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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
    • [X] A balanced version, with less focus given to every launch or the geopolitics (medium)

    I maybe just want a little bit less detailed if things have to be different.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Summer 1960. The conflict, the staredown, between New Alleghany and Dysklande came to an end peacefully but tensions had turned their relationship into nothing more than diplomatic nods during important meetings of state. Trade deals were cancelled, flights between the two were delayed and eventually airports just stopped flying to those destinations.
    Meanwhile, the Alleghanians at the Cape were looking at a bright moment - the first flight of the BRMJ rocket with a test package of the space camp going up with it. The real design was coming together at the same time. Ten tons, four weeks endurance, with space for four aboard. A grand future which was, nonetheless, just a first step.

    Please submit designs for a base camp following the above requirements.

    When will the space camp first fly?
    [ ] Push hard, 1962.
    [ ] Take it slow, 1966.
    [ ] A good pace, 1964.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • 4WheelSword said:
    Summer 1960. The conflict, the staredown, between New Alleghany and Dysklande came to an end peacefully but tensions had turned their relationship into nothing more than diplomatic nods during important meetings of state. Trade deals were cancelled, flights between the two were delayed and eventually airports just stopped flying to those destinations.
    Meanwhile, the Alleghanians at the Cape were looking at a bright moment - the first flight of the BRMJ rocket with a test package of the space camp going up with it. The real design was coming together at the same time. Ten tons, four weeks endurance, with space for four aboard. A grand future which was, nonetheless, just a first step.

    Please submit designs for a base camp following the above requirements.

    When will the space camp first fly?
    [ ] Push hard, 1962.
    [ ] Take it slow, 1966.
    [ ] A good pace, 1964.
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...
    @4WheelSword, what if any new technologies do we have for this? the next tier of life support at least, right?

    Before those of us inclined towards design get started, would anyone like to talk over what capabilities we would like it to have, and what additional things to prioritize?

    A few things to note:

    Our current spacecraft design, in its current form, does not have a docking port. We would presumably have to invent one. This means that if we don't prepare a new spacecraft to go with it, our upcoming station absolutely needs an airlock and some way to at least securely tie down the astroscaphes while EVAing or something else of the sort.

    Watch the space/stress thresholds. They are important. With docking, it should also be possible to cheat a little by including the volume of the other spacecraft.

    Lab spaces are a good thing in a reusable space station, but right now we seem to be treating this as more like one of those disposable Soviet stations. In that case, permanent experiments and living space is a more cost effective approach.

    The basic pressure hull and major systems we design here stand a chance of being something we could build off of in the future, perhaps for modules in a modular station. It might be wise to consider this when thinking about basic layout, even if it isn't a huge consideration.
     
    If it's still valid:
    [X] A continued deep dive into alternate history, geopolitics and characters with many, many launches (Slow)

    [X] Push hard, 1962.

    Fortune (hopefully) favors the bold.
     
    I'm not going to say this is easy, technically, but in the end it's about as easy as you can make a space station worthy of the name beyond just shortening the lifespan or reducing the crew. Which is still damn hard, because space is hard, but a lot of issues it might run into matter a little less when it will be thrown away after a month. Two years to go from the drawing board to flight is really ambitious, but maybe not completely out of scope for the early space program? For reference, Gemini was started in 1961, an unmanned test launch was done in 1964, and the first manned launches happened in 1965. The Salyut stations went from inception to first launch in only 16 months, but they made use of the hull design from the Almaz stations (in development since 1964 or so) and subsystems from the Soyuz, integrated together to make a quick and dirty space station. We have no existing hull and our existing subsystems are not up to the challenge of this duration at a reasonable cost and mass.

    Of course, if we want to go with the rushed schedule, maybe we can find an existing hull we can use as a starting point. The obvious candidates are skylab-style dry workshops derived from the Hermes second stage or the third stage of my rocket. There are probably a few systems that can be astroscaphe derived (communications, the interface for the experiments, perhaps the RCS after a great deal of work) but power and life support can not. Life support needs to be all new. Power probably does too, since the only design with solar panels we've built is a tiny probe.

    This could be the makings of a pretty neat design, but is there that much of a rush? This might be a thing to not half-ass since no one has done it before, especially if we plan on trying to figure out docking.

    Thoughts?
     
    Apologies for the double post, but I figured there's enough new to have earned a new alert.

    The zero stress threshold for 4 crew for 4 weeks is 40 m^3 internal volume. Based on an overall density for rp-1/lox os 1031 kg/m^3, the tanks in my rocket's third stage have about 24.25 m^3 of space. So, one of them would get pretty cramped, but doubling it up could work, and would be 10 mass of tank, which is equal to a block of living space at the breakpoint and a bit better than it ought to be at its actual volume, close enough that the difference could be accounted for with the stuff that has to be added to make it livable. Therefore, I think that stations derived from empty stages (at least with that fuel and structural tanks) can be modeled just fine with the existing payload rules.

    As for the practicalities in this case, I don't entirely love them. The payload comes out really long and skinny if you stack them the obvious way, and somehow putting them side to side has a ton of problems of its own. Long and skinny may be fine since by the point it is just down to the last stage, it is well and truly in space.
     
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