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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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    C12P4 - War goes hot
  • Threadmarks
    • War Progress - Advantage Europan Coalition - Caspian Rumours
    Tensions amongst the Coalition partners rise as the war drags on, but Dyskelande diplomacy wins out over Gallian concerns about the future of the Cathayan conflict. While progress stalls along the front, the linking up of several armoured divisions allows for a more aggressive posture to be planned for in the coming weeks, and the Europan forces expect the war to be over by Christmas.
    Reports of fighter pilots and tank crews speaking caspian being sighted along the front have grown massively in the past month, and intelligence agencies suspect regular forces are now being deployed alongside Cathayan militias. New Alleghany has requested peace and sent envoys to promote calm choices to Caspian embassies. Caspians have responded by throwing out the New Alleghanian Diplomatic corps.
    New Alleghany has a choice to make.

    What will New Alleghany do?
    [ ] Begin supporting second faction of Cathayan Warlords against Caspians (high chance of failure)
    [ ] Commit forces to the coalition (high chance of Europan success)
    [ ] Commit independant forces, as Akitsukini has (Medium chance of Europan success).
    [ ] Attempt to bring about the end of the war through diplomatic means (high chance of failure).
    [ ] Attempt to bring about the end of the war through threat of conventional intervention. (???)
    [ ] Attempt to bring about the end of the war through threat of atomic deployment (???)

    Please Submit a rocket design with a payload of at least 40 mass.
    If you would like to submit a design, but don't know where to start, please feel free to ask for help.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Commit forces to the coalition (high chance of Europan success)

    We tried asking diplomatically. Now the Caspians will learn why you should listen to diplomacy first.
     
    [X] Attempt to bring about the end of the war through diplomatic means (high chance of failure).

    If we succeed, the war ends. If we fail, we avoid getting dragged into it. I call that as close to a win-win as you can get when you are talking about a war.
     
    Why do people want the Europans to win? Aren't they the aggressors here? I could be misremembering, but this sounded like straight-forward imperialism with few mitigating factors, as I recall. Which I guess fits with siding with them, if your goal is to faithfully roleplay totally-not-America, but I don't find very appealing personally.

    Fuck. Even from a purely cynical perspective, we are playing NASA. If we get bogged down in this war, we will be fighting with the military for our budget. Can we please not?
     
    [X] Attempt to bring about the end of the war through diplomatic means (high chance of failure).
     
    4WheelSword said:
    @brmj do youhave a 40 mass rocket design?
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Not an acceptable one right this instant, but I can pretty quickly. I've got something with a hydrogen upper stage, but I don't think we can do that yet. I'd need to adapt it or throw something together from scratch.

    Am I allowed to use new engines, or do they have to be existing? Have there been any useful tech advancements since we last established what was available?
     
    Questions for the thread: any strong objections to aerozine for a first stage? does anyone have any priorities in particular for this?

    Questions for @4WheelSword: if I go three stage, is that an extra staging event roll, or is there more to it than that? Also, is early refurbishability available, and would we see the full cost savings or some percentage of it?

    Edit: any thoughts on how a wet workshop station works in game? Not because of any serious near-term intention on my part, but because it is the sort of thing that will sometimes be in the back of my mind when looking at second or third stages.
     
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    brmj said:
    Edit: any thoughts on how a wet workshop station works in game? Not because of any serious near-term intention on my part, but because it is the sort of thing that will sometimes be in the back of my mind when looking at second or third stages.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    Honestly, my opinion on Wet Workshop is that it's neat if you want to optimize mass usage for a LEO station or something like that, but it's not really much of a mass savings unless you don't plan to do much with that space - you still need to bring up all the life support fittings, furniture, etc., so it only saves on structural mass for the habitat.

    As for how it would work, you'd probably need to make the upper stage tank "Wet Workshop Ready" by spending some extra mass and cost, to represent the internal fittings to mount things onto and such, and would also need to bring up everything that you planned to put into it, possibly being able to save some volume by packing it in such a way that you can't use it while stowed, but it takes up less space.
     
    Just a quick update. I thought I had a couple good candidate launchers last night, but then I went and compared them to real ones of similar capacity and was not impressed. Going to take another look at it tonight and see if I can figure out what's wrong.
     
    C12P5 - Hot as the sun
  • Threadmarks
    • Attempt Diplomacy
    Threaten Atomics

    The New Alleghanians took things a step further in the Summer of 1960, deciding that the colonial war in Cathay had gone on long enough. Diplomatic corps across the world, but especially in Dyskelande and Caspia, were tasked with finding a peaceful solution to the conflict. At the same time, observers and advisors embedded amongst the Cathayan forces began a campaign designed to bring about the end of things.
    This, ultimately, was a disastrous failure. Cathayan warlords decided that the Alleghanians were asking for peace because the Europans were on the ropes and the Caspians considered much the same. Meanwhile coalition forces protested what was seen as Alleghanian interference and redoubled commitments to the Cathayan region.
    New Alleghanian rocket forces in Curonam, just south of Cathaym were stood too and their atomic-armed missiles were emplaced on their prepared launch sites. Diplomats informed allies and enemies alike that they were prepared to launch against front line targets if the war was not brought to an end through peaceful means.
    The Caspian and Dyskelande embassies retreated. Messages were sent that rockets were being fuelled in response. All around the world, missiles were readied, atomic weapons primed, and now it was just a matter of who would blink first.
    As a not yet famous NA news reporter put it, "The clock sits at two minutes to midnight. Will we survive to see the dawn."

    Roll 3 x 2d10 for Caspia, Dyskelande, New Alleghany (each should be rolled by a different person).

    At the Cape, everyone was nervous, but that didn't mean that work could stop. An open request for rockets had gone out, and they'd certainly brought back some interesting first drafts.
    O'Connel was threatening another Solid rocket first stage of massive proportions. Mccall had a lifter that could manage ten tons, just, with fuels that would rot a man's flesh off in seconds. One firm was promising fourteen tons, but they were an unknown and essentially new to the world of rocket design. And BRMJ, whoever they were, hadn't even submitted a design, just a recommendation that they should be chosen.

    Choose Three options to request designs from:
    [ ] O'Connel SRB
    [ ] Mccall Corrosive
    [ ] Unkown 14 ton
    [ ] BRMJ's design
    [ ] Write in your own suggestion
     
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