The long road to orbit

Date: 1952-10-30

Funds: ~15k

Unspent Science: ~26

Scheduled Science: 14

Routine Mission (1952-10-27): An SR-2a launch was scheduled to perform a routine sounding rocket contract but had to be scrubbed when the rocket engines failed to ignite on the launch pad (!). There was no adverse effect to the rocket.

Routine Mission (1952-10-29): The engines were repaired and the launch was completed successfully.

Here's our plan for the next couple of years:


There's no plan to start any new programmes. For now, I expect to keep adapting and progressively enhancing the Y-1 and SR-2 designs to meet our new short-term objectives.

Our next SR-2 flight will complete a requested biological payload mission. We will then perform some further Y-1 rocket-plane experiments (the second of which will require upgrades to achieve), slap a camera on the SR-2 for some cartographic snooping, then attempt to fire the SR-2 rocket significantly downrange.

Historical Aside: Downrange rocket flight tests were extremely important historically, being the main purpose of most rocket technology. Specifically, the rockets of this era were primarily designed to mount explosive or nuclear payloads and lob them over great distances to attack other major powers. This led to the birth of SRBMs, MRBMs, IRBMs, and, eventually, ICBMs.

The first major milestone here is the completion of Avionics Prototypes research, which will hopefully allow us to control our final stages of our sounding rocket payloads and maximise our efficiency as a result, especially once we start pointing downrange.

We'll then be working on Early Material Science. This will let us step forward in to the next era of technologies and lead to genuinely new designs.

More long term, I see 1956 being the year we start looking at designing our first orbital vehicle.

Historical Aside: The famous first orbital mission Sputnik I didn't launch until late 1957, beginning the space race.

Next Post: Scaring Moroccans

 

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