Let's Play: Shattered Earth

[doom3607]

Since I feel like being very cruel, I'll throw a curve ball, pardon the soon-to-be-revealed pun.
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Suddenly, there was a slight shock felt through the station, and a faint- very faint- sense of gravity in a direction other than the normal down... or maybe acceleration.

One of the engineering ensigns pulls out his pad and says "Oh, SHIT! It looks like a meteorite somehow slingshotted around the planet and hit the O2 cooling lines on the nightside of the station. They just gave. We're about to lose all our O2 unless we can fix it fa-"

Suddenly, another, harder shock. The sense of acceleration increases a good deal. Then floor feels rather slanted.

The ensign says, looking rather ill, "And that would be the rest of the atmosphere cooling lines. Looks like bits of the O2 line broke them, too. We've got maybe two days on the emergency reserve, but it's worse than that. The venting is slowing the station's orbit. Unless we can stop it, and fast, we're going to burn up in... let's see... 37 hours and 12 minutes. Roughly... And we don't have enough rocket fuel on hand for the corrections. We have way more delta-vee than we need, even with only the lifeboats pushing, but the problem is we have too much of it. By the time we can safely use the lifeboats to push back without throwing ourselves out of orbit, we'll have fallen out of our orbit anyway."
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I don't think anyone needs much help getting the 'curve ball' bit, now. Or the cruelty bit, either.

[PeZook]

Could I be a snarky and cynical AI experiment?

EDIT: And yes Team LAME is based on Orbiter, more precisely on a single spacecraft found there, with an added fabular layer.

[Force Lord]

"Shit, if we don't solve this soon, we'll all get a taste of Hell."

[Hawkwings]

OOC: I don't understand the problem. Delta-vee as referred to here is capability (roughly equation to fuel) to change velocity. You can't "have too much" of it. But this is directly contradicted by the "we don't have enough rocket fuel" line. Both of these can't be correct. As I gather, the problem is that the oxygen venting is slowing the velocity of the station and causing it to fall out of orbit. Plus it's leaking out too.

[doom3607]

Yeah, I know that Orbiter is involved. But the entire plot came staright out from the minds of those involved, so Orbiter isn't really that much of the base of it. And AI? Sure, why not. As long as you ensure you're able to be reasonably moved off the station. Unless you want them to find you on the planet. Power, as usual, is a non-problem. I'm basically using cold fusion so I can just avoid giving you guys even more issues.

And you can have too much at one time. You can't part-fire the rockets on the lifeboats, they're all or nothing, and using them at all would shove the station far too hard out of orbit. It can be pushed, it was built so that was an option, but you'd move it too far. You don't have enough rocket fuel to put you back in your orbit if you use same to stop your fall out of it, since the oxygen will be venting for several hours you'd need to correct several times, which would take more fuel than you have. If my physics are off, please tell me, so I can make this problem more reasonable. Or just retcon it so the station can't be pushed.

[PeZook]

Yeah, I know that Orbiter is involved. But the entire plot came staright out from the minds of those involved, so Orbiter isn't really that much of the base of it.

Yeah, it's not. The idea sort of evolved

And AI? Sure, why not. As long as you ensure you're able to be reasonably moved off the station. Unless you want them to find you on the planet. Power, as usual, is a non-problem. I'm basically using cold fusion so I can just avoid giving you guys even more issues.

I could have some sort of a chassis I am confined to because of irrational human fears.

I mean, the occasional ranting about forcibly upgrading the human race to a higher standard is nothing to be worried about.

Really. It's not.



DESIGNATION: Project 69

AGE: 5

POSITION: Special scientific project.

69 is a snarky, sarcastic artificial intelligence constructed as part of the station's ongoing research. It had gained sentience kinda accidentally due to a programming glitch and scared the bejeesus out of his creators. Deemed to valuable to disassemble, he was instead confined to a clumsy, shambling robot body constructed to poor specifications, which made him hate his lot in life.

He is treated like a cross between a pet and a robot butler.

And you can have too much at one time. You can't part-fire the rockets on the lifeboats, they're all or nothing, and using them at all would shove the station far too hard out of orbit. It can be pushed, it was built so that was an option, but you'd move it too far. You don't have enough rocket fuel to put you back in your orbit if you use same to stop your fall out of it, since the oxygen will be venting for several hours you'd need to correct several times, which would take more fuel than you have. If my physics are off, please tell me, so I can make this problem more reasonable. Or just retcon it so the station can't be pushed.

"You can, however, fire off the rockets one after another. It's unlikely the lifeboats have enough delta-vee to throw the entire station out of orbit as it would require about 3 km/s: so we just boost the orbit to gain time, and fire another lifeboat if we need to boost it again as it degrades while working to patch the ruptured tanks, you organic idiots!"

Project 69 finished summing up his idea and stares at the gathered station personnel.

"Uh, would you like some cold codiments, sirs?", he adds quickly, knowing humans only remember the end of a conversation.

[doom3607]

The problem is you don't have enough lifeboats. You have twice the lifeboats you need, becausen the ISA loves redundancy. Unfortunately, you'd need more than five such burns, and five firing all at once at the very end wouldn't be enough to correct. And if you haven't worked it out yet, and don't mind, I'm trying to put this well into the future of Team L.A.M.E. The XR-11 and Ravenstar-10 designations were my first little clue in that regard.

EDIT: I'll make it clearer what is OOC and what isn't in the future. Starting now.
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The ensign says "The problem is we don't have enough lifeboats. We have twice the lifeboats we need, becausen the ISA loves redundancy. Unfortunately, we'd need more than five such burns, and five firing all at once at the very end wouldn't be enough to correct."

[Hawkwings]

OOC: Well first of all, the station must be venting an absolutely extraordinary amount of oxygen at a ridiculous rate and velocity to deorbit this large station in a mere day or two. The progress spacecraft used to deorbit Mir had a main engine capable of generating 4 kilonewtons of thrust, and it had to fire for over an hour (not sure how much over though) to deorbit the 129-tonne Mir.

Next, which idiot put solid-fuel rockets on lifeboats? It rather defeats the whole purpose of lifeboats, as they need to be controllable. Finally, what's to stop us from just closing the valve to the broken areas? Or rotating the station so that the venting is pushing us higher?

[PeZook]

Hey, I don't own the copyright to the spacecraft, so why the hell would you ask me for permission?

Next, which idiot put solid-fuel rockets on lifeboats? It rather defeats the whole purpose of lifeboats, as they need to be controllable. Finally, what's to stop us from just closing the valve to the broken areas? Or rotating the station so that the venting is pushing us higher?

Actually no, that's entirely reasonable. Solid motors are very simple and reliable. All you have to do is board the lifeboat, undock, then wait for the re-entry window and fire off the thrusters (or let the computer do that).

Mercury spacecraft in fact used this very scheme, with a solid-rocket retropack. It allows the spacecraft to re-enter completely autonomously with a minimum of moving parts that can break, so for example a wounded person could lose consciousness and still arrive on Earth safe and sound.

The problem with using the lifeboats for pushing is that they just plain may not be oriented properly to counteract the force from random damage with their retropacks, which is the simple and reasonable explanation for why they can't be used to help.

OOC: Well first of all, the station must be venting an absolutely extraordinary amount of oxygen at a ridiculous rate and velocity to deorbit this large station in a mere day or two. The progress spacecraft used to deorbit Mir had a main engine capable of generating 4 kilonewtons of thrust, and it had to fire for over an hour (not sure how much over though) to deorbit the 129-tonne Mir.

I got that impression as well. Then again, it could be venting oxygen, spare rocket fuel and other stuff, it's not worth arguing over particulars.

Finally, what's to stop us from just closing the valve to the broken areas? Or rotating the station so that the venting is pushing us higher?

That.

[doom3607]

OOC: You can actually make a turn-offable solid-fuel rocket. The issue is that when it's on, it has to be on at maximum possible thrust, until you turn it off. And yeah, you're venting six months worth of air for the lot of you, so a lot of stuff is venting. And besides, the de-orbit itself isn't the only reason you need to get off the station. The life support is broke, and the only spare parts were in, oops, Florida. Which is now feeling a certain similarity to Atlantis. And no, the lifeboats aren't in the rigt place to push, but the station actually has a couple of hardpoints specifically for Ravenstar-10s to push it, which is what the lifeboats are. As for rotating the station, it is rotating to give artificial gravity. It's just the cooling lines counter-rotate to stay on the dark side of the station, and there's no way to turn them around. After all, who the hell would bother to plan for a contingency this unlikely?

[Hawkwings]

OOC: lifeboats using solid-fuel rockets are dumb because you don't know when, where, and under what circumstances they will be needed. Mercury got along fine with solid retrorockets because the flight plan had it firing the retrorockets in the correct time and place for a landing in the correct landing area. What if you need to get off the station now? If all you had were solid fuel rockets on the lifeboats, then you board, pray, fire the rockets, and hope that you don't land in a mountain range. Or the middle of the desert. And what if the orbit was not exactly circular (as they never are) or whatever orbital paths are in the computer? Oops, guess the dumb solid-fuel rockets fire too long/short and you're re-entering too hot and you die.

And if we're using solid fuel rockets that we can throttle or turn off, then we can use those to boost. Just turn it on for the correct amount of time to compensate for whatever loss of dv has occurred up to that point.

Who would bother planning for a micrometeorite impact on the exposed and vulnerable oxygen lines? Err, any space agency worth a damn of course. Unless we're going for comedic incompetent space agency, there should be contingencies for every single thing on the station breaking.

Station is rotating? OK then, there must be thrusters to maintain and alter the rate of rotation. Just fire those in the proper sequence and duration to boost the station. Counter-rotating to stay in the dark side? Well the orientation need to change as the Earth goes around the sun, meaning more thrusters. Fire those too.

As for the oxygen supply: OK, so we've got roughly 6 months worth of oxygen. According to NASA, each person needs 0.84kg/day. For a crew of 39 and 6 months, that gives 5900 kg of oxygen. Now, oxygen is about 25% of air, so let's call it about 24000kg of air on the station and stored in the tanks. Assuming we're venting all the way until we deorbit (as otherwise the guy would probably have said we run out of air before that) then that's a loss of about 650kg/hour, or .2kg/sec. Assuming the station is the same mass as Mir (which it can't be, but let's just use it) then it'll take 4kN applied for at least an hour to deorbit in a 6 hour-ish timeframe. Well, the acceleration required for 0.2kg to result in 4 kN is (F=ma) 22km/sec^2. That's one hell of a nozzle. And that's just to de-orbit Mir, which weighs much less than this. (Let me know if my math is faulty or I'm making some wrong assumptions here)

Finally, let's just turn off the valve feeding oxygen to the cooling system. That can't be too hard to do.

Anyways, if you want to give us a "you're all going to die" challenge just say that all the oxygen tanks were broken by micrometeorite strikes and and we have 2 days of air left or something. In which case we are well and truly screwed and we should launch lifeboats and GTFO. Oh, and life support is broken? No spare parts? No Scotty around to miracle a solution? That's gg.

[Scottish Ninja]

McNair excuses himself from the meeting to find out exactly what we have got, leaving one of his ensigns behind to keep an eye on the meeting.

Also, find out what kind of necessary supplies might be intact and accessible on the surface, and get this information over to Ravensburg's team.

[Eternal_Freedom]

OOC: Yeah, doom3607, the "our oxygen supply is gone and irreplaceable is a better curveball than "the station is crashing.=" as the "no life support, get off NOW" allows for the possibility of returning to the station at a later date.

[FaxModem1]

Ensign 'Chuck' Woods moves about the station, hearing the impacts on the hull. There is a soft 'Meow' from his jumpsuit torso pocket.

"Its okay Londo, just some meteorites, not a hull breach or anything. I better see if anyone is in the command room."

The kitten makes a soft 'meow' as they float to the meeting, Woods petting the kitten and getting a purring sound in response.

[doom3607]

OOC: I give up. That was indeed the most horrendously misplanned curveball I have ever attempted to throw. Would anyone mind if I retconned it to, as you say, you just can't replace the air supply and/or the cooling system?

[Eternal_Freedom]

OOC: I'm fine with that. If you're planning future curveballs, might be best to run it by some of us first, so it actually makes sense. As this is intended to be a lot more serious than TEAM LAME, we can't really just do continuity on the fly.

[doom3607]

OOC: You has point. I'd go back and edit my posts if I could, but I can't, so let's all just pretend there was no discussion about the station falling and the shuttles are indeed liquid-fueled? But the parts to repair the cooling system are still in Florida. Which is still enjoying certain similarities to Atlantis. So, where to land? Plesetsk was suggested, I believe. Any other ideas, since you're going down, probably to stay?

[Zaune]

OOC: Before we decide on that, shouldn't we also establish where the fragments hit and how extensive the damage is?

[PeZook]

Doom, I can retcon that post if you want, though I'd rather leave it up so that it's clear WTH people are talking about.

Just make a new post indicating the retcon.

[doom3607]

OOC: Well, we know the meteorite hit the O2 cooling lines and damaged one of them. A small section blew up and the shards of flying metal managed to break the rest of the lines in a chain reaction. I don't think there's any damage other than the fact the the cooling lines are all ruptured/weakened in multiple places so any attempt to run liquid air, O2 or N2, through them results in it being vented into space. Minus cooling, well, you get the distinction of simultaneously operating the world's biggest oven and being the first people accidentaly broiled in same. You have... not long. It's probably safer to just vent the air, that you can probably replace at any of the spaceports away from the sea. The issue is that they were almost all by the sea, for obvious reasons. Nobody likes rockets taking off next door, and nobody wants stuff coming down from orbit anywhere overland, either. At least over the ocean you can crash-land more-or-less surviveably.

STILL OOC: You have two other big issues if you land, though. Refueling the Ravenstars shouldn't be that hard if you can find an intact spaceport, but repairing the inevitable reentry damage is. The main stockpiles of spare parts were at the main planetary spaceports... Cape Canaveral, Sydney, and Istanbul. You have three guesses as to whether or not there was a hit in the Black Sea/Mediterranean, but only one of them counts. The other big issue would be fixing the cooling system. Guess where they stored the spare parts. The manufacturers for both sets of spare parts were in Florida, just to add more injury. Here's hoping you can manage to salvage the parts you need from deep below.

OOC, YET AGAIN: Meh. Yeah, leave it up, PeZook. Thanks for the offer and advice, though.

[FaxModem1]

Ensign Woods swims(or runs, are we simulating gravity here by rotating?) to his station. As a security officer, he starts a manual sweep of the deck he's on to see if there are any problems or visual cues on how bad it is.

[Eternal_Freedom]

Whilst the discussion amongst the senior officers rages on, Ravensburg has been carefully checking the impactor trajectories and observations of the planet below.

"Captain, if I may interject...There are three landing sites that can safely accept, repair and refuel our Ravenstars. Cape Canaveral, Istanbul and Sydney. Based on the available data and observations, Florida has been totally razed, and Sydney is presently doing an excellent imitation of Atlantis. I think Istanbul is our best landing option, but we should delay any launchs until we can see the surface and determine the status of the spaceport."

John once again consults his pad."Istanbul will be visible in about 30 minutes sir. It'll take at least that logn to prep the shuttles and teams anyway, so we lose nothing by delaying."

[Force Lord]

"I'll tell the away teams to start preparing for drop in half an hour. Permission to go planet-side, sir?"

[Eternal_Freedom]

"I would think it would be best if we only send those Security personnel who don't have families, or those who know their family wasn't in immediate danger. I know that sounds crass and harsh, but this first landing must be completely focused on acquiring supplies and if neessary securing the spaceport and a place for us to survive and rebuild. The last thing we need right now is crew members deserting on some errand of mercy."

[doom3607]

OOC: Yes, there is gravity due to rotation. The station's a ring for a reason. Except the central hub, where the lifeboats are docked. You have ten, each can hold... how many can Team L.A.M.E.'s ship hold? Each contains one set of the emergency supplies, each with one of the guns and a few other emergency supplies. I'll do up a complete listing if you need it.