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OOC and IC, I vote for the orbital rendevous. If it lets us beat the Murcans that easily and by that much time to the moon, it's worth trying. And, solely OOC, if it kills off some of those cosmonauts, so much the better! *insert evil laughter*

Washingtoff, Murca
The White Dwelling

President-elect Dave Fitzpatrick Teddy had just finished moving into the White Dwelling. But the world would not let him enjoy the time after being sworn into office. Barely two days after the ceremony, a great crisis struck.

"Let me go over this one more time...", President Teddy asked his National Security Mang, "We had a sub spying on the Zenobian rocket program. It detected a ship. It observed the ship carried prisoners. It then surfaced, seized the prisoners and torpedoed the ship."

"That is a succint and most awesome description of this terrible event, Mr. Preaident", the National Security Mang replied, his voice full of infatuation with the sexy voice and awesome hair of the new president.

"And now Zenobia is threatening war. And they have piles of evidence it was us. Nobody is believing our denials."

"Yes"

"How many tankskis do they have in East Thanasia?", the president-elect turned to a random general sitting on the sidelines.

"Uh, I believe it is, um...", the general flipped through some papers, "Uh, enough."

"Enough to do what?"

"Pretty much drive all the way over to Anglia, sir. We won't be able to destroy them fast enough to stop that from happening. Unless we go nyukyular, of course, but then they will, too and..."

Silence fell in the Ovaltine Office, broken only by Teddy tapping his very expensive pen on an even more expensive desk.

"Fuck me! Talk about a great first day in office...get me the COMMASUBBALANTERN!"



UMSS Hard and Rigid
Docks of New Joke

The sub triumphantly returned home, bearing its standards proudly. It even displayed the Smarmy Roger, a sign it had torpedoed an enemy combatant ship!

The sub's captain, Joe Blower, was proud of himself and his seamen. They have brought the war to enemy waters and returned triumphant! Surely the vile Thanasians they combatted would know the power of the Murcan Navy now!

The sub docked presently, and its crew presented themselves the best they could in their nice sailor uniforms. There was whistling and running and manly shouts of even manlier orders.

Suddenly, the cheering crowds waving little Murcan flags were dispersed. Murcan Marines descended upon the dock and the submarine in their Geepers and trucks and stormed aboard.

"What is it? What is the meaning of this?!", captain Blower yelled, as the Marines escorted away the Zenobian captives he had heroically rescued from the vile Thanasian auxilliary cruiser. The Murcans also escorted his officers, snapping handcuffs on them.

"Captain Blower, by the order of the President, you are under arrest for the charge of war crimes.", the Marine captain in charge announced oficially.

"What war crimes?! I didn't even machinegun the survivors, like our boys are doing in the Japanorse Theatre right now!"

The captain seemed confused, but he didn't have any intention of arguing with the arrestee. He gave a had signal, and two bulky Marines held the captain down, while a third snapped a pair of handcuffs on him.

Simon_Jester wrote:

FaxModem1 wrote:Spoiler

So, the Zenobians are paranoid squabbling fighters and the Murcans are gay testosterone meatheads? Is that about right?

Da, tovarisch. That is correct.

Murcan degeneracy may wind up motivating the Zenobian female cosmonaut program- in hopes of speaking to the aspirations of the greater majoritarian masses of the people, rather than the dainty muscleman minority!

The Commissar fully supports and endorses an increased number of women service people around the base, with the correct outfits they should help dramatically increase morale and help keep everyone sufficantly patriotic!

It would be a nice change of pace from the tirade of dick and gay jokes...

But this is MURCA, Land of the FREE! We can make whichever jokes we wish, even if they form a "tirade" like you speak of.

Matter of fact, "tirade" sounds a bit Zenobian to me...

I also recommend the Soyuz approach. While a direct penetration with our much larger instrument of rocketry would be amusing, we need to beat the Murcans to the punch much more than we need to prove just how bigger ours are.

PeZook wrote:Also: RECRUITMENT NOW OPEN FOR CLASS II ASTRONAUTS!

YES! RECRUIT ME, RECRUIT ME, RECRUIT ME! Vladimir Vladimirovich Vladimirensky if you've forgotten.

Comrade Karzanovski would say something about the persistent shortage of names, but fortunately his vodka-addled mouth cannot form the sentence.

Such is life in Zenobia.

Narkis wrote: YES! RECRUIT ME, RECRUIT ME, RECRUIT ME! Vladimir Vladimirovich Vladimirensky if you've forgotten.

I have not forgotten, however Class II will compose of 9 cosmonauts.

Should no suitable volunteers appear, we will provide properly indoctrinated gulag prisoners.

Or perhaps top secret Zenobian cloning tech clones of our existing Cosmonauts, in the fine tradition of SDNet LPs?

Comrade Comissar! You are already in enough trouble due to rampant sabotage and defections at your facility! You do not need the additional burden of releasing secret state information!

Well, we could have an entire class of Vladimirensky clones.

PeZook, please open recruitment for Mucan astronauts as well. If no volunteers, "invent" some

As I wrote before, recruitment for Class II is open for BOTH SIDES.

You can recruit the class at any time for 15 megabucks. To speed things up a little, you will get the nine most skilled astronauts/cosmonauts amongst the candidates.

Ivan Ivan Ivanovich awoke from his slumber with a terrible hangover.

How long have I been passed out? he wondered.

Several days, it turned out. He was very patriotic and consumed much vodka and borscht and Bloody Ztalins (vodka and borscht mixed together) for glorious Zenobia.

However, upon hearing Pavylyvych's suggestions, he knew what they needed.

"Qvartets! Direct ascent, comrade! We need the hugest fucking rockets on earth, so we can drop the fuckers on Thanasia's hospitals! Da!"

He then passed out again, the vodka catching up with him.

PeZook wrote:Unfortunately, wimmin astronauts are unlocked by a random event, and it didn't happen yet.

I guess you're stuck with penises.

I'm describing the motivation behind the eventual introduction of women cosmonauts, not saying it's a near-term plan for the program.

PeZook wrote:It is Spring 1961, Murca has a scheduled manned suborbital at the end of this season, in May or so.

Zenobia will probably attempt a manned orbital in June unless the decide to scrub it due to their rocketry problems.

Also: RECRUITMENT NOW OPEN FOR CLASS II ASTRONAUTS!

I really need to take a bit of a break today, or at least ease off; can we just concentrate on role-playing rather than aggressive pushing forward of the program today? We've got subplots and it's worth taking some time to get more people's buy-in.

I'll try to get a detailed plan out if possible, before you go to bed, PeZook, but I expect to be busier today.

Incidentally, pretty much everything I've outlined for the Soviet options applies to the Americans- they have equivalents for most of the hardware, so they too can go direct ascent or build a minishuttle or... well, all the other options I described.

Zenobian cosmonaut in waiting Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz reporting for duty.

Although a direct penetration by a huge monument of Zenobia's mighty missiles has it's emotional appeal, I always preferred the dual penetration option, for some sentimental reason.

Simon_Jester wrote:I really need to take a bit of a break today, or at least ease off; can we just concentrate on role-playing rather than aggressive pushing forward of the program today? We've got subplots and it's worth taking some time to get more people's buy-in.

No problem, man. I was pushing agressively so that we could reach the first manned flight ; If people want to catch a breather, there's no objection.

On the systems: I will add that the minishuttles, while expensive, have a HEUGE bonus to their re-entry checks.

Ivanovich would love that, as he assumes he's going to be the go-to guy for most space walks and so forth.

I think the minishuttle would also be awesome, but that's a bit off in the future. For now at least.

Like Simon, I too am going to be away fromt he board over the next three says (Saturday, Sunday and Monday) so could we, as Simon said, focus on the role playing? That way when I come back to find three extra pages, it is just amusing banter rather than a crucial event I missed.

Basically, let's just... not push the game forward until both sides have presented a detailed, workable (I'm looking at you, Sam Francisco ) plan for the upcoming season. As long as we do that, it'll be fine because both sides will have consented to any changes that get made.

You know?

We could just both make a gentleman's agreement to fly minishuttles, since there are people on both sides who think it would be cool. Then neither of us would be at a disadvantage for doing it. Then this would really be the game SCRAMming up was supposed to be...

I'm game if you guys are.

Can I get some feedback on that from the Murcan side of the board?

Akhlut wrote:Ivanovich would love that, as he assumes he's going to be the go-to guy for most space walks and so forth.

Ivanovich will probably not be the go-to guy for most spacewalks, but he's certainly one of the most appealing candidates. Sort of like our version of Alexei Leonov, and if you live long enough yes that may translate into being the first mang on the moon.

May, I said. No promises.

EDIT: Of course, Alexei Leonov was an awesome guy; our cosmonauts would want to be him, Murcan astronauts would want to go to bed with him. If he's part of the Group II cosmonauts just like Titov was part of Group I, I am totally on board with hiring him.

Sam loves this gentleman's agreement. No moon shot before mini-shuttles?

barnest2 wrote:Sam loves this gentleman's agreement. No moon shot before mini-shuttles?

Well in this case, we'd just be developing minishuttles in place of Apollo, more or less. It would fill the same role and everything.

For someone with a ton of money they might also develop the Apollo/Soyuz capsules, but we'd agree to make our serious bid for a lunar landing with minishuttles.

We could do the same with direct ascent as well, if you Murcans want to push forward to the Nova rocket and Jupiter instead of trying for something like Apollo.

Incidentally, the Murcan minishuttle is called the "XMS-2," and in game it's implied to be a descendant of Dyna-Soar. It's much smaller and lighter than the historical space shuttle, though it can logically be viewed as the direct ancestor to more sophisticated shuttles.

EDIT: This would still leave us with the choice of sending the whole thing up on a Saturn V-class rocket, versus a joint orbital rendevous of some kind.

Simon_Jester wrote: Sort of like our version of Alexei Leonov, and if you live long enough yes that may translate into being the first mang on the moon.

I like the first mang on the moon part. I'm a little iffy of "if you live long enough" part.

Can I bring a 10 ft. statue of Comrade Lennon and Comrade Groucho to the moon with me, should that occur? Solid bronze visages staring down with Communism upon the earth! For eternity!