StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Spoiler Olds finished his report and had a runner take it down to the engineers before they left for the night. Then there was dinner, evening exercise, and showers. He saw the shiny, shiny chests reflecting the late golden sunlight and made ready.

Flashheart was lagging, both from having too much to drink and having annoyed the other astronauts for some reason or the other. Thus, only he heard the "psst" from a little spot surrounded on three sides by shipping containers. "Hey Flashheart, want to have a heart to heart?" It was Olds, but now he let the sarcasm flow. That was fine; he was wanting a fight.

Johnny stood out in the open, in the middle of the space, one hand on his side and one hand up around the shoulder, as if he had something slung around his back. He was wearing a ragged old T-shirt with the arms cut off, too.

Flashheart cracked his knuckles. He'd show this little brainy newcomer brat what a real Murcan man was like. Show him with his big, hard...fists.

When he was within twenty feet he charged, ready to tackle him like a football player and beat him on the ground. It seemed like the plan would work, but the drinks were slowing his reflexes and thought. Johnny sidestepped and swung something dirty white. Flashheart took it right in the stomach, painfully, and stumbled to his hands and knees. Then he felt another hard blow on his back, right about where the kidneys were. Flashheart struggled not to vomit right there.

"Soap in a sock. Hurts like hell, doesn't leave a bruise." Olds leaned down so his face was at Flashheart's level, but still out of arm's reach. "You don't like me; that's fine. I don't care. I don't care what your problem is, either. If the only way to keep it from going limp at night is to insult me, fine. I don't care.

"But if you ever, ever say or insinuate anything bad about Bob Johnson again, I will fucking destroy you. I hate dumb jocks, and I know that you fear embarrassment far more than death. I would enjoy humiliating you and watching you crawl away." Johnny swung the soap-sock into Flashheart's back again, and this time the sting did make him throw up.

"I hope we've come to an understanding," Johnny said. He stood up, slung the sock back over his shoulder, and walked away with a little hop to his step. When he was outside the little enclosure, he started whistling a little ditty.

Oh, mang. I totally forgot to approve this!

That's alright, because now I have more!


Flashheart looked for chances to get his revenge. He saw some repair work down a hallway that Johnny usually passed through to get to his 'office' and thought of a cunning trap. There was a particular spot with a lot of clutter and a platform that could hide him, giving him the drop when the new guy passed by.

It went a little something like this.

Flashheart froze. 'No jokes'? How did he know? Olds couldn't see him and no one else knew of his plan! It was impossib-

-and then the platform fell over. Johnny had calmly kicked over an unstable support beam while Flashheart hesitated and knocked everything down.

"Next time, you should climb strong scaffolding!" Johnny said, before he stepped over Flashheart, who was groaning on the ground, on the way to his office.

Johnny found Rex in his 'office' sitting in his chair, spinning around.

"Chair goes round. Chair goes round. Chair goes roung."

It was the funniest thing Johnny had seen in minutes, and he laughed so hard that he had to hold back tears.

Spoiler Mr. Grey remembered sleeping. Vaguely. He was working overtime trying to deal with bids from various contractors to build the XMS-2, fielding phone calls from Congressmen who wanted to make sure that the cockpit switch covers for the XMS-2 would be sourced from a shady scrap metal dealer in their districts, trying to get the astronauts to put down the goddam lube for long enough to get their input on the XMS-2, and, in odd moments, actually doing some work on the XMS-2 design.

And now, this.

Flasheart, one of their "old head" astronauts, had apparently taken it into his head to insult the late Bob Johnson. That alone would have qualified him for this quarters galactic stupidity award, but he'd chosen to do so in front of Bob's friend Johnny Olds. Nobody had been hurt in the ensuing prank war so far, but given the way things were escalating and the abundance of explosives, flammables, and toxic compounds around the Center Grey figured it was only a matter of time. Clearly, something Had To Be Done.

As he scanned the latest damage report, Grey rubbed his forehead and sighed. It was time to take strong measures. He picked up the phone and dialed.

"Gordo? It's Chase Grey. Yeah, don't ask. Listen, I've got a little problem here and I was hoping I could call in a- well, you old son of a gun. Took the words right out of my mouth. Thule Air Force Base? In Greenland? Plumbing Control Officer? Yeah, that sounds just about perfect. How soon can you have the orders cut? Gordo, you are my favorite Pentagon-bound office drone and don't let anyone ever tell you different. I owe you surf and turf next time I'm in DC. Yeah. Love to Marylou and the kids. Bye."

Grey hung up the phone, whistling through his teeth. Some problems, it seemed, really did have easy solutions.

Still alive, guys. Family emergency is settled, so things are improving on my end, also I recently completed a big writing project in SDNW4 which sort of improves my ability to get stuff going.

PeZook, I need to check two things with you before posting a plan.

1) PeZook, you DID schedule the manned Digaditch/Borisov Voskhod flight as one that would rendevous with a docking module already in orbit, correct? I've tossed two of the things up there last season and one more this season; I'm kind of banking on that. If not, I have a backup plan which is slightly modified. But please check to be sure that's what's scheduled before doing ANYTHING with this plan.

If you instead scheduled a mission where the docking module goes up into orbit with the rocket, that's fine, but I need to know in advance so I can budget the hardware.

2) How's Kicker-B doing? I budgeted for R&D for that last season, but the Red Army Flashcard Corps didn't get that one to me. Maybe their truck broke down or something.

There is also a question for the Zenobian player-base, about the upcoming Mars probe flight. That is detailed at the bottom of this post.

________

PeZook wrote:ZENOBIA
BAIKONUREK

The administrative office inside the main bunker was dead silent. Syrgy Pavylyvych was not satisfied - it was obvious, because the man rarely let his anger show.

The comissar was slowly reloading his pistol magazines by the wall, which didn't exactly put the program heads at ease.

"Electrical cables. First fuel tubing, now electrical cables...", Syrgy stopped himself short of saying something really bad about Commienist industry, "...at least we know where the guidance and engine problems lay. But can we fix this on time?"

"There is a solution, comrade Chief Designer, but you are not going to like it.", a young research assistant said.

"Let us hear it first, shall we?"

"Well...it is possible to purchase high-quality electronic cables from...abroad. Murca, to be precise. At great expense and effort, but it is possible. We could rewire the capsules and the problem should be solved..."

The commissar's eyes narrowed, "And how would you know that, comrade?"

"I...uh...I...", the assistant choked up under the comissar's steely gaze, "Intertrade has researched the problem for me!", he finished with a high pitched voice.

"On the other hand, the season wasn't all bad.", the docking program head quickly saved the assistant from interrogation, "Both docking modules have separated and powered up properly, and we have been running systems tests on them. We have a good idea of guidance and telemetry problems that could arise during this season's tests."

The Chief Designer nodded.

"Da, this is good. And young comrade Razumikhin, that might solve our problem, but I do not think we are quite to such a state of emergency yet." Pavylyvych chuckled. "I think I see the difficulty here- it is as much procedural as anything else, a matter of quality control. Parts which are broken must be identified, soldering joints must be checked for proper smoothness and connectivity under a microscope and tested for strength so that they do not come undone in flight, and so forth. The designers will have to go back over some of these modules intended for Zond- have we overlooked anything else?"

"But, what of the next docking test, coming up so soon..."

"We'll have to take our chances with that. If the dummy capsule doesn't come back, it's not the end of the world. But I want everyone to be most careful with the manned flight. Everyone must check their own work carefully, and then everyone's work must be checked by others to spot what they missed. There can be no slacking, and no incompetence! Lives and the honor of the Zenobian Onion hinge on our efforts, people!"

"Da, Comrade Chief Designer!"

---

[some minutes later, alone with the commissar]

...

"Comrade Omeganski, I know the value of making sure that everyone here, myself included, appreciates the... urgency and necessity of our tasks. To punish failure and root out disloyalty, essential. In particular, we are going to pass through a very difficult phase of quality control in the next few months, and I suspect there will be the need to punish a number of failures. I respect your efforts in this vein. And yet..."

The commissar's eyebrow rose suspiciously. "And yet?"

"And yet... while engineers are trying to solve problems in the most efficient way possible, intimidating them so that they dare not speak is a risky practice. A broken machine does not get fixed if people cannot talk about how to fix it. I know it raises difficulties, but... there it is." Pavylvych spread his hands.

Omeganski's gaze was cold. He nodded slightly, acknowledging that something had been said, but Syrgy did not know what he thought of it.

"Also, Comrade Commissar, there is one other matter. It involves the upcoming launch of the Mars probe."

"Da?"

"The Murcans are, as you know, scheduling a similar launch. They have announced the date, and unfortunately their launch date is before ours- their probe would arrive at Mars first, if we both launch according to schedule. This is... not good."

"Nyet, not good. What are you saying?"

"Well, comrade, as I have explained before, the concept of 'launch windows' to the planets is somewhat flexible. The greater the velocity you can impart to your payload, the more choices of launch dates you have. In our case, the velocity which we can impart to our payload is defined by the thrust of the Proton booster and the weight of the Mars probe. This determined our choice of launch date, but we may be able to accelerate slightly..."

"How?"

"Anyway, there are a number of alternate proposals- we can remove a few backup systems from the probe, reduce its weight, and launch sooner. But this means haste in preparing the rocket, which comes with a somewhat increased risk of booster failure. Also, less redundancy in the probe. I am not really happy with this idea, but given our past experience with the Venera and Luna* probes, I think we could... probably get away with it. Probably, though it makes me quite nervous."

"So, we could accelerate the launch by one month, and be sure of getting our probe to Mars first, but with greater risk of failure. Or we could launch on schedule, but then we would only get to Mars first if the Murcans' Ranger-Marinateroid probing is a failure, and if their probe succeeds, they will probe Mars before we do."

"This is true. The troublesome part is that waiting to launch on schedule improves our chance of getting to Mars at all. I feel safe in saying that our hardware is, in this matter, somewhat superior to the Murcan's. But not that superior, not enough to permit us the luxury of being sloppy."

"Da, I see, comrade Pavylyvych. Which do you plan to do?"

"I am... uncertain, comrade. There are many variables, it seems almost even either way. This is why I come to you for advice."
______________

*Author's note: I'm using Soviet designations. As far as the game is concerned, the Venus and Moon flyby missions were Cosmos flights.
Spoiler

Simon_Jester wrote: 1) PeZook, you DID schedule the manned Digaditch/Borisov Voskhod flight as one that would rendevous with a docking module already in orbit, correct? I've tossed two of the things up there last season and one more this season; I'm kind of banking on that. If not, I have a backup plan which is slightly modified. But please check to be sure that's what's scheduled before doing ANYTHING with this plan.

I did, it's scheduled as the last flight this season, and it's a rendezvos in orbit that doesn't have to carry its own docking module.

Simon_Jester wrote:2) How's Kicker-B doing? I budgeted for R&D for that last season, but the Red Army Flashcard Corps didn't get that one to me. Maybe their truck broke down or something.

Uhh...no you didn't, actually.

Crap.

I'm sorry. I've been looking back through not just the post I made, but several draft copies I made at different times while figuring out what to do with my budget. The "Do Kicker-B research" budget is one I worked out separately, and not the one that made the final cut. My mistake.

So that just leaves the question of whether to rush the Mars launch one month, or not to rush the Mars launch one month.

Any thoughts, people?

The Commissar carfully considered what Comrade Pavylyvych had said, true enough he was here to ensure success and idealogical purity, but this was not as simple as it had been during The Great Salvation War: Part Deux, engineers were not quite as expendable as the endless divisions of the Red Army.

Perhaps a new policy would have to be called for, while punishment for failure would not go away, perhaps it could be lessened somewhat, and new more impressive and elaborate punishment could be brought in for those who kept quiet about problems, that should certianly help the Comrade Chief Designer find the faults in the program,yes yes, he nodded to himself while thinking.

"If it is your honest opinion Director that we stand the most chance by launching after the Muricans, then we shall launch after the Muricans, to give us a greater chance of success, while arriving second shames us, it shames us not as much as failing to arrive at all"

He broke out into a grin, it was quite unnerving.

"Besides, if we are lucky the Muricans rushed and pathetic rocket program will suffer from being launched prematurley and thier pride will be left hanging limp da? Now if you will excuse me, I must go and work upon some new guidlines that you have inspired"
Spoiler

Shroomanski says "Da!"

"Umm....

Da to which?"

"To the MARS PROBE! The faster one!"

"Da to the faster one! I see!"

[gives orders to remove backup battery]

"Perhaps," says Unnamed Zenobian Engineerski, "the Premier means to say that whatever decision we make has his full support and we have his complete confidence in our methods and leadersh-"

Unnamed Zenobian Engineerski decides to shut the hell up about politics before he says the wrong thing and is forced to telecommute from someplace with a name like Asskutsk.

OK, I think I'm going for the 'accelerated launch' option. The probability of success is still decent, and the expectation value of the prestige award is practically identical either way.


PeZook, a question of personnel management: what exactly happens if I put together two incompatible cosmonauts, such as Brzeczyszczykiewicz/Mametov? Obviously, morale declines, but does it decline extremely fast, or merely at a moderate rate such as 5 points/season?

Because right now I only have three flight crews, and I'm considering scheduling a mission next season, but I'd have to put together an incompatible crew, send them up in Spring '67, and break them up in Fall '67.

Looks like it's time for me to train the Group III cosmonauts...


EDIT: Whose names are in the ring for Group III, considering that a lot of the cosmonauts for Groups I and II have left or will be leaving soon?

Hmm... I might volunteer as someone who escaped the regretfully non-commienist Canuckistan or whatever we're calling Canada.

Simon_Jester wrote: PeZook, a question of personnel management: what exactly happens if I put together two incompatible cosmonauts, such as Brzeczyszczykiewicz/Mametov? Obviously, morale declines, but does it decline extremely fast, or merely at a moderate rate such as 5 points/season?

I think there's a random component, but I've never seen an incompatible crew go down by less than 10 points each. On the other hand, extremely prestigious flights might be worth it, if you break the crew right afterwards, since they give huge bonuses to the involved cosmonauts.

Simon_Jester wrote: EDIT: Whose names are in the ring for Group III, considering that a lot of the cosmonauts for Groups I and II have left or will be leaving soon?

I think we only have one candidate so far! Comrades, this deficiency must be quickly adressed by heroic feats of socialist labor!

Hmm. Duration C is... moderately prestigious, I think. I'm not entirely sure. I'll check later, though if anyone remembers and can rattle that off for me I'd be obliged, since I may be away from my copy of the player's reference card and the game tonight.

Sorry, but I don't think I'll get my plan out before you hit the sack, PeZook. Tomorrow, I think.

I'll throw two into the pool for Group III cosmonauts:

-Artemy Lebedev: Really wanted to be an industrial designer growing up. This being the Zenobian Onion, they said "oh, an engineer" and posted him to a Mick factory. He was behind the massive production surge that filled an order which turned out to have been for the entire war in a few months. Ztalin sent his thanks, sent a collection of medals to divvy up between themselves (In the ensuing fight he got his eye poked out by an Order of Commienest Labor which he wound up keeping) and promptly shipped all the workers to the front to maintain all the new planes because they weren't needed in the factories anymore. When he arrived he was mistaken for an ace pilot, and promptly sent out to fight the Thanasians. He never actually learned to dive bomb, but it turned out his lack of skill and depth perception cancelled each other out perfectly, and he made it to the short list for missions that involve dropping things on other things, in this case himself on earth. He also really really loves robin's egg blue.

-Manov Smirnoff: The result of a secret Zenobian project to solve their budgetary issues forever, by making a gland for citizens that secretes vodka. Due to the massive consumption uptick at the cosmodrome (doubled vodka rations and all), he was sent to be a cosmonaut, an idea which made even more sense when they got to figuring out where they'd put the vodka bottles in the capsule. Yes, he is always drunk. No, his left big toe is not a tap.

But can it be tapped? You know, maple tree style? Or a reverse IV?

Simon_Jester wrote:Hmm. Duration C is... moderately prestigious, I think. I'm not entirely sure. I'll check later, though if anyone remembers and can rattle that off for me I'd be obliged, since I may be away from my copy of the player's reference card and the game tonight.

Sorry, but I don't think I'll get my plan out before you hit the sack, PeZook. Tomorrow, I think.

Duration C is worth 5 prestige, for the first and second attempt.


Orbitting a minishuttle, though. Now that's prestige. The first nation to do that gets 20 points. The second gets blown away and will only nail 8 points.

Some other ratings:

Lunar probe landing: 16 first, 9 second
Manned Lunar Pass: 12 first, 5 second
Manned Lunar Orbit: 20 first, 7 second
Manned docking: 8 first, 4 second

doom3607 wrote:But can it be tapped? You know, maple tree style? Or a reverse IV?

I wouldn't encourage pairing him with a vampsylvanian, that's for sure.

Just for that, can I make a vampire cosmonaut? Please?

doom3607 wrote:Just for that, can I make a vampire cosmonaut? Please?

Vampires are a bourgeois affectation that preys on the blood, sweat, and tears of the proletariat, and are not permitted in a program which demands exemplars of the New Zenobian Mang such as the cosmonaut corps.

Nyet.

I know about the minishuttle- but basically, I'm trying to get some firsts out of Voskhod while I can... Hm.

Thinking about it, I'm going to need all the money I can get to start work on Lapot next season, so on balance it's probably not worth the manned Duration C attempt. Certainly not in such a rush, since there's a good chance I don't know what my budget for next season looks like.