the entire system from scratch? Assuming there is, what is it and how does this work?
 
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Here's a really wild idea for a phase 2: put it in a Uphoff-Crouch cycler orbit.

Unlike a LLO station, or for that matter the tollbooth, this is actually useful for landings. It means that all the equipment needed for the flight to and from the moon only needs to be launched once, that the lunar module ascent stage can be designed for re-usability, and that all you need to send up for each new landing is a lunar module descent stage, replacement fuel and consumables, and some astroscaphe derivative or similar to bring the crew to the station. Of course, the big downside is that the lunar module has to support the crew for two weeks, and they are going to die if they need to go home early or they miss their window. Which could maybe be mitigated by keeping some kind of lifeboat in LLO, perhaps an astroscaphe derivative that can be docked to the reusable tug that would otherwise bring the lunar module back to the cycler.

Kind of cool, but on the whole not actually that useful unless the moon plans were already going to be pretty long term. The moon isn't far enough away for this to give useful savings if all you want to do is go to the moon and back and are fine with not staying so long.
 
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Rocketbucket: Tankbucket - Giat-20 Tank Destroyer

A revolutionary design, the GIAT-20 not only carried a long 90mm high velocity gun, but it did so in an armoured casemate behind the engine. The survivability of this vehicle was almost unparalleled in the 1950's, able to withstand punishment equivalent to a much heavier tank.
However, they suffered from inadequate suspension for the rough terrain of Cathay and would sometimes be set upon at close range by infantry where they could do little but die.
 
C12P3 - Many Crews in Orbit
The decision making was essentially unanimous and, fortunately, you were essentially able to cut the Navy out of the process. They might be on site to bring their expertise to the actual design process, but it would be a cold day in hell before any of the NASA lot let the Armed Forces finally manage to push their way into the program just by offering a little help. Even if it was the navy who so far had been pretty quiet, all told.

But yeah, there was a plan coming together. A ten ton base camp to be placed in orbit with a scheduled mission time of four weeks, to develop all those little things you'd need for phase two - a long stay camp that would support other missions. Maybe even the sort of base that would last for years, given the right hardware set-up and the ability to resupply it.

Of course, that raised other questions. How many space men would it be set up for, what other systems would it have?

Well. Those would be have to decided upon before you could put together a proper design brief for the Navy team. And then there was the question of what was going to lift it into space.

How many will it be designed for?
[ ] 2 - a single phase 2 Astrocaphe crew at a time.
[ ] 4 - a pair of crews can visit it.

What of the rocket, a 10 ton lifter?
[ ] Design internally, risking another Artemis
[ ] Request Tenders from trusted companies.
[ ] Release an open request for tenders.

Please roll 5 x 1d10 for the war
 
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