Lunar landing variants

[Sabratha]

What are the sensible or just interesting lunar landing mission options you would like to see? Here are my ideas:
1) Obviously the historic Apollo mission.
2) A gemini variant. While the gemini had its flaws, it was always seen as a backup moon plan to apollo. It was smaller and lighter, so at some point there was a suggestion of using gemini and two Titans or Staurn IBs and skipping the developpment of Saturn V alltogeather. Overall it would probably have been a faster, but more risky alternative to the Apollo.
3) Soviet N1 rocket and L3 lander combination. Staple soviet plan, remained at the forefront until the N1 was deemed unusefull.
4) An alternative (and imho actually more realistic) soviet option was to use Vladimir Chelomei's LK-700 lander and Konstantin Glushko's UR-700 rocket, both by Korolyev's competitors.
It was actually a pretty sound and straightforward direct landing plan. Although probably wouldn't beat the americans to the moon, but it was a less risky and would likely be much elss accident-prove option than the N1. Given some political will, it migth have realistically put a soviet cosmonaut on the moon somewhere in the early or mid 70s.

[Nacho84]

Hello Sabratha,

Apollo and Gemini missions are definitely included in the game. In fact, I've now finished assembling the scripts for three lunar Gemini variants (Gemini lunar flyby, Gemini lunar orbital and Gemini Direct Ascent). Hopefully you'll get them on the next update this Friday.

Regarding the Soviets programs, we'll see what we can do.

Cheers,

[Sabratha]

Hello Sabratha,

Apollo and Gemini missions are definitely included in the game. In fact, I've now finished assembling the scripts for three lunar Gemini variants (Gemini lunar flyby, Gemini lunar orbital and Gemini Direct Ascent). Hopefully you'll get them on the next update this Friday.

Regarding the Soviets programs, we'll see what we can do.

Cheers,

I don't think the soviet attempts need to be in the game at this early beta point, but I'm pretty certain they are a must for the campaign mode at final release. Not having a possible soviet lunar landing in the campaign, would be like having a 2nd punic war game without hannibal being able to beseige Rome. Or like a civil war game without the possibility of Lee invading the north.

I think this is one of the core fundamental values of these sort of historical games - the players will want to see if they, by making different decisions, can influence and change the final outcome. Playing as the underdog and winning where the RL side lost was always a big thing in gaming. that's why so many players prefer to play the Napoleonic side at waterloo games, play as Rommel in the desert, as Hannibal at Zama etc.

Just my 2 cents.

Oh also a big two thumbs up for giving us the gemini direct landing option. Always great to see a hypotethical (yet historically feasible) option available to players.

[N_Molson]

I pretty much support what is said above. Also I think that the game offer the possibilty of "two technological paths" :

- A NASA-hardware inspired path, with the items and missions linked by goals and technology transfers.
- A USSR-hardware inspired path, ... ... ...

Each program having its strongpoints and weakness for a given era. For example the "Soviet path" could give you nice advantages at the beginning (the golden era of Sputnik, Luna, Vostok & Voskhod), then suffer of high R&D durations/costs for a not-so-good max R&D reliability when getting to the Lunar Landing mission. That would more or less reflect what really happened (Soyuz & N-1 caused a lot of problems to the Soviets, they probably needed a few more years for that technology to be mature enough. But Apollo was already there and running well, despite the tragedy of "Apollo 1"). The contrary for NASA hardware : a sluggish start with expensive and long to research hardware, but technological advantages as soon as Gemini is running (that program has been a real technology testbed for Apollo, including the docking techniques that the Soviets did not master before the 1970's).

There is already a Soviet lunar mission IMHO almost ready to be manned : the "lunar flyby and free-return-trajectory" Zond program. Modifying the scripts and adding radio chatter would probably make it, plus a few animation sequences, like looking at the Moon through the hatch, and a recovery scene with the 2 cosmonauts rescued by an helicopter.

But of course, the priority should be to finish what was planned.

[Sabratha]

Each program having its strongpoints and weakness for a given era. For example the "Soviet path" could give you nice advantages at the beginning (the golden era of Sputnik, Luna, Vostok & Voskhod), then suffer of high R&D durations/costs for a not-so-good max R&D reliability when getting to the Lunar Landing mission. That would more or less reflect what really happened (Soyuz & N-1 caused a lot of problems to the Soviets, they probably needed a few more years for that technology to be mature enough. But Apollo was already there and running well, despite the tragedy of "Apollo 1"). The contrary for NASA hardware : a sluggish start with expensive and long to research hardware, but technological advantages as soon as Gemini is running (that program has been a real technology testbed for Apollo, including the docking techniques that the Soviets did not master before the 1970's).

I very much agree with all you wrote. I do think that the soyuz however should ultimately have a rather high max R&D reliability, just that the research process would be long to reach that. Soyuz had a lot of teething problems, but actually ended up as a reliable and modifiable design that managed to outlive the space shuttle and its versions are still used today.
Of the zounds of soyuz missions, only two ended in fatalities and both in its "early life".

As for the NASA vs Soviet programs, I also think that in the campaign game the US should get more and more money after the Kennedy moon speech, while the soviets money increases should be visibly lesser.
However, the soviet side should have its own benefits. First of all the prestige loss for unmanned mission failures shuld be negligible for the soviets, because both of the secrecy and the entire engineering philosophy.
Unlike the NASA approach, the notion of trial-and-error was a core element of soviet designs and repeated mechanical failures in the testing phase were seen as a neceassary thing. Launching several test rockets and learning one's lesson by watching each explode was part of the soviet approach.
That's why I also think that R&D loss after launch failures should be much smaller for the soviet side than for NASA.

In short: I think in the game NASA should have more money and be able to run more paralel projects than the soviets, but catastrophic failures should be much more problematic for NASA.
The soviets should have less money, but could be able to withstand numerous unmanned catastrophic failures with negligible prestige loss and with relatively small R&D loss.
So NASA should have more leeway in investment and program choices, while the soviets should have more leeway when it comes to mission failues.