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

[Simon_Jester]

Since she's supposed to be informing the Comrade Chief Designer, yes, I'd like some semi-accurate information out of her. Hmph.

[PeZook]

One question. Is it "-10% reliability on the next launch," or is it "10% reliability, permanently?" Because if it's just "on the next launch," then screw that, I'll just send up the unmanned flight precisely as scheduled. And of course write some explanatory text about the problem so PeZook's description of it gets addressed.

Huh, dude. You are way more perceptive than I am

I have just checkeds, and it is indeed a problem only for a single launch! The unmanned one had reliability o 77%, then whoompf the manned one goes up to 88%.

[Mayabird]

"No, look," said Johnny Olds, as he slid up the visor of the simulation space helmet. "I put my hand here, and there's a long row of switches and all of them do different things. Hit the wrong ones, and disaster."

"But sir, you'll be able to see which ones you're hitting," the technician said. "It shouldn't be a problem."

"It's not as easy with this helmet in the way, and the situation when I'd really need to hit them in a hurry would be an emergency, which is when disaster would strike and when you can afford it least. No, no-" he said, cutting off the tech, "I saw this in the Navy when I was a test pilot. People thought the pilots should adapt themselves to whatever control panels they were given, and then I saw too many expensive planes crash and too many good pilots get injured or die. We're only human."

The tech held back a sigh. "What do you recommend?"

"Break up this line. Not so many switches in a row. Alternate some buttons or lights, because I don't like all these buttons in a row here either. Don't confuse my muscle memory. I don't think it should be hard to rewire, just..." There was some grumbling from the engineers who wanted to be working on more important things than just making the astronauts more comfortable. Olds was always complaining about these things, giving them more work. "If I raise my arm to hit these toggles, it'll be after I hit these other toggles and in the bulky suit my elbow would hit these switches accidentally." "It's hard to pull this emergency release when I'm strapped in the seat; can it be moved closer?" "These warning lights are too dim; can you make them brighter?" Such a complainer.

Olds was writing up his report later that day with his newest recommendations when Flashheart came in. Then it was Johnny's turn t stifle a groan, because the man had been getting increasingly obnoxious recently. He didn't know why, but he didn't care either; Johnny was there to fly, not to psychoanalyze.

"Hey Johnny, I got ya something." Flashheart held out a can of industrial lubricant.

Olds didn't look up from his circuit diagrams. "No thank you," he replied. Flashheart was about to dump the lube on Old's papers, but he swept them to his chest in a one-armed rapid movement. "I'm working Flashheart."

"Why dontcha leave the nerd stuff to the nerds?"

"Because they don't know anything about actually sitting in a cockpit," Olds said, calmly - a little too calmly, intentionally.

"How 'bout leaving the homework for later? We're going for a run. Running to town." Flashheart held up the lube again.

"That's nice. Could you get me a beer while you're there? Thanks. Now if you'll excuse me, I would like to finish this this evening."

Olds started to lay his rumbled disorganized sheets back down, but Flashheart put his greasy palms flat on the desk and leaned towards Johnny. "You wanna know who the only other two astronauts who wouldn't use the lube were? Ohjesus and Johnson."

Johnny's blue-gray eyes were as cold as glacial ice. "There is such a thing as professional behavior, and then we go off duty. I will see you tonight, Flashheart. Get out of my office." Flashheart thought about telling Olds that it wasn't his office, just some room with a desk that he'd appropriated, but settled for slinging a few half-hearted insults as he left.

[Simon_Jester]

Huh, dude. You are way more perceptive than I am

I have just checkeds, and it is indeed a problem only for a single launch! The unmanned one had reliability o 77%, then whoompf the manned one goes up to 88%.

It's such a relief to have a problem that can be solved by throwing capsules at it.

Now, I'll work out Plan Pavylyvych Fall 1966 when I can, plus of course the explanatory text segment. But I'm under a fair amount of strain still, not so much the family emergency anymore but other stuff. So... no promises on timing. Sorry.

[FaxModem1]

Spoiler

So after booting Von Evilstein for throwing capsules at a problem, you are now throwing capsules at a problem?

Rex watched Olds yelling like a chicken with his head cut off and throw lubricant back at his fellow astronauts. He approached, seeing if he could find the problem.

"You all right there? You seem to be a bit hot headed, maybe you should take a break and calm down. Before you kill someone with the simulator."

[Simon_Jester]

Spoiler

So after booting Von Evilstein for throwing capsules at a problem, you are now throwing capsules at a problem?

Spoiler

Well, he is now probably at least 1% von Evilstein by mass...

Seriously, though, in this case the dislocation of the budget created by the flaw comes at an extremely bad time, so any way I can work around or through it is hugely to my advantage.

My problem with von Evilstein was that he (and, OOC, Doomy) seemed oblivious to the failure rate of his hardware, and to the way that failing over and over was costing us in prestige with Moosecow. There's a -3 penalty for a failed satellite launch, and the first six Sputnik launches he insisted on netted us -12 prestige for failures and only +13 prestige for the successes, even though we beat the Murcans into orbit!

Also that he seemed all set to apply the same standard to a manned mission as he did to an unmanned mission, which would make disaster even more likely. We had manned launches scheduled on that low-reliability hardware, and the prospect scared me.

Whereas Pavylyvych is really trying not to send people up on hardware he doesn't think is fit to fly in the capacity desired. Otherwise he'd be rushing Kicker-A and trying to rush the manned lunar pass... but Voskhod isn't ready for that

Incidentally, I still intend to refer to any Voskhod capsules which I use for lunar missions as "Zond" or by other designations than "Voskhod." In this case, Zond is something that would evolve upwards from the (historically, very limited) Voskhod design, in the same way that the Americans might have developed a super-Gemini for lunar missions. Instead of being (as historically) a Soyuz variant, because Soyuz never exists here.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh. A question to the experienced BARIS players. Is an unmanned lunar pass a milestone I need to meet before launching a manned lunar pass? I don't think so, but I'd like to check.

[PeZook]

I thought about using Russian conventions for mission namings, but I thought it would be too much of a headache to keep track of them. I might resurrect this idea because it is pretty cool

And yeah, I agree that your Voskhod is probably far more capable than historically. Hell, that much is obvious: it can dock

[PeZook]

Oh. A question to the experienced BARIS players. Is an unmanned lunar pass a milestone I need to meet before launching a manned lunar pass? I don't think so, but I'd like to check.

I shall check

[Simon_Jester]

I thought about using Russian conventions for mission namings, but I thought it would be too much of a headache to keep track of them. I might resurrect this idea because it is pretty cool

And yeah, I agree that your Voskhod is probably far more capable than historically. Hell, that much is obvious: it can dock

You can call the missions whatever you want. I will call the missions whatever I want- note how I keep referring to the Nikov/Mametov flight as "Voskhod 1" while to the game it is "Voskhod IV."

Though the Voskhod 1 capsule need not have been more sophisticated than historical Voskhod, since it basically did the same thing- put two men into orbit and have a spacewalk. The next manned Voskhod flight will perforce be more sophisticated, and is probably a reasonably equivalent to the American Gemini.

In-game, I figure this is the reason we've had a sudden rash of technical difficulties: the Zenobians are developing something only marginally less capable than the Soyuz capsule would have been in real life, here.

[PeZook]

First versions of the Soyuz were two person craft as well. The capsule was only later enlarged to allow three people (well, technically the first Soyuz could squeeze three people in, but only without pressure suits)

EDIT: I have experimentally verified. At this point you need two milestones before a manned lunar pass gets down to the usual -1 penalty.

It is a Duration C flight, and a lunar probe landing. I know it's a weird progression and it mystified me why it would be at all relevant, but that's how the game works.

[Simon_Jester]

Very true, though I think you know what I mean in general.

[PeZook]

BTW: I forgot to mention, but the Murcans cannot do a joint lunar landing mission with the XMS-2 using Titan, even boosted. Their ONLY option is the Saturn V.

[Simon_Jester]

Wait, I have to do lunar probe? No way to 'defuse' that by doing unmanned lunar passes? Hoo boy...

I knew about the Duration milestones. I'm planning to get Duration B out of the way ASAP, and Duration C out of the way reasonably soon.

[Scottish Ninja]

Yeah, it's a bit of a pain in the ass; mainly a case of "this happened before this, therefore milestone penalties". I always forget about the Duration milestones, though, because they're not listed. That blew up in my face a couple of times.

[OmegaChief]

Well we were going to send off a few more sattalites anyway wern't we Simon? Might be a good way to help boost rocket reliability with extra luanches for them too.

[Simon_Jester]

At this point, rocket reliability isn't really the problem- capsule reliability is. While we could very reliably launch Sputniks to orbit for 4 MB apiece, with just over a 94% chance of success. But even on a success, all it nets us is +1 prestige, or 1 MB per year for, well, at this point the program is probably going to run at least another four years, so we roughly break even.

And those launches tie up pads and doesn't improve reliability of any components.

It kind of made sense to do that in the early years, when we needed to run up A-Series reliability to eliminate that failure mode as a risk for Vostok/Voskhod launches, and when the prestige benefits would keep trickling into our budget for the next seven to ten years. Now, not so much.

We do legitimately need to improve reliability of some things- especially the N-1, when that comes online. Proton, less so, since I'm not actually doing all that much with Proton that can't be done with the boosted A-Series except the unmanned exploration program.

But doing satellite launches with Proton or N-1 is ruinously expensive compared to the prestige payoff. I'd much rather do those tests with a Cosmos for planetary or lunar probe shots. It only a few MB more, and the prestige payoffs are higher. Plus, lunar flyby and probe landings improve our reconnaissance of potential lunar landing sites, come the day.

I'd like to develop the Luna probe and do a robotic landing on the Moon, but the budget situation is a cast-iron bitch.

PeZook, are you sure about a probe landing really having an effect on manned lunar pass mission reliability?

[Eternal_Freedom]

I've been playing BARIs all bloody afternoon. I was playing the yanks and the soviets, tryig my two different methods.

1. Semi-Historical for americans, atlas, explorer, mercury, boosted-atlas/Gemini, Saturn/Apollo. Everything went swimmingly, got every milestone, until I tried doing a pair of lumar orbit docking LM tests. With everything in tip-top reliability, it killed both flight crews. BAM. Goodbye moon landing.

2. As Soviets, do sod all, let budget pool up, go for Vulkon and Kvartet direct-ascent. Working well so far.

[PeZook]

PeZook, are you sure about a probe landing really having an effect on manned lunar pass mission reliability?

Absolutely. I tested it very carefully: I went from your save. First step was to check the penalty for a manned lunar pass right now - it was -14.

Then I did a duration C. Upon checking,the planning screen gave me a -4 for a manned lunar pass.

Then I did an unmanned lunar pass, and the penalty didn't change, so finally I flew a probe and the penalty dropped to -1.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure. It makes absolutely no sense, but that's how it works.

Of course lunar probes are very cost effective (one succesful mission gives 15% to lunar recon) and give you 16 prestige, so you might want to do that anyway

[Simon_Jester]

I'd love to do lunar probe landings, but my inner accountant is screaming at me... then again, that's the story of the whole program.

[PeZook]

I'd love to do lunar probe landings, but my inner accountant is screaming at me... then again, that's the story of the whole program.

The things do benefit from technology transfer and will start at 50% reliability right off the bat, though. You might want to take that into account.

[fnord]

Does an unmanned lunar pass net you any recon boost for getting cameras over Luna farside?

[Simon_Jester]

I've been seriously considering it all along, PeZook. I'll be more sure in Spring 1967; I need to start Lapot pretty soon too, after all.

[Scottish Ninja]

Does an unmanned lunar pass net you any recon boost for getting cameras over Luna farside?

I think that it does do that, at least. I just usually skip them though because there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of advantages there.

[PeZook]

No, it doesn't

I just checked - neither an unmanned lunar pass nor orbital gives you recon bonuses.