Baikonurek Cosmodrome
Office of the Chief Designer
May 2, 1969
The General Secretary is displeased...
Syrgy Pavylyvych held the earpiece telephone a short distance from his head. "Da, Your Excellency, I know about the Murcan shuttle, our radars are tracking it. Da, you are right, it is no hoax. Da, da, I know, it is terrible... What? You demand an inspection tour? I will make arrangements at once, Your Excellency!"
Syrgy knew his office was bugged, much as a fish knows that there is water somewhere nearby. And by nature he was not a demonstrative man, or a particularly healthy and lively man. Therefore, he did not leap from his seat and begin cavorting with relief and glee.
Spacecraft Prototyping Facility
Two Days Later
"Syrgy! The Murcans are
still up there! They threaten to break our duration record, staying up LONGER than your paleocapsules! This is an outrage!
Why is our shuttle not ready?" Not satisfied with his usual habits, the General Secretary reached out and shoved a passing engineerski, tripping him. Shroomanski then took off
his shoe and started banging it on a convenient workbench. The one-shoed engineerski groaned and started to crawl away.
"Your Excellency, the reason our shuttle is not ready is that the resources which the Murcans devoted to obsessive development of their new toy, we devoted to practicing the proletarian techniques of spacelabor and perfecting our knowledge of the lunar surface. These are areas where the Murcans are still behind us, and will have to catch up before they can match our achievements. Their position is superficially made to look stronger by this shuttle, but it is like a Hollywood movie facade without the infrastructure and knowledge to support it. Here they must delay, and here we will have ample time to catch up and surpass their momentary advantage."
"Hmph. I, must see what you have for myself. What of the moon rockets?"
"Well, our current planning still revolves around the well-known Proton rocket which has returned so many photochromographoids of the heavenly bodies... Your Excellency, are you all right?"
"Mmmms, heavenly b- da, da. Anyway, those are
current plans. What of future plans?"
"I will show you."
"You'd better."
"...Kerosene fuels drive the liquid rocket engines- thirty in the first stage, eight in the second, four in the third. With this we put the rocket into orbit; subsequent stages can be added in various configurations to boost payloads to the moon in what we call "trans-lunar injection." There are also proposals to add additional booster motors, as we have done so successfully with the Semyorka and plan to do with the Proton for early manned lunar missions, which would increase payload even further."
"Impressive. How much can you put into space this way?"
"By design, the unboosted model is capable of lofting ninety tonnes into low Earth orbit. The boosted version, slightly more- the main benefit to the boosters is increased payload that can be sent to the moon and beyond, though."
"Ninety tonnes. Da... you could put a tankski into orbit with such power."
"You could, although..."
"Da! DA! This must be done! The Zenobian people must EXCEL in flying-tankski research, as we did during the Great Patriotic Salvation War!"
"Even as you say, Your Excellency. Perhaps this could be discussed at a later time? The rocket will not be ready for some time."
"Of course. So, the stages..."
Shroomanski's examination of the model was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream from the other side of the office complex. The General Secretary looked up. "What is this? Are your men under investigation by the NKVDVDROM? Why was I not informed?"
"Ah... Your Excellency, I believe that is not an interrogation, though you would have to check with the commissar. I believe that is simply the computermen's Screaming Room."
"Screaming Room."
"Da. There is considerable challenge in building and programming the computronic mechanisms to control the N-1's many rocket engines and prevent any errors from destroying the rocket. The project is headed by Comrade Maisner, who despite his Zeich ancestry has been a mighty bulwark of the program- it was he who designed the Sputnik beeper array, among many other things."
"How goes it?"
"They are still at work- some problems have been solved, others remain, we are not ready to assemble the rocket, but by all reports the Murcans are unlikely to outpace us significantly. We can do most of our near-future operations with the reliable Proton booster anyway, as well."
"I see. But what does a Screaming Room have to do with any of this?"
"You see, the team is engaged in mighty and endless feats of Strakhanovite technoproletarian labor. It is something of a strain on their nerves, though they make good progress. When the difficulties grow too great for any one man to stand alone, he simply withdraws to the Screaming Room for a brief time, then returns to his tasks. Efficiency has improved considerably with this simple alteration, believe it or not."
"Perhaps we should implement Screaming Rooms in other offices..."
"I am not qualified to say, Your Excellency."
"I will think more on this matter. Anyway, you say that this N-1 is desirable, but not strictly necessary, for the time being, da?"
"Da."
"Then I am satisfied with the rocket program- now, on to the shuttle!"
The General Secretary beheld the shuttle and the form of its hull. "Hmmms. It looks like a cheap shoe. Yes, yes, a shoe which may be taken off of the Earth, and hurled into the very heavens, to the moon! A fine shoe indeed! And so I think it should be called... LAPOT!"
A tiny bit of Syrgy Pavylyvych died inside. But his determination was unaffected- man WOULD reach the moon, and it WOULD be the Zenobian people and the commienist cause. The fire blazed in his eyes even as he acknowledged his superior's request.
"As you say, Your Excellency, though the designation of ZiG-105 is still used in most of our paperwork. And as to the matter of the names of the actual shuttles themselves, individually..."
"There will be more than one?"
"Currently we plan on a fleet of two, or perhaps three, for the opening stages. This allows us to turn shuttles around more quickly, as refurbishment after each successful flight may take quite some time. In the long run, reusable spacecraft will no doubt depend heavily on this factor of refurbishing, and there is much to be learned."
"Da, I see. It would be a shame indeeds to have only one of these magnificent spaceplanes. But what is this about names?"
"Well, Your Excellency, I tentatively submit a pair of names for the first two shuttles, this one here which is currently undergoing assembly and testing of its tubule-transistor electronics and other systems, and the second ones whose airframe is still in the works at the Armor Plate Production Plant."
"The small yet disturbingly advanced one?"
"Precisely. In any case, for the shuttle before us now, I propose to name the vessel of space something which I hope you will find suitably patriotic. In honor of that glourious revolutionary vessel of the seas, that which Lennon himself called the "undefeated territory of the Revolution," I propose that the first of our ZiG shuttles be named...
Potemkin!"
Shroomanski's face was unreadable. "I see. The second?"
"In the same vein, I propose that the second shuttle be named after that hero-ship, recipient of the Order of the Red Banner and lately of the Order of the October Revolution, whose guns and sailors led the storming of the Winter Palace in Stasograd...
Avrora."
"Hmmms... Acceptable as a preliminary. This will be discussed at a higher level, but I will seriously consider this. These shuttles, they will fly to the moon?"
"They will need help."
Shroomanski glowered. "Help?
Help?"
"We are working on it."
"I must see."
"...What is required is a cylindrical module, compatible with either the ZiGplane or an advanced "Zond" version of the Voskhod capsule, which contains fuels, surplus life support, and a powerful rocket motor to boost the capsule to the moon."
"So, this 'kicker' will give our little Comrade Shoeplane the momentum to round the moon?"
"Have the Murcans such a machine?"
"They have mooted an equivalent; I do not know what the state of their progress is, Your Excellency. All reports say that they are behind us. Of course, with their capitalism and degeneracy, they fixate on ideas of mastery and servitude, and thus call it a 'service module.' But after consultation with our local political experticians and Party officials, I believe it better to call it by another name."
"Da?"
"I give you... the
COMRADE MODULE!"
"Comrade module... da! DA! Do it! Launch your Zondoids, and your ZiGs, for great justice!"