Not to fret Simon, at least we got our plan figured out, now lets see what goes explosivly wrong for who this time!

Da!

Of course, if you would care to give any glourious speeches, Comrade Commissar, you are welcome to do so.

I would give it a try, but likewise real life has been sapping both time and energy somthing feirce latley, I'll try and poke my brain against a word process though, see if I can hammer anything out.

Comrades of the glorious and most patriotic peoples space program, I am happy to announce that I, Comrade Commissar Omeganski, will be performing the most glorious and patriotic speechifying to accompany the budget this year.

Our great and wise leaders at the Politburo have this year provided to us a great example of the brilliant work ethic of the new Zenobian Mang, as well as an example to how Comminisem , in that all our costs for the program this year have been slashed in half! Witness how our brave construction enginerski’s work just as bravely and as hardly as always for only half the pay! Truly this will show the vile capitalist Muricans that their false system of wealth distribution only hampers everything but the pockets of the vile upper classess.

Onto program assignments for this year, I am very pleased to announce that our unmanned space probes will all be going ahead this year; we shall commence bleeping at the entirely unvisited planet of Mercury! Additionally the good workers at our small but disturbingly advanced armour plate production plant will be producing our second glorious patriotic moon shuttle.

Most importantly I am happy to announce the commencement of the N-1 project, this vast and mighty rocket will be the one that carries our brave and patriotic comrade cosmonaughts to the moon, and best of all, it dwarves the size of anything the Muricans have, come Comrades, let us sing the anthem to celebrate all this good news!

What follows is a rather offkey singing of the national anthem, with everyone being 'encouraged' to join in by the ever friendly NKDVDROM agents

"Farewell, comrade probeski!"







The lights were dimmed, for the benefit of the glourious socialist technoworkers mannng the launch control center. It was easier to concentrate in the dark, da, when all relevant information was displayed on lighted screens and gauges and fluorescent markings.

Also, bright lights were not conductive to working when hung over.



"We have little doubt the rocket will work. The Proton design thoroughly proven by now, certainly much better than shoddy and overengineered Murcan designs.", Syrgy was explaining to a Pravda reporter, who was miraculously allowed to write an article about the Luna I launch (the actual mission number was IV, but the Onion would ever admit to the last three failed missions).

"So you say the mission has no chance to fail?", the reported asked, his pencil hovering menacingly over his writing pad.

How do these Murcans do that?, a thought flew through Syrgy's head before he answered, very carefully, "The great comrade technosocialist proletarians working for the space program have done all they can to ensure it goes smoothly, comrade reporterski. They gave their best, which is all we can ask from any mang."

"Should the probe land, what results do you expect?"

"Da! An excellent question! The spacialitic landerski is carrying in its protective coverings an advanced product of great Zenobian industries, designed and produced right here, at Baikonurek: we call it the Lunokhodzik.", Syrgy flipped through pages in an extremely thick binder he was carrying with himself, to a page showing the rover's photograph.

"Uh...I can't really see much here..."

"Da, shamefully the NKVDVDROM censored most of the photograph to protect important strategic secrets", Syrgy said with melancholy, "But you can get the general idea! Our Luna probeski will deploy this autonomous surface rover, and it will wander the surface, taking spectacular and important photographs of a future landing site...here, at the Baurus-Litter valley. These photochromagraphoids will allow us to ascertain the viability of a future lunar landing, and deliver untold wealths of scientific data!"

"Comrade Chief Designer?", an engineerski interrupted the interview, "We are ready."

"Ah, da. I must attend to my duties. The good comissar Omeganski will finish your tour."

The reporter nodded meekly and turned his head towards the imposing form of Baikonurek's comissar. Comrade Omeganski grinned, which made him look like a shark, "This way, comrade."

With the reporterski out of the way, Syrgy inserted a launch key into his console and turned it. Seconds later, the bunker's floor shook with a familiar rumbling.




The rocket climbed quickly, and soon deposited its final stage to orbit. The room began filling up with cigarette smoke as remote checkouts were being run in preparation for trans-lunar injection.

Finally, Vasily Mishingun nodded slowly, "The payload is functioning properly. We have performed shutdown tests as per revised procedures. We are ten minutes from the burn."

Syrgy gripped the railing tightly as seconds counted down.



"Da! Da! DA! DA!", the new engineerski leapt to his feat, "This is great! The engines work! Da, comrades! The probeski is on its way!"

"Congratulations, everyone. I will now leave the control center in your capable hands Vasily. Unfortunately I must take care of my other duties."

---

Luna IV mission control bunker
Mission Day 4

The bunker was silent. So silent, in fact, that Syrgy paused for a second upon entering it.

"What's the matter?", he demanded quickly, after shaking off the initial surprise. Vasily Mishingun just pointed towards the screen. On it was...the Earth.



"It's from lunar orbit, da. Excellent quality."

Syrgy admired the sight of their home planet for a while, so tiny and blue. Then he walked up to the trajectory console and glanced at the figures, "You are in the middle of the deorbit burn?"

"Da. It is going well. Telemetry is good."

People smoked, paced and bit their nails nervously. Engineerskis who had nothing to do slowly trickled into the room, watching the lunar surface get closer and closer.

"I have data from the landing radar. We are approaching landing site. Altitude ten kilometres."

"Stability is good, propellant levels are good."

"Roll maneuver...done. Eight kilometres."



The first ever close-up pictures of the Moon were being relayed by the probe thanks to its state of the art communications suite. The Unmanned Planetary Exploration Lab really outdid themselves this time. The picture quality was so good, that Syrgy almost...no, these couldn't be foreign-made capitalist lenses. And even if they were, he wasn't about to point this out in front of the comissar.

"One kilometer. Descent rate is fifteen metres per second. Propellant levels good. Radar operating well..."

Syrgy tensed. The last four probes failed at various stages in the flight, and landing was the most dangerous part of any mission...someting had to happen.

"Contact light! Engine shutdown..."

A few more tense seconds."

"Touchdown, comrades! We have touchdown, communications are active, all status lights green!"



The control room erupted in spontaneous celebration. After so many failed flights, the Zenobian Onion has put Man's first creation upon the surface of the Moon.

Four hours later, the Lunokhodzik was activated and rolled down from its ramp. Its first picture would travel across the globe like lightning.



In the room right besides the bunker, several cosmonauts and pilots sat hunched over monitors, manipulating various controls. The Lunokhodzik would operate for a few days before its batteries ran out, and had crew of a total of twenty men.

"Da", comrade cosmonaut Fillyereski said after rolling the robot down the ramp, "It just like driving submarine!"





Compared to the great success of the Luna I (IV) landing, and the following rash of congratulatory telephone calls, medals, dachas and newly made Zaporoznik personal vehicles which rained on the cosmodrome, the Cosmos XI mission got relatively little coverage.



It was still an incredible success, even if unappreciated. The Unmanned Planetary Lab would be busy for a good, long while analyzing the data delivered, the detailed radar maps and close-up photochromagraphoids.



All things considered, for Syrgy Pavylyvych, it was a damn good season.

RED MOON

COMMIENISTS SOILED THE MOON

IS THE RACE ALREADY LOST?

The headlines glared at him. They jutted form their pages, accusingly. The Red Phone was red hot from all the calls placed from the White Dwelling. The door was barricaded because of all the goddamned journos who wanted Johny von Braun to comment on what happened.

That was a disaster. The President already wanted his head after he told him there was no way Murca would land on the Moon by the end of 1970, as promised by the late president Teddy - and it was no mean feat to outwit Dicky Trick, as they said on the Hill.

And now this. A filthy commienist device impurifying the precious desolate lunar landscape with its beeping. For a while the Director thought it was a hoax, but no, the damned Zenobians thought of everything - the Lunokozik or whatever its name was had a retreflector on its back, so when its batteries ran out it would STILL mock Murca by reflecting laser light at them.

Fucking commienists.

And of course Conrad, the most awesome astronaut ever, had to be declared unfit for flight duty due to his bad liver. How could he even have a bad liver and pass qualifications?

Then the Director remembered their massive drinking binges together with John May.

Oh. That way.














"No! No!", Syrgy pounded his fist on the desk, "This is terrible news! Influenza, amongst the brave cosmo...wait a minute, Vasily...the mission is unmanned!"

"Uh, da...", Mishingun scratched his head, "But not quite. You see, after the propagandistic success of the story of comrade Myishanauts born during the Voskhod mission, the Politburo, uh..."

"Out with it!"

"Basically, the probe will be manned by mice. Little mice, in spacesuits and all..."

"It was not in any of the documentations..."

"Well, no."

"Why?"

"We were told to hide this after the Politburo member who demanded this realized the mice would not be returning from the Moon."

"So why are you presenting this information to me?"

"Well, we just need your signature as a formality. Then the brave myishanauts can stay home and just pose for pictures instead of dying horrible deaths from lack of air."

Syrgy glared at his second and signed the paper, "Inform me next time."

"Da, comrade shief designer!"












GM Notes:

Well, gentlemen...I said the Zenobians wouldn't keep failing at that probe landing forever

The great success of this season's unmanned launches men the Murcans better get their shit in gear - frankly, it seems that without taking a dicey gamble, they might not be able to beat the filthy commienists to the Moon, da!

As the American player of a similar LP I led on another board said:

"NOW CLENCH AND FUCKING GET BACK TO WORK!" - general Richard A. Hole.

BTW, you don't have the ten megabucks to redesign the Titan, but the negative bonus will only last for one mission. Also: the booster titan cannot lift the XMS-2 and Kicker-B. It could do an XMS-2 and Kicker-A, though.

Ha ha, Boris Badenov strikes again! (though without Natasha, his work isn't anywhere near as impressive)

The Space Program: Murca's lame duck

With the recent success of the Zenobian unmanned exploration program, Murcan taxpayers are asking themselves: do we really need a manned space exploration scheme?

In the age of improving computers and electronics...

***

Queen of Anglia: "Incredible, absolutely incredible!"

The Queen of Anglia was reportedly overjoyed upon seeing pictures from the Zenobian electromechanoid probe, the Lunokhodzik-I. Her Majesty called this latest achievement of the Zenobian Onion a "keystone in the history of the world", congratulating the commienists on their skill...

***

Queen of Anglia is a filthy commienist sympathizer!

Anglia has clearly fallen under commienist sway. Murca must take immediate military action to prevent the rise of the filthy and disgusting socialist-proletarian ideology in the Islands.

***

Johny von Braun a former slave driver?

Decide for yourself, after watching those incredible new photographs...

***

Murca to wihdraw from Vetnam?

Sources on The Hill say Murcan soldiers might start leaving Vetnam in the care of indigenous troops as early as 1971.

I don't see a problem with the Titan thing. It's only 5%, it's only for one season and we can't affod to fix it anyway. Besides, the rocket is still 90% reliable anyway.

---

You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.

One launch, to be precise.

Even better.

---

You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.

Bugger me, I'm not sure which is more shocking....

Comrade Chief Designer's gambles all coming off and netting 23 prestige in one season (and denying the Murcans their shot at same), or Fillyereski being permitted to drive the luna rover.

---

A mad person thinks there's a gateway to hell in his basement. A mad genius builds one and turns it on. - CaptainChewbacca

URRA!...

Wait, that was Luna IV? I could swear I only remember one failed launch... two, maybe, but three?

Missions that are scrubbed increment the mission numbers just as if they were launched, so 1 failed + 2 scrubbed makes this one number four.

Ah. Well, in that case we only failed to launch one probe!

Although dang, I was hoping for glourious sample return... not that I'm willing to try my luck with another probe launch to get it, given the prestige payoff or lack thereof for a second lander.

Anyway, the plan for Fall 1970 is pretty much determined from the plan for Spring 1970:

Scrub the lunar probe landing (no need for it; that was planned in the event of a failure with this one).
Do 1 team of research on Lapot.
Do 2 teams of research on Kicker-B.

That's it, really. I'm hoping to do a lunar pass and some unmanned Lapot tests in 1971... we'll see what develops.

You'd have had it if you asked for it, but now I can't be arsed to rewrite the entire thing

Of course, on the other hand the mission is planned and you have the hardware prepurchased

Kapustin Yar Missile Range
Mishingun's N1 Development & Operations Black Site



The payloads had arrived, on a special train under heavy NKVDVDROM guard, from the Armor Plate Plant at Baikonurek.



Mishingun's team of engineerskis were looking over the clipboards of technical data sheets that had arrived with them, in their own special car in the special train, in a safe that had been welded to the car and then welded shut. It had only now been cut open.

The familiar face of the State Planning Commissar was with Mishingun, standing off to the side watching the buzz of activity around the vehicles.

"... you see, comrade, there are some issues. Mass is, of course, the most significant."

"I thought this great rocket that you have built is capable of flinging just about anything into the heavens? Are you telling me that there are limits to the efforts of socialist labors?"

"Of course not, but no man can accomplish everything at once. Great efforts do take time, after all. And so this rocket is no deity; it is not omnipotent. However, that is not the major issue. The rocket possesses the thrust and power to take any one of these vehicles to orbit. This is a true realization of the dreams of Antonov who once foresaw the delivery of tankskis to oppressed peoples all around the world by air. Mass is still an issue though. While even the largest of these is comparable in dimensions to the proposed Soyuz expendable spacecraft, that same vehicle is also five times the mass. This is well within the rocket's physical capability to loft into an orbit. The problem is the stress such a dense mass will put upon the structures of the rocket. If attached poorly, the payload could come loose and potentially cause the rocket to break up in flight. This would... fail to achieve the planned objectives."



"You can see here the structures that our engineerskis will be testing, both on the unpowered training rocket which miraculously survived our, ah, dramatic tactical rocket test last year, and on the new rocket currently under construction."



"This will allow us to finally cement our lead over the decadent West in flying tankski research. Once we can deploy these en masse, the oppressors of the proletariat shall never recover. Thank you, comrade Mishingun."

---

You mean, "permitted to drive the luna rover from Earth".

Comrade Chief Designer, we get more prestige if our second Lunar Lander lands da? Why don't we go ahead anyway, and then RP getting back some samples too, the odds are very good of the mission succeeding after all, and whats the worst that could happen?

Well, shit. On two accounts. I thought Titan could lift XMS-2 and a Kicker-B. The new version weights are really ****ing with my calculations, and I really can only blame myself.

Moving on.

One team on Kicker-B this season, plan another lunar probe flyby and two more unmanned orbital docking missions. Launch all missions as planned. Break the crews with Barnesti and Conrad on them and try to form new compatible ones with those 'nauts. We're not doing manned anytime soon and if we have to recruit another group of astronauts I'd rather know now.

EDIT: All this, of course, subject to the Director's approval.

---

Lt. Brown, Mr. Grey, and Comrade Syeriy on Let's Play BARIS

Approved

---

You are standing on a 4.5 billion year old complex, self-sustaining organic spacship, which is orbiting a power source a million times larger than your ship. There are 200 billion other power sources, many of them with ships like yours, in your fleet. There are 40 other fleets in the immediate neighbourhood and your entire neighbourhood is moving at two million miles per hour towards an object 150 million light years away. Welcome to life, it's a lot more exciting when you think on larger scales.

It is a question of prestige cost versus reward, the cost is the same while the reward is vastly diminished for a second flight. And also of the extra opportunity cost- what else could we do with that Proton?

I'll seriously consider it, though.

Actually, hmm. Proposed revision:

Schedule as follows: 1 unmanned orbital docking, 1 lunar flyby, one manned orbital docking (orbit). We should have at least a decent docking skill by then, and it's a shot at prestige. We've got two crews that aren't being broken, so they can fly the mission.

Comments?

---

Lt. Brown, Mr. Grey, and Comrade Syeriy on Let's Play BARIS

The argument for using the Proton to further the Lapot reseach is a good argument, but on the other hand we have the mission prepped to go how bad would the prestige failure be vs the potential even more presteige we could earn and thus even more funds for next season which would help boost critical research, it's a gamble sure, but it's one I think we should go for.

We have about a 50/50 shot of success. We stand to gain, I think, two prestige... or lose five on a failure.

Please trust me on this one.

Also, what I'm really thinking more of doing is using that Proton for a lunar Voskhod pass- go around the moon, or at least try. It's relatively low-risk and low-cost(ish) from our perspective, we can do it as soon as the Comrade Module is ready, it gets a milestone out of the way, and so on.

For Lapot tests we'll be using boosted A-series to put the thing into orbit.

Alright, no Luna II then, how soon do you think it'll take to get the Comrade modual up to spec? And unless I'm forgetting somthing arn't we still short the Duration D test? We can do that too.