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

[FaxModem1]

Drago Ivanov is escorted by his two guards to the party. He walks into the ballroom, and wonders how hard it would be to cut the chandelier cords and have it fall on the Director's head.

[Simon_Jester]

Syrgy Pavylyvych greets Drago Ivanov.

Privately, Syrgy remembers his own experience of being imprisoned and forced to do aerospace engineering work at gunpoint, and is thus not entirely unsympathetic to Drago's situation. That said, he strongly disapproves of Drago's decision to defect.

Also, having more political savvy than the average turnip, Syrgy maintains a cold, distant facade.

However, while he is not particularly warm to the recaptured defector, he makes a point of acknowledging Drago's work on the retro-rockets, which has been quite helpful in getting Vostok ready for orbital missions. It is a pity that just as Vostok becomes ready, the poor abused Semyorka becomes unready.

[FaxModem1]

Drago gives a cold stare to Syrgy.

"I'm so happy to be of service." Drago says without a drop of enthusiasm or emotion.

[Simon_Jester]

Syrgy shrugs and moves on. There is nothing he can do about Drago's situation; if he could speak freely perhaps, but that is not reality.

[PeZook]

Doom, you of course can defect. I am not going to save scum for a catastrophe, though. It's impossible anyway, the game seems to have rolled all the random events in advance.

[Narkis]

Yeah, I started the game quite a few times, and I remember the events always being the same, no matter how many saves I scummed.

[FaxModem1]

Drago wanders the party, his escort always close behind. Then he spots the one thing that all Zenobians love, an open bar. He hands bottles of vodka to each guard, and grabs a glass of water in his. They quickly start taking shots.

It takes five bottles each, but the guards eventually start dancing with the wives of certain political officers, leaving Drago free to run for the fence, and with that, freedom.

[PeZook]

Even if he gets over the (thoroughly patrolled) fence, he'll find himself in the middle of a Boratstani steppe.

Not very good odds

[FaxModem1]

Drago heads to a certain fencepost, hoping that its still the way it was six months ago. Luckily, it is, and the vodka and packages of cigarettes he's been leaving in the Lab bathroom have paid off, and there are papers, uniforms and keys. After a quick change, he calmly walks to the nearest village.

[Simon_Jester]

The nearest village is the base dependent housing facilities. He should probably not go there.

The nearest other village is probably many many kilometers away across the open steppe.

Gonna be tricky, tovarisch.

[Simon_Jester]

Baikonurek Cosmodrome, Boratstan
December 1960

Comrade Shroomanski, Premier of the Zenobian Onion, had flown down specially to Baikonurek for a short visit, to partake in the celebratory speechifying and parading in honor of the glourious cosmonautical and bureau-technocraticoid achievements of the Zenobian space program. After giving one of his famous not-so-Seekrit Speeches, Shroomanski settled down to have a discussion over tea, cigars, and corn, on the future of the program with the Interim Chief Designer, Comrade Syrgy Pavylyvych Kyrylyv.


"Comrade Shroomanski, our options are myriad. We have now, on the drawing board a vast legion of rockets, capsule concepts, and even schemes for landing on the moon!"

Shroomanski scratched his head. "The moon?"

"The moon!"

"Why the moon?"

"It is inevitable. The progress of technology, social advances away from unnecessary blind batrachian belligerent buttheadedness and towards peaceable agreement and cooperation on great projects for the advancement of science and civilization, it will happen, Your Excellency. And there are only two possibilities as to who will do it first, with the fall of Thanasia and the struggles of Stenchia and Angliannica to maintain their unjust colonial oppression over our browner comrade-nations such as Shroomalia."

The premier nodded to himself, and sipped from his glass. "Us, or the Murcan capitalists..."

"Da. So it is a choice, whether we will be first to explore a new, virgin celestial body, or..."

"Sloppy seconds. Da! I see; we must press on or become a laughingstock. But what of your complex schemes?"

"As I said, Your Excellency, there are many possibilities. The simplest and perhaps most glorious, but also most technically challenging, would be to build a very large capsule- something seven or eight times the weight of the little Vostoks- and a very, VERY large rocket. Then, we put the enormous capsule on the enormous rocket, and hurl it to the moon! The capsule is large enough to contain copious fuels and instrumentations, including a four-cosmonaut crew, and there are no fancy orbital rendevous steps to go wrong like in other plans. The men leave the earth, the men land on the moon, the men leave the moon, the men land on the earth."

"I like it."

"As do we all. We call it direct ascent. The problem is that while it is easy to explain, it is hard to do. During the War, even the maddest Thanafanafofantasians never conceived such an enormous rocket in their wildest wet dreams. Design and development costs will be immense; the project must consume the entirety of the space exploration budget for years, and any serious setback in testing and operation could be a disaster."

"Hmmms. I see. What of your other plans?"

"These can be achieved with smaller rockets and are thus less demanding, which is of course all to the good. Broadly speaking, our choices depend on whether we want to construct a huge moon rocket, or merely a moderately large orbital rocket. With a huge moon rocket, we can simply pile together all the hardware we need in one go and hurl it to the moon."

"How then is this different from the... direct ascent?"

"In that instead of hurling one enormous capsule at the moon, we will use multiple components that must rendevous in space. This is more challenging, but it can be done- if we build the rocket."

"Must this rocket also be as large as the direct ascent rocket?"

"Nyet. It will, however, be most splendiferous and large by any normal standards, standing roughly a hundred meters tall, and equipped with as many as thirty engines to get it aloft. We're planning to call it the N1... ah, Your Excellency, are you all right?"

"Da! Da! I was just... distracted. Mmm... heavenly body..."

"... Ah, shall I continue, or do you wish me to explain at another time?"

"Nyet, nyet, go on."

"Alternatively, we can proceed with a simpler, more ruggedizable rocket design which is already entering the concept stage- though the hardware is not yet firmed up. We call it... the Proton."

"What's the catch?"

"A Proton cannot possibly carry enough hardware to put a crew on the moon."

"Wretch! Did you not just tell me you could do it!"

"Two Protons, however, can."

"So you... tie the Protons together?"

"We have investigated this possibility. Unfortunately, Comrade Landau and his students assure us that Proton-Proton fusion is decades in the future. Instead, we will simply launch the Protons separately, each carrying roughly half the burden. Then, we assemble the hardware either in orbit around the Earth, or around the moon. When the combination is placed together in safe comradeship in lunar orbit, we transfer personnel to a specialized lander. This, too, is complicated- quite a few steps to go wrong, but it places minimal budgetary demands on the rocket-science side of the project. Rocket production, though, may prove expensive- two rockets per mission, and there will need to be a number of missions prior to the final landing on the moon."

---

"Hmms. I see. So, one HUEG rocket for direct ascent, one merely very large rocket for the combinatorialized version, or two less large ones, likewise combinatorialized... what other concerns do we have? What capsule do you envision for flight to the moon?"

"For direct ascent, we need a massive, four-man capsule that contains copious fuels, as explained earlier. Developing such a capsule would prove expensive, and as with the super-rocket, any failure could catastrophically set back the program since we would have no backup plans. This four-man capsule would not be useful for any other purpose, as well."

"Alternatives?"

"The most favored proposal is the Soyuz, a next-generation capsule that is still on the drawing boards. It would seat three, contain integral boosters capable of reaching lunar orbit without additional rockets, and be comfortable...ish."

"Comfortable-ish?"

"A brave man who did not mind smelling very bad could live in one for as much as two weeks."

"I see. What else?"

"Some radical engineers wish to design a... call it a spaceplane, a reusable vehicle which could reenter the earth's atmosphere without being irretrievably burninated, and thus used over and over on multiple missions. The projected long-ranging version would seat three like the Soyuz, but would need special boosters to reach the moon, unlike the Soyuz."

"A reusable- this is going to be expensive, da?"

"Da! Personally, I would be just as happy to wait on development of reusable shuttlecraft until the next decade- advances in metallurgical and computronic scientifics are needed. But it is at least conceivable that we could do it in this decade, at great cost. It would certainly be a remarkable achievement of Zenobian engineering if we did."

"I don't know... what about the capsule I am hearing about, the two-mang one with which we will do all manner of impressive stuntitude?"

"With boosters, this capsule could reach the moon, and... I suppose we could build a one-man lunar lander to go with it. It's at least possible. But... it would be an inglourious and improvised solution; I would much prefer to go forward with Soyuz if possible."

"A point. However, I have other concerns about the two-mang capsule. What if the Murcans build this before us? I am worried!"

"Da, we must do this before the Murcans."

"It is more than a matter of prestige! If the Murcans send up two meng at once, who knows what they will get up to? They will pollute the cosmos with their degeneracy and decadent ways! NAY! We must send our UPSTANDING NEW ZENOBIAN MANG up into space in this capsule first! Also, we must send WOMEN into space, to further reduce the risk! Get on it!"

"...Ah, if we can find women candidates for space flight, I'll see what I can do. This may prove difficult, of course-"

"Da, da, it is not urgent. Not unless the Murcans threaten to totally overwhelm space with their oiled musculatures and hot dogs and Coca-Cola and whatnot."

"But we will push ahead on the two-mang capsule regardless, and on other things such as the walking of space. You have been most generous in funding our researches, Your Excellency."

"The program has done amazing things for Zenobian prestige. Even in far Shroomalia, our Killyshnikov-wielding brown-comrades can tune in on their crystalloid radiophones and behold the glories of our beeping, and take heart in the might of commienism!"

---

Practical upshot:

-Concrete Zenobian plans for the short term future include the development of the two-man Voskhod space capsule, EVA suits, and in the nearish future the Proton medium-lift rocket.

Broad options for a moon program include:

1) Direct Ascent
This involves building a superheavy booster (larger than a Saturn V), and a superheavy four-man capsule, and simply sending the capsule to land. Instead of the complex three-module system used by Apollo, we have one module... but it is large, very expensive, will take a long time to develop, and setbacks in either the superheavy rocket (Vulkan) or the superheavy capsule (Qvartet) could devastate our program.

2) Historical Lunar Landing
This is, basically, the same method used by the Apollo astronauts, only with red flags and funny-looking hardware. We use a two or three-man capsule, an attached lunar lander, and whatever extra 'kicker' rockets may be needed to get the hardware to the moon. For most (all?) possible configurations of hardware available to us, doing it this way would require us to develop the N-1 rocket, a Saturn V equivalent.

3) Earth/Lunar Orbit Rendevous
This allows us to launch the various components of the lunar landing system (the manned capsule, the lunar lander, and assorted docking and 'kicker' modules as needed) on multiple rockets, then link the components up in orbit around the Earth or around the moon. It is somewhat more complicated, but we can do it without developing the N-1. On the other hand, the extra investment in Proton boosters required to do each joint mission, scaled over the cost of the equivalent of multiple Apollo missions (say, Apollo 8, 10, and 11), is significant. Also, using two launches means double the risk of one of the rockets exploding and ruining the whole mission, which is not to be sneezed at.
____________

In addition, we must consider advanced capsules- what are we flying to the moon?

1) If we want to go direct ascent the choice is simple: Qvartet is the only thing that can land on the moon with enough fuel to take off again without a dedicated lunar module. This option is cool, but expensive and has a lot of drawbacks- on the other hand, it is technically simpler.

2) The three-man Soyuz is a good option (historically, most of the Soviet moon plans used it). One advantage of using Soyuz is that Soyuz capsules come with an integral booster capable of getting them to lunar orbit on their own power. For our other options (below), we'd need to launch a specialized kicker rocket along with the manned vehicle.

We can either use Soyuz more or less the way the Americans would use Apollo, or we can develop a specialized kicker rocket which would allow a Soyuz capsule to land directly on the moon and take off again.

Doing this latter method would commit us to a joint launch; not even an N-1 can carry both the Soyuz and the specialized Kicker-C stage we'd need for this job. The counterbalancing advantage, though, is that we develop Kicker-C instead of a lunar module, which simplifies our testing requirements somewhat in the final stages of the program.

The Soyuz is probably our most practical bet, but not our only one.

3) Yet another option is the "Lapot" minishuttle- this would be functionally equivalent to a Soyuz capsule, and allows most of the same mission profiles. However, the minishuttle is reusable, and can reenter the atmosphere repeatedly. We save money on capsules and gain a huge bonus for coolness, but the development costs of the minishuttle are very high. Lapot can also be researched to a slightly higher max R&D than Soyuz, giving us a marginally lower risk of catastrophic capsule failures during the first few tests of the three-man vehicle.

The minishuttle would require a kicker to reach lunar orbit, and of course would require us to develop a lunar module, just like a normal Soyuz landing would.

This method is very cool, and I have a soft spot for advancing shuttle technology because of my role in SCRAMming up, but it is probably not the most efficient method.

4) We can, in principle, send Voskhod (a modified version, I'd think) to the moon. This will, again, require a kicker. We would also have to develop a more expensive one man lunar lander, since we need one guy to stay with the Voskhod command module while the other guy goes down to the moon. This will be lonelier on the lunar surface.

In my opinion this is a lame and inglorious way to win the race, and I hope neither side picks it.

[OmegaChief]

Spoiler

Well as the Comissar IC isn't one to tell you designers how to do your jobs (Only to make sure you are sufficantly motivated and patrotic in doing them and insuring Zenobian dominance) I'll weigh in on which programs I think we should go for.

My votes would be for either Direct Ascent (For the sheer hlarity of having a bigger rocket then the Muricans, image how inadiquite they will feel! The Rocket envy as they see the might firm Zenobian rocket dwarfs theres!)

Or for the Spaceplan (For coolness factor)

[Simon_Jester]

Out of character, I would like to see input from many of the Zenobians before committing to anything- we'll be developing Proton, Voskhod, and EVA suits and so on anyway, but within a year or two we need to start thinking about where the program is going up through the late '60s.

I am unsure- torn between the cool options and the relatively boring but effective Soyuz options. I dislike the Voskhod option, for I find it lame.

So, Comrade Shroomanski, comrade cosmonauts, what do you think?

[as characters the cosmonauts' input is limited, but as players your opinion counts for a good deal, just like everyone else's]

[Shroom Man 777]

The Premier suggests they take the Apolloski approach.

[Simon_Jester]

By this, I presume you mean the Soyuz capsule.

Do you think this would go best with the powerful N-1, a la the historical method? Or with an orbit rendevous double-Proton option, possibly including the intriguing Soyuz/Kicker-C option?

[FaxModem1]

Once Drago reaches the village on the base, he knocks at a certain address. There is much shouting inside as people seem to be waking up. Inside is a man with a glorious mustache, who looks at Drago and nods, bringing him inside.

"Da, we will smuggle you with the trucks carrying the corn. Aside from the Premier, no one else eats the stuff."

[Shroom Man 777]

With one Saturn-type missile (N-1). Just like the real Apollo.

Da.

[PeZook]

[as characters the cosmonauts' input is limited, but as players your opinion counts for a good deal, just like everyone else's]

Actually the cosmonauts would have significant input, especially the new Hero of the Zenobian Onion, Faaaabio Elenin

[PeZook]

MURCA
THE WHITE DWELLING

"You fucking idiot! You bastard son of a lamp-post whore! Do you know your incompetence and lilly-livered dillydawdling has cost me my Presidency?! You always were a bastard Thanasian mongreloid!"

The (former) President Ironhowler was yelling into his Red Phone. It was still weeks away from that socialist Catholic bastard, Dave F. Teddy, being sworn in, so Ironhowler would use it to the fullest. First, he had to destroy the man who's actions were the reason for it all, that bastard Johnny von Braun.

"I want your traitorous hunchbacked Thanasoid ass on the Hill asap! You're gonna publically explain how the fucking Zenobians managed to get the jump on us not once, but twice! You're gonna pay for ruining my shot at becoming President for life, you Aryan pig fucker!"

[PeZook]

Only Pravda!

The Faaaabulous Faaaabio!

Accomplished test pilot. Hero Of Socialist Labor. Son of a hard-working Proletarian family. And now the newest Hero Of The Zenobian Onion, and the first man to ever fly into space!

Faaaaabio Elenin will surley not have any trouble with the ladies. Tall, muscular and with the sort of boyish charm that women adore, the brave Zenobian cosmonaut will enjoy the attentions and adoration of the entire world.

Himself, Faaaabio is very modest about his accomplishments, preferring to credit the work of technical specialists and the Chief Designer, Syrgy Pavyllych, for his success.



"I was only a small cog in a very big machine. The fact I was the one to risk my life is immaterial - many other brave patriots toiled day and night to ensure my safe and succesful flight. They have earned their honors much more than me."

The socialist Zenobian premier, General Secretary Stanislav Shroomanski, has invited the cosmonaut to a special dinner at the Kremlin. Faaaabio will then undertake a tour of the Zenobian Onion, speaking at worker's rallies, schools and universities about his experience.

[fnord]

Either the Soyuz direct-landing option or the minishuttle (for the coolness/manliness factor).

[FaxModem1]

Fax Modem reviews his plans with the MBI, hoping to rescue Drago before he launches in a Mercury rocket. Otherwise, he might not ever see Drago again due to what's left of him being able to fit inside a thimble. But he does his sacred Murcan duty, and trains as hard as he can for the launch.



In a truck somewhere, Drago is surrounded by stalks of corn and is driven to the nearest seaport.

[Simon_Jester]

...I thought cosmonauts were selected for relative shortness. I mean, not midgets, but Gagarin for instance was 157 cm tall- five foot two...

[PeZook]

Dude, it's Pravda. They probably didn't even interview the guy.

[PeZook]

MBI Headquarters
Washingtoff, Murca

"Hey Joe!", the Senior Analyst for Zenobia, Joe Pescadrillo, turned around upon feeling his butt slapped cheerfully by the Director, "What is it? I'm in the middle of something!"

"I have here a plan or proposal if you will from our brave astronaut mangs. Could you review it really quick and tell me what you think?"

Joe took the piece of paper hesistantly, positioning himself to avoid any more sexual advances from the Director. He read the proposal quickly...then read it again...and again...

"This is a joke, right? A prank on the new guy?"

"No, it's serious. Seriously! Totally serious!"

"Oh come on!", Joe threw up his hands in frustration, "I know astronauts are tough and proud Murcan mangs, but COME ON!"

"Just tell me what you think!"

"I just did. This is a joke and will get them killed."

"But...but..."

"No butts! These good ol' boys want to go into the middle of the Zenobian Onion, without training, without even knowing the language or customs, then break into oh just one of their most secure installations to break out...who, a guy we've already interrogated? This is madness!"

"NO! THIS IS MURCA!"

Joe thought for a minute, "Nope, still madness"

"I'm still going through with it"

"You'll get them killed!"

"They'll manage! They're MANLY MURCAN MEN!"

"Well, you can't do it without the President's approval, and I'm so gonna tell"

"Snitch!'

"Idiot!"

"Rat!"

"Fatso!"

The Director was all hot and heay by now, "Oh come 'ere!"



Joe smiled after all was said an done, "...I'm still telling."

"ARGH! And I gave you so much!", the director said and stormed off, crying.