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

[PeZook]

That will come in handy during those duration flight achievements.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Spring 1959:
-Begin project: Mercury
-assign 5 research teams
--cost: 25MB
-Continue project: Atlas
-Assign 2 research teams
--Cost: 4MB

Fall 1959:
-Continue project: Mercury
-assign 5 research teams
--cost: 5MB
-Continue project: Atlas
-Assign 5 research teams
--Cost: 10MB

This plan is approved. I am also scheduling two Explorer/Atlas launches for Spring 1959. Mercury/Atlas launches can wait until Spring 1960, when the astronauts are done training. Better to come in second place than try for first and lose a Murcan doing so!

[fnord]

Is it too late to volunteer for advanced capsule training, Comrade Director Evilstein?

[PeZook]

If the Murcan plan is finalized, then I will proceed with implementing it, however I will need astronaut names and mission types (unmanned/manned and suborbital/orbital) for Mercury I & II that you want to schedule for Spring 1960.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Can I see an update on capsule safety factor and astronaut skills please?

[PeZook]

Can I see an update on capsule safety factor and astronaut skills please?

You'll get it routinely. I take it you want to hold off the mission planning until you get the status update for fall 1959, correct?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Correct. As I said, better to come second than lose expensive equipment and astronauts by rushing.

[doom3607]

I'm going with Syrgy Pavylyvych's recomendations as to the two primary pilots of the Vostoks we'll be launching according to my plan...

Initiate the Vostok program and go to full research on it. Kill all Sputnik research, they're fine. Go to full on Series A and get a couple of astronauts (the Ivans) ready to go for an ASAP manned non-orbital. As soon as that's done, they get full orbital.

When's ASAP? And the secondary crews will be the Ivans. I want one of the dead, ASAP.

[fnord]

Comrades Nikov and Karzanovski, those who are about to detonate ROCK, we salute you...

[PeZook]

When's ASAP? And the secondary crews will be the Ivans. I want one of the dead, ASAP.

ASAP is Fall 1959, provided you yank the crews from training.

[doom3607]

Umm... if training gives uniform bonuses, I want the incompetent idiots going up first. The Ivans as primaries, and the two worst others as seconds. Yank them.

[Karza]

Comrades Nikov and Karzanovski, those who are about to detonate ROCK, we salute you...

What do you mean sitting in a tin can on top of a pile of explosives might not be entirely safe? I mean, we even had a notorious former fascist approve the plans. At gunpoint.

[Eternal_Freedom]

All right you brave Murcan Astronauts! Your training will be complete soon. We are considering a pair of Mercury launches in Spring 1960, pending capsule safety tests.

These missions will be dangerous, possibly fatal. I am not going to send anyone who does not volunteer. I need 4 astronauts, 2 prime and 2 backup. I would request that those astronuts skilled in docking operations not volunteer as prime crew as we will need you for later missions.

Volunteers men?

[fnord]

Comrades Nikov and Karzanovski, those who are about to detonate ROCK, we salute you...

What do you mean sitting in a tin can on top of a pile of explosives might not be entirely safe? I mean, we even had a notorious former fascist approve the plans. At gunpoint.

In other words, we're going to the top, propelled by fart steam.

[doom3607]

So yeah. We'll have two normal launches in the fall of Vostoks on A Series, with the Ivans as primaries and the two most incompetent people as secondaries, and we'll have another two normal launches in the spring of '60, with the two most competent cosmonauts, who just finished training in time for that, flying them. And the two next-best as seconds. Or will I be shot for getting the Ivans killed before I get my chance in the spring of '60?

All these flights are not aiming for orbit- that's next.

EDIT: With full research on Vostoks and A Series until I say stop.

[PeZook]

The Central Comittee has a high tolerance for casualties as long as there are results.

Your cosmonauts, though...well, they're mostly military pilots and may have access to firearms.

EDIT: Also I can't get that Sputnik song out of my head. Thanks a lot, Simon

[doom3607]

Well, by launch time we should be able to make orbit with basically all of them, it's just the capsule that will be an issue. But by the third or fourth launch we should have it.

Also, didn't I have two Sputnik launches lined up for the current spring?

[PeZook]

Meine herren,

I wish to congratulate herr von Evilstein on his success. While I have my suspicion as to the nature of the "perfectly prepared, single rocket launch" mentioned in the your press release, the details do not matter.

Since I would imagine the rivalry between you will only flourish now, I wish to advise you on another matter related to mission planning. It is allowed, though inglorious and shameful about as much as a failed unmanned mission, to downgrade a flight in its complexity, should you feel that despite your considerable Aryan technical aptitude you will be unable to ensure success.

I hope this information is helpful and you will show the superiority of Aryan technical thought to the apes you are attempting to civilize.

Always faithful,
Hans von Smallhausen

EDIT: yes, Zenobia has two Sputnik launches planned, as I clearly marked in the last status update

[Simon_Jester]

Comrade Syrgy Pavylyvych awaits the Sputnik launches with great tiredness.

That will come in handy during those duration flight achievements.

Da. For being stuck in a small metal sphere in microgravity for two weeks, there's nothing quite like high endurance... [dispassionately reviews medical test results from cosmonaut corps].

I'm going with Syrgy Pavylyvych's recomendations as to the two primary pilots of the Vostoks we'll be launching according to my plan...

Initiate the Vostok program and go to full research on it. Kill all Sputnik research, they're fine. Go to full on Series A and get a couple of astronauts (the Ivans) ready to go for an ASAP manned non-orbital. As soon as that's done, they get full orbital.

When's ASAP? And the secondary crews will be the Ivans. I want one of the dead, ASAP.

Umm... if training gives uniform bonuses, I want the incompetent idiots going up first. The Ivans as primaries, and the two worst others as seconds. Yank them.

[Syrgy Pavylyvych looks up from his desk, haggard and weary from months of twelve hour workdays]

While I object on general principles to Herr Doktor von Evilstein's characterization of our brave comrade-cosmonauts as "incompetent idiots" given the stringent testing they were all subjected to...

I must ask Herr Doktor if he's been reviewing the numbers from the training program. If he wishes "incompetent idiots going up first" because he "wants one of them dead," he would be well advised not to send up our best pilots with their capsule ratings of 4.

If the goal is to put skilled pilots in the capsules to maximize the chances of success, the best choices for cosmonauts on the suborbital Vostok-1 and Vostok-2 launches are Nikov, Karzanovski, Ivanov, and Titov. In descending order of quality.

If the goal is to put less skilled pilots in the capsules as passengers and trust to the law of averages to get launches off quickly (and I have grave misgivings about this, which I occasionally express and am sure to put down in writing for Herr Doktor)...

I still maintain that comrade Ivanovitch has demonstrated specialist skills which make him valuable, as much so as a high-skilled capsule pilot. Under that rubric, the logical choices would be Faaabio, Dostarovaski, Titov, and then one of the three Capsule 4 pilots: Nikov, Karzanovski or Ivanov.

Ivanovich is too average as a pilot to go into a capsule because of superior skill, but has too much potential as a mission specialist to be squandered as an expendable piece of rocket fodder as Herr Doktor von Evilstein appears to advocate.

[Akhlut]

Comrade Ivanovich thinks Comrade Evilstein is just pissy because I happened to bomb a few civilians during the Great Salvation War. Maybe if they were a bit more superior, they wouldn't have needed those hospitals anyway.

[doom3607]

Very well then. Send up the least competent people first, with the next-worst as seconds, then for the next round of launches use the most competent people, with the next-best as seconds. I'll let you work it out, you seem more a people person. Let my superior Aryan mind me do the work with the machines, and you get their crews ready, ja?

[OmegaChief]

As Political Officer I feel compelled to remind Comrade von Evilstien that while I have no objection to sacrificing glorious patroatic cosmonauts for the patrotic glory of the motherland, to waste such fine pilots just because you can is well... wasteful.

To keep us ahead of the capitalist pigdogs I advise that we do everything in our power to succeed, this means not rushing cosmonauts out of training.

[fnord]

Right, Karzanovski, time for you and me to get trashed on the farewell vodka.

After all, we peasant-origin Zenobians are known for our sunny, unfailing optimism.

[PeZook]

Isn't it cute how unique are the problems of the Zenobian space flight program?

"Who to kill first?" is not quite the decision that von Braun will have to make

[Eternal_Freedom]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'd rather get to space second than get there over the bodies of my astronauts.

Not for any compassionate motive of course. It's just I know I'd have to go to the funerals and make speeches, and I find funerals/memorials so very depressing.

EDIT: Sorry, that should read "Over the battered and flame-grilled remnants of my astronauts."