Scaring Moroccans

Routine Mission (1953-02-27): Sent up an SR-2c payload to complete a biological capsule contract. Went smoothly without issues, netting a big ol' payment which was immediately funneled to R&D.

To complete our next mission from the French Ministère des Armées, to take an early film camera and photograph a stretch of North Africa from a height of at least 100km while travelling over 200km, will require a variation of our SR-2 design:



This monster of a single engine-staged rocket is capable of taking the 160kg payload over 200km high and nearly 650km downrange, all the way to the west coast of Africa, where parachutes can bring the film down safely for study.

The mission was completed successfully on 1953-06-04. We now have 40k in funds and 39 (!) in unspent Science™. 20k of those funds are going to be push straight in to ongoing R&D, which continues to be our main priority. The sooner we can unlock new materials technology, the sooner we can make the leap to more powerful engines.


Historical aside: This design is roughly analogous to the downward range of a typical short-range ballistic missile, and is similar in capability to the Soviet R-2 missile (1951, on which its engine is based) and better than the US PGM-11 Redstone (1958) or German V-2 rocket (1944). The V-2 was also used for these sorts of film reconnaissance flights. Unlike any of these designs, our rocket remains unguided to keep costs down since we're more interested in sheer range rather than landing at a particular location.

Next Post: TestLite? More like TestSpite, am I TestRite?

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