Let's play: Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space

[ChaserGrey]

Bell, book, and Commienist Manifesto?

Or turn out all the lights in the shuttle and say "Stas Bush" three tim- AAAARRGHHH!

[Simon_Jester]

Or turn out all the lights in the shuttle and say "Stas Bush" three tim- AAAARRGHHH!

That's not an exorcism.

That's an insorcism.

[OmegaChief]

The Commissar marched up to the slightly battered but serviceable space tankski Avrora, his dress uniform immaculate and slung under one arm a large bulky cassette player with the proud ‘Made in Zenobia’ label on the side along with a rather thick book with a plain red cover.

He hoisted himself inside the craft, settling himself down onto the seat so heroically used by comrade cosmonaut Kerman, placing the cassette player at his feet and hitting the play button. It worked as all great and glorious productions of the motherland did, just fine as long as you applied percussive maintenance every now and then, the small craft soon filling up with the noise of brass bands almost managing to play sufficiently patriotic music.

With himself now in position the Commissar slid the book open, the golden letters of the title, ‘The Big Book of Premier Shroomanski’s Glorious and Patriotic Speeches’ visible at last as several pages were flicked through and with a cough to clear his throat he began.

“The new Zenobian Mang has no need to be held back by the out dated superstitions that…”

Many many hours later the speechifying had come to and end, and if there were any outmoded superstitions still clinging to the glorious space tankski (Which there weren’t and never were, and it was the Commissars job to shoot anyone who said or thought otherwise) they would have breathed a sigh of relief (Which they couldn’t as they didn’t exist).

But it was not over yet, for the Commissar ejected the cassette and rotated it to the other side, oh yes, there was more. To the tune of the Zenobian national anthem, as heroically and patriotically beeped out by the glorious Zenobian satellites the Commissar began reciting the Cominist manifesto.

This was defiantly not the last straw, there definitely were not the screeches of the damned heard echoing around the hanger as what were defiantly not ghosts/spirits/gremlins of any sort desperately fled what was certainly not dull patriotism.

The NKDVDROM did however promptly declare the Avrora sufficiently patriotic for resuming its spaceflight operations.

[Scottish Ninja]

Fuck, if you'd asked I would have said BARIS didn't *have* two errors in its database that didn't kill the whole crew.

The Zenobians are damned lucky the BARIS programmers weren't more sadistic, too - the same failure mode in Liftoff dictates a 50% penalty to the shuttle's safety factor Of course, in Liftoff, you could research all the way back up to where you were before failures...

---

Office of the Underdirector
Teddy Space Center
The Cape

"Stupid goddamn Boing. Filching my engineers to work on their damned supersonic airliner. I've never seen a bigger boondoggle in my life..." U.M. Engineer's head was buried in his hands. "Is there any coffee left?"

Mira didn't say a word as she passed him another steaming mug. "I guess they figure they don't need to stick around with the Hermes in such good shape, especially after proving it with the first moon flight - but Grummang won't be happy to have to do most of the systems integration between their lander and the shuttle themselves. It's going to cost us time, and that's going to cost us money. At this stage they'll probably need until '75 to get it fully operational - which, I should tell you, is practically a miracle. I was the one who drafted a lot of the planning documents for this LOR lander all the way back in '61 - the contractor was supposed to have seven years to develop the damn thing. Grummang's going to do it in half that time... Has it really been twelve years?"

He sat in silence for a few moments before the window burst inwards in a shower of glass and the whole building shook; Engineer jumped to his feet and stuck his head out; a flight of what looked like FU-4s were out to sea and climbing fast. Another crash of noise turned into a draining howl as another four darts blew past at an altitude that must have just skimmed the Administration Building. Then a building thunder rolled through - straight-winged, twin-engined - B-57 STRAYAs in loose formation.

Engines straining; trailing thin black smoke. As the sound of the jets died, U.M. Engineer turned around and saw that his secretary had gone.

"What the hell is going on?" If there was any danger, the sirens outside ought to be going. Shouldn't they? But another blast of sound from a third supersonic flight of fighters suggested that whatever was going on, it wasn't a routine training flight out of MacDillpickle.

Trentson burst into the office then, with that stupid rifle he'd gone so crazy over in his hands. "Sir, please come with me. It may not be safe here."

"I'll say," Engineer said, "Damn trainee pilots breaking all our windows..."

"I'm serious, sir. We should go now."

---

Engineer came up from a tiny shelter in the basement two hours later, after Trentson had led him down there and closed the door on him, against his protests. Stepping back into his office, he saw that his window had been boarded up - again, and just after he'd finally decided to take the boards down. Atwater was sitting with his feet up on Mira's desk, smoking what looked to be his sixth cigarette, if his count of the butts in the ashtray was accurate.

Engineer could have sworn that he'd heard a voice in there before he came in. He mentioned that to Atwater, who said, "Just listening to the radio, boss, waiting for you to come back. Leisurely lunch, was it?"

He started to say "No, it was..." then "...yeah, I guess it took longer than I thought. Any news?"

"Trickson's talking on the Hill about the Chilly issue and the threat to world democracy that their cybernetic commienism is, but no big news on space. The Committee is still talking about our budget for next year - they don't have a firm number yet, but they seem to be impressed by that circumlunar flight and want us to press on. There's still a lot of other factors though, so things might still swing the other way."

"And what's your news from Grummang?"

"Pretty much what you heard over the phone - the integration's going to be a bitch that they'll miss the help of the Boing engineers on. It'll cost us some time, but they don't think it should really delay the program. One nice bit was the Eastern shuttle coming back down from LaGrauiad to Washingtoff National; that Boing 727 is light-years better than the Electra I flew on going up. I won't miss the propellor planes, when they finally go. I wonder, actually, if we could get one of those Convair 990s for use as a passenger transport for us; with all the traveling MASA personnel have to do..."

---

Atwater had left at four, three hours later, and so Engineer had sat in his office staring at the wall, wondering if it was time yet to pull out the scotch. At Scotch Thirty Mira finally returned, finding Engineer staring at the bottle with the last of Atwater's cigarettes trailing from the corner of his mouth.

She put a binder that looked to be about a million pages thick on his desk, walked out, sat at her desk, and promptly fell asleep with her head resting on her arms.

Engineer looked at first page of the enormous binder, and quietly left the office with it, trying not to disturb his secretary. Her ears twitched as he walked past her, but she didn't move; so he carefully closed the door. Trentson was outside, who he sent to gather a few of the top engineers still at MASA, who he trusted most, and to order a truly prodigious quantity of Chinese food.

---

The engineers in the conference room were hours into the technical discussions about the upcoming lunar orbital and the mechanics of submodulated polytonic cross-frequency shortwave radio transmissions when Engineer thought that he had noticed something unusual when he'd left his office.

Maybe he was mixing that up with the suspiciously white guy who had delivered the Chinese food fifteen minutes after the meeting had started.

It was coming up on Scotch Plus Three Thirty and Engineer was stone-cold sober. Something didn't feel right.

Something never felt right. But for the moment, MASA would go on. On to the Moon, eventually. There was enough money now, mostly. Only if nothing went wrong.

Which was quite a lot to hope for. Jeebus. Could they beat the Zenobians? Only by a hair, if t'were to be done at all. And t'were best done quickly. In a few months another of the mighty Saturns would shatter the sky. This time he would make sure to be at the Cape, to see it go up himself...

---

Dr. U.M. Engineer's MASA Plan, Fall 1973

Notes: Damn. This is going to be close - unless one of us has a catastrophic failure.

Budget: 41 MB

Hardware Purchase:

1x Saturn V (18 MB)
1x Kicker-B (6 MB)

Remaining Budget: 17 MB

Research and Development:

5x teams on Eagle (10 MB)

Remaining Budget: 7 MB

Astronaut Management:

None at this time.

Mission Scheduling:

PAD A: Unmanned Docking Test
PAD B: Manned Docking (Orbit) EVA Duration D - Prime Crew IV / Backup Crew I
PAD C: Lunar Probe Flyby

Mission Go/No-Go Status:

PAD A: Lunar Orbital is GO!

---

Unnamed MASA Engineer had a bad dream; he asked Mira the next morning, "Are our shuttles vulnerable to possession by space ghosts?"

"No," she said, "They're well warded against anything like that," she said, with the most perfect straight face that Engineer had ever seen.

He burst out laughing, and after a moment his secretary broke into a grin as well. Somehow he was feeling all right today; he didn't even want a drink yet, and it was already eleven in the morning. He wondered how good times were, over in Zenobia. Somehow, they didn't feel like enemies sometimes...

[FaxModem1]

Engineer looked at first page of the enormous binder, and quietly left the office with it, trying not to disturb his secretary. Her ears twitched as he walked past her, but she didn't move; so he carefully closed the door. Trentson was outside, who he sent to gather a few of the top engineers still at MASA, who he trusted most, and to order a truly prodigious quantity of Chinese food.

---

The engineers in the conference room were hours into the technical discussions about the upcoming lunar orbital and the mechanics of submodulated polytonic cross-frequency shortwave radio transmissions when Engineer thought that he had noticed something unusual when he'd left his office.

Maybe he was mixing that up with the suspiciously white guy who had delivered the Chinese food fifteen minutes after the meeting had started.

It was coming up on Scotch Plus Three Thirty and Engineer was stone-cold sober. Something didn't feel right.

Something never felt right. But for the moment, MASA would go on. On to the Moon, eventually. There was enough money now, mostly. Only if nothing went wrong.

Spoiler

Good to see that WHITE CHINESE DELIVERY GUY's family is there.

[Simon_Jester]

I'll need to do some serious contemplation and planning, still. Just to check:

-I have the Duration D milestone, correct?
-PeZook, can you give me a figure for next year's estimated budget?

[ChaserGrey]

What's the duration for a Manned Lunar Orbital? If it's D, no need to do another "D" mission next turn, unless we want insurance. We can just do a manned orbital docking (orbital).

[Simon_Jester]

I think I have Duration D, and will never need to fly a Duration D orbital again. That's why I checked- I've already got credit for the milestone, as I recall.

I don't think I need to do any more docking tests; unlike the Murcans, I was able to max out my docking reliability using a swarm of cheap docking tests with the two-man capsule.

It's a pity I couldn't use a Zond capsule to get credit for Duration E, I could do with the prestige, but no dice.

[Scottish Ninja]

What's the duration for a Manned Lunar Orbital? If it's D, no need to do another "D" mission next turn, unless we want insurance. We can just do a manned orbital docking (orbital).

Doesn't really matter to me; I've never seen a duration failure have any serious consequences, so it's almost just for flavor - it's more time to do SCIENCE! No sense in not doing as much as we can in every mission, especially when it's not a big deal.

[PeZook]

Yes, Zenobians have the duration D milestone cleared. A lunar orbital would do that anyways

And the budget office says the projected Zenobian budget for next year is 85 megabucks, though as I wrote before this may not take your latest prestige gains into account.

EDIT: Also, that exorcism was hilarious

[ChaserGrey]

Yeah, I was talking about the Murcans, actually, who I think do still need to knock off Duration D. Granted, it doesn't make a big difference, but I suppose I err on the side of "do the minimum needed, and then get the hell back on Earth before something horrible can happen".

[Simon_Jester]

If I still had Zond, I'd do Duration E, that's it for Zenobian duration flights.

As it is, all I need are LEM tests, a lunar orbital, and a landing.

[OmegaChief]

I think we might be best off combing out next Lunar Orbital attempt until we have a spaceworthy Lander, then we can nab both the things for that.

I think that is, I've nowhere near as good at curnching the percentages as the Comrade Chief designer.

[Simon_Jester]

My problem is that I haven't sat down and crunched those numbers, not properly (hint, this will involve a good deal of arithmetic if I do it my usual way). So I'm kind of... hung in place.

[fnord]

Someone rang?

As hilarious as it would be, bringing Digaditch back as senior CAPCOM ... wouldn't go too well since once he starts talking he DOESN'T SHUT THE HELL UP. Maybe bring back Nikov, who is a little less excitable than Comrade Kerman?

Simon, you want my usual range-of analysis for mission odds?

[Simon_Jester]

Sure, let's have Nikov as CAPCOM. You're on, comrade.

PM me your analysis, though I fully intend to do my own over the weekend.

[fnord]

First two steps analysed and in your inbox, Comrade Chief Blamesponge Designer.

[Scottish Ninja]

Office of the Underdirector
MASA Administration
The Cape

Today was a quiet day, a welcome gap in between interminable meetings on revisions to the Saturn V and the Heavy Servicing Module. What that really meant was that Unnamed MASA Engineer got to do something else mind-numbing, but at least he got to do it in his office, by himself, with a bottle at hand.

They wanted what!?

He was looking at the work of the young engineers doing today what he was doing ten years ago - developing concepts for future programs, throwing them against a wall, and seeing what stuck. Now Engineer was the wall. Lunar bases, Martian landings, unmanned probes to the outer planets, manned probes to the outer planets, space stations of all varieties. Some stuck more than others. Nuclear thermal rockets, ion rockets, solar sails - what he’d gotten through today so far had been everything going everywhere with every kind of propulsion under, around, above, and behind the sun. Reverse thermo-magnetic reactionless transmatter phase induction? What the hell did that even mean?

He shook his head and muttered. Some of these ideas weren’t even that bad, they were just - a manned flyby of Venus? Using a spent S-IVB as extra habitable space; maybe it could work, but it’d take a lot of work to make good.

He put the proposal aside in the “not completely batshit insane” pile, and picked up the next one, a plan for a Hermes successor - crew of seven, large payload bay...

Engineer choked. They wanted how much cross-range capability?

He looked at the specs again. Engines rated for what? Heavy solid rocket boosters - adding an extra segment onto the boosters being developed for the Saturn V - was that even feasible? Whoever wrote this thought so...

He saw another note. This had gotten pushed in Congress? Oh Jeebus, he knew that whoever had run with the LOR lander idea had gone over someone’s head, but making it a political issue before coming to him was something else.

How had they managed to sell it to politicians, anyway? This... thing... would have to end up being ridiculously expensive, with all the capabilities they wanted to build into it - five hundred dollars a pound to LEO!?

Engineer put the proposal down and leaned back in his chair. To be fair, he had known the engineers who had come up with the Orion battleship...

Ugh. He needed a break. So did his secretary, by the looks of things - she was asleep at her desk again, though she managed to be alert whenever anyone came in, or when the phone rang.

The tumbler came up in one hand; he reached over with the other for the radio. Maybe something good would be playing, help him relax a bit. He had enough to worry about with the upcoming lunar orbital flight...

One finger pressed down on the switch.

Ground Control to Major Tom
Your circuit's dead,
there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Major Tom?
Can you -

kzzzzzt

wooo hooo witchy woman, see how
high she flies
woo hoo witchy woman she got
the moon in her eye

Three seconds later the radio was off and Engineer was hunched over the new shuttle proposal, staring at it very very hard.

[Simon_Jester]

Awk. I let this one slide again. Other stuff on mind, usually wanting to do mindless things during the intervals when I'm not otherwise busy. Blah.

Well, comrades, tentatively I think we should look into scrubbing the Lunar Orbital and go for an Apollolapotksi 9/10/11 progression. Cost issues may force us to do it with joint launches, too. I would love to develop N-1 and there are strong arguments for it, but looking at the numbers I dunno. I'll think this over and try to get the next Plan Pavylyvych going soon, but I'd appreciate input.

[OmegaChief]

My personal opinion is to go with the N-1, the moon landing with the fewest dicerolls is the one with the fewest chances for catastrphic error after all, for that reason if no other, we should use the N-1

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is paying a net 70 MB or so to get the N-1 up to anywhere near the reliability that makes it safer than launching a pair of boosted Protons- plus testing. Proton is already at max reliability, you see.

For the three-launch program, the mission costs look like:

N-1
70 MB (R&D- estimate; could actually be noticeably more than this)
10 MB (Apollolapotski 9 launch, earth orbit lunar lander test, 93% reliability)
38 MB (Apollolapotski 10 launch, lunar orbit lunar lander test, boosters required, 98%*94% = 91% reliability)
38 MB (Apollolapotski 11 launch, lunar landing, boosters required, 98%*95% = 92% reliability)

Total: 156 MB

A-Series and Proton
24 MB (Apollolapotski 9 launch, earth orbit lunar lander test, 98%*98%*98%*98% = 92% reliability)
48 MB (Apollolapotski 10 launch, lunar orbit lunar lander test, boosters required, 98%*98%*98%*98% = 92% reliability)
48 MB (Apollolapotski 11 launch, lunar landing, boosters required, 98%*98%*98%*98% = 92% reliability)

Total: 120 MB

You see the problem- N-1 launches are cheaper and at least roughly as safe, but only if I shell out 70+ MB ahead of time to pump them up to max R&D first. The cost of the extra 70 MB of research really hits you hard, although to be fair there's not a lot else on our budgetary plate, aside from getting the LM to max R&D, which should only cost about 10 to 16 MB more over the next two to three seasons. I'm nervous about where those extra 36 MB are going to come from, though...

We have the funds. We could do it. The safety difference is marginal, and it's actually incrementally less safe on all launches unless we use the N-1 for the first Duet test in earth orbit, which will mean not being able to do that launch until Spring 1975, which puts us on a really tight schedule.

It is more glourious, though, I will admit. I do not know...

[Comrade Kerman plummets screaming through Cosmodrome on experimental jet-propelled roller skates going "I WANNA RIDE THE N-1! I WANNA RIDE THE N-1!"]

[OmegaChief]

Hmmm, it's a tight one then, ultimatly it depends on how our budget pans out, I really want to say go with the N1, I really really do.

We could try going with it for Apolloski 9 at least? If our budget dries up then we have the Proton and A Series as a back up plan, a lot more risky perhaps, but on the upside we get giant missiles rockets to fling Comrade kerman into orbit, compete with KSP numbers of engines.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is that if we make the N-1 reliable enough that it's not just an expensive flying bomb, we have to sink most of the costs into it anyway. Having a backup doesn't save money; indeed we get the worst of both worlds- expensive N-1 development, and expensive launches that use a pair of boosted Protons.

I do not want to launch Apollolapotski 9 on a very unreliable rocket. I'd rather just use a pair of boosted Semyorkas for the job than that.

A rocket failure is actually less disastrous than a shuttle failure, because if you have both rockets you can always do joint... well, OK, we can, the Murcans can't because they can't send Hermes/Kicker to the moon without using a Saturn V. But even one manned failure this late in the game would be a tremendous setback for the program, so I'll do a lot to avoid having one.

Gah.

[OmegaChief]

You do make a convincing case sigh as much as I'd like to go with the N-1 I just don't think we can afford it with the way things have gone, ah well, we can always develop it for future moon missions that will totally happen after landing on the moon ebcause we'd never just do it a few times and not go back or anything!

Plus with the joint launches we get to have things be unnecesserly complex and silly, in true Soviet Zenobian style!

So yes, make the Apollotski happen with Protons and A Series Comrade Designer.

[LaCroix]

Think of the many hungry mouths of Zenobian child workers worker's children that need to be fed. Joint launches are the way of the onion!