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NISSKEPCSIM's Career - An Alternate History-style Mission Report Series


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Post #11 - June 11th, 2017

An excerpt from 'History of Kerbin: 1900 - Onwards.' Published in 2007. Written by Fredbo Kerman.

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Chapter 5: 1937-1943

Time Period: The Second Great War

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Above: A map of Kerbin during the WWII era; The orange lines represent the fluctuating borders during the war.

  The Second Great War (WWII) has to be the deadliest and largest armed conflict in the history of Kerbin. The war began when a megalomaniac named Schnitzel Kerman decided that it was time Germany became a global superpower, and advanced upon the Western European countries swiftly. The German Air Force used a technique called 'Blitzkrieg,' where their aircraft would bomb the important and vital facilities, such as power stations, phone lines, fuel stations, and food storage. The enemy, disoriented, and incapable of calling for help, with no access to food, fuel, or electricity, would then by overrun by tanks sent by the German Army.

  On the 7th September, 1937, the war officially began. Poland, Denmark, France, Spain, and Italy were quickly overrun in the course of only a few days, and the United Kingdom, which, at the time, consisted of the island nation of Britain, the Dominion of Canada, and the Australian Territories, declared war on the German Empire. The Luftwaffe, the German Air Force at the time, began to bomb major cities such as London and Ottawa. British and German planes battled in the skies above Britain, Australia, and Canada, and millions of pilots died during these battles, dubbed 'The Battles of the British Empire,' and hundreds of thousands more civilians were killed during the bombings.

  The German Empire and also formed an alliance with the Asian nation of China. However, on the 12th December, 1937, Germany broke this pact, invading Northern Asia. Cina was quickly conquered by the German 'Blitzkrieg' attack, and the country, along with dozens of other Asian countries, were subjected to the harsh rule of the German leader. The war was proceeding smoothly, with the Western and Eastern Fronts advancing rapidly. At the time, the death toll was at least 5 million people, both civilians and soldiers, on both sides.

  However, on the 22nd October, 1938, Schnitzel Kerman made a terrible mistake. He ordered his troops to invade the Soviet Union (USSR). Though the initial attack went rather well, using the identical 'Blitzkrieg' technique the Luftwaffe had used for dozens of other countries, the Eastern Front expanded up, through the small funnel at the Southernmost tip of the USSR in mainland Europe, and into the centre of the enormous nation.

  The German troops successfully conquered the Southern USSR - however, that was only because of the sole reason that they entered at the equator, at fairly reasonable temperatures. However, as the German Army advanced, slowly but surely, the temperature reached minus-40 degrees Celsius, absolutely unbearable for the soldiers, and they were forced to retreat, back into Eastern Europe. The German Army had unleashed the wrath of the beast that is the Soviet Union, and, from that point onwards, the 'Red Army,' as the Russian Army was known at the time, began a relentless march towards Berlin, the capital of Germany.

  During the whole process, which lasted more than a year, over 10 million Kerbals, on both sides, were killed, bringing the total fatalities up to 15 million people. It was then, on the 3rd January, 1940, that Schnitzel Kerman made his second fatal mistake. He decided to invade the United States of America (USA / America). His troops on the Western Front marched into the Southernmost tip of the United States, and captured the area with ease. They heavily fortified the Front with an enormous concrete wall, 20 metres high, a construction operation that took nearly two months, fortifying the border with barbed wire, machine gun emplacements, and heavy artillery batteries.

  However, this sparked a level of outrage never seen before in the American public. Until then, most Americans were unwilling the enter the war. However, the invasion of the state of Arizona sparked the interest of the USA, and the nation entered the war officially of the 10th March, 1940. The United States began their involvement in the war by giving the Germans a taste of their own medicine - quite literally. The Americans formed their own version of the German's 'Blitzkrieg' tactic, beginning to use B-17 Superfortress bombers to drop incendiary and high-explosive bombs on the Western Front and Central Germany on the 7th November, 1940.

  The American's bombing runs were known as the 'Flaming Arrival of Hell' among the German soldiers on the Western Front. During mid-1942, with the Americans and the Britain Empire approaching Germany from the west, and the Soviet Union relentlessly marching towards it from the east, all hope seemed lost for the German Empire. However, on the 1st January, 1943, with the Americans and Russians mere hundreds of kilometres away, Schnitzel Kerman revealed to the world a newly designed weapon - a poison gas, which was highly flammable, and highly deadly.

  Bombs containing this gas were dropped over the Eastern and Western fronts, striking a crippling blow the Allies, the name given to the group of nations that were fighting against Germany. The death toll had now reached 25 million people, including both sides, both civilians and non-civilians. The Germans continued to drop these gas bombs on Allied defenses, pushing the Americans, British, and Russian back to where they were months before, thousands of kilometres away from victory.

  The global conflict reached its climax when, on July the 21st, 1943, the United States, after months of extensive research and testing, unveiled a new form of bomb - the Atomic Bomb. These bombs would have a blast yield located in the field of kilotons - a unit of measurement where 1 kiloton was equal to 1 thousand pounds (approx. 454 kilograms) of TNT (Trinitrotoluene). Two of these bombs were dropped - one on the German city of Nuremberg, where the actions of the military were planned and organised, and the location of the German's production factories of their poison gas bombs. A second one was dropped on the German-occupied city of Brussels, in Belgium, where the highest concentration of German weaponry and soldiers were located.

Each of these Atomic Bombs had a blast yield of 20 kilotons - equal to 20,000 pounds (approx. 9072 kilograms) of TNT, with a blast radius of over 1 mile (approx. 1.6 kilometres), completely levelling both cities, killing hundreds of thousands of people within the seconds of the bombs detonating, and killing millions of people in the weeks and months that followed, due to radiation poisoning and cancer caused by the radiation. The total death toll of the Second Great War was now at 40 million people.

  The Allied nations continued their march towards Germany, with the Atomic bombings disorienting the German army enough that the USSR and the United States to capture Berlin, the capital of the German Empire, with almost no resistance whatsoever, on October 1st, 1943. Moreover, when American soldiers searched the secure bunker that Schnitzel Kerman was hiding in, they discovered him, lying, face-flat, on the floor, with cyanide foaming from his mouth. The German leader had killed himself, rather than facing the life of a war criminal.

  The remaining German leaders surrendered to the Allies three days later, on October 4th, 1943. October 4th is now celebrated around the world as Victory (VE) Day. The Second Great War was finally over. The total death toll had reached over 43 million people, both soldiers and civilians, on both the Allied and German sides. The Soviet Union had suffered the most casualties, at 20 million people. Shortly after the conclusion of the Second Great War, an organisation, named the United Nations (UN), was formed, an organisation that's top priority was to restore peace to the world, to prevent such armed conflicts from happening again, and to perform peacekeeping in countries that were engaged in civil wars. So far, there have been no more global armed conflicts on a scale of what was experienced during WWII.

Summary: Backstory stuff that isn't that important.

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Post #12 - June 11th, 2017

An excerpt from 'History of Kerbin: 1900 - Onwards.' Published in 2007. Written by Fredbo Kerman.

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Chapter 6: 1943-1978

Time Period: The Cold War - 1st Half

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Above: A map of Kerbin during the 1st half of the Cold War era.

  After the conclusion of the Second Great War, the Allied nations began the long and drawn-out process of cutting themselves a 'slice of the cake' - ie: Deciding which countries that they occupied during the war would they keep, which countries the other nations kept, and what was located in between. The decision was made to split Germany into two parts - one controlled by the Soviet Union, and one controlled by both Britain and the United States. And, because Berlin was the capital of Germany, Berlin itself was split into two halves, one controlled by the USSR, East Berlin, and one controlled by the remaining Allies, Britain and America, West Berlin.

  The section of Europe controlled by the USA spread down, through the funnel that German soldiers used to invade the Southern United States, and all the way to Berlin, where the line was drawn as to where the Allied territory ended, and the Soviet territory began. However, the section of land the US controlled was only a small section of Western Europe, consisting of the tiny upper section of Canada, which was vital if the United States wanted their territory to lead all the was to West Berlin. This small upper section of Canada, known at the time as the 'West Europe Bridge,' later became a fully-integrated state of the United States in 1972 when Canada gave the small piece of land to the United States, known as the state of Pontouest, the 51st state of America. In fact, the words 'Pont Ousest' mean 'Western Bridge' in French, the second official language in Canada, after English. Western Europe was not under the control of any one country, but rather contained dozens of other countries, each independant from each other, rendering Germany the only country that continued to be occupied by the Allies after WWII ended.

  In the middle of the city of Berlin, over on the other side of the border that divided West and East Germany, was the territory controlled by the Soviet Union - East Germany. The USSR had, under its control, East Berlin, the entirety of Eastern Europe, including all of the countries within, and, away from the Russian mainland, down in the far, far South of Kerbin, was Yugorussa (Yoo-go-roo-sa). Yugorussa was a small territory at Kerbin's South Pole, used for nuclear weapons tests, and to launch various satellites into polar orbits from a launch site there. Back on the mainland, the Soviet union still had complete control over the Russian continent, the enormous area of land that took up 1 third of the world's land mass. As well as bordering Northern and Southern Asia, and Western Europe, the Soviet Union also directly bordered the African continent directly via Eastern Europe, as well as the enormous peninsula that reaches around to contain the Indian Ocean; That peninsula was and still is separated from the Easternmost tip of the African Continent by only a few kilometres, and is known as the Strait of Sykhaputnymost (Soo-ha-poot-n-yi most). The last border between the USSR and another land mass, perhaps quite alarmingly, was at the Northernmost point of the United States - dozens of miles of guard towers and control checkpoints separating the United States and the Soviet Union - a direct entrance from Russia to the US.

  However, after the conclusion of the Second Great War, a series of events known as the 'Cold War' followed. Though it was not a war in the conventional sense - it was a contest to display military superiority between the United States and the Soviet Union via the stockpiling testing of nuclear weapons of greater and greater explosive yield. After the Second Great War ended, the American public no longer had the threat of the Germans looming over them. Desperate for a replacement, the public decided to pin Communism as their new enemy. Conspiracy theories began to crop up around America, portraying Communism as an 'evil' force. And, because the Soviet Union were a Socialist regime, and Socialism was the closest thing available at the time that represented Communism, the Soviet Union was pinned as the latest 'evil' and 'dastardly' threat to the United States. The American government began perceiving pro-Communist citizens in the country as spies and possible security threats, and anti-Communism protest marches were held over America.

  Thanks to this 'Cold War,' the relations between the Soviet Union and the United States slowly deteriorated, with tension between the two superpowers rapidly rising. On August 3rd of 1964 (Year 1, Day 62), the Russians abruptly fortified the border between West and East Berlin overnight, laying down lines of barbed wire and armed mines. Soviet troops also laid down miles of barbed wire and mines along the Northern border crossing between the US and the USSR.

  This surprising and totally unexpected move by the Soviet Union had outraged the United States and Britain, who decided to dispatch troops to patrol the borders and attempt to negotiate with the Russians to undo their surprise fortification of the borders between them and the United States. However, the Soviet Union refused, also dispatching their own troops to patrol the border. The event almost resulted in a conflict between US and Russian troops - the resulting skirmish would have been enough to ignite the fire needed to start a third world war. Though, thankfully, WWIII did not become a reality, and the Russians simply increased the fortification of their borders, which they now dubbed the 'Berlin Wall' and 'Northern US Border' respectively.

  The Soviet Union continued to fortify their borders with the US. The Soviet Union and the United States each set up 'Neutral Zones' at both borders. The USSR fortified the border with electrified fences and barbed wire atop those fences, with entrance checkpoints to allow free movement between East and West Berlin. The US did similar, setting up chain-link fences with barbed wire atop them 500 metres from the Soviet's border, with their own checkpoints to allow access from the USSR to the US. The 500 metres between the Soviet border(s) and the American border(s) were declared 'Neutral Zones '- Areas where neither US nor Russian law applied - but rather, only international law applied there. These 'Neutral Zones' contained restaurants, shopping centres (malls), and gift shops, with 250 metres of these 'Neutral Zones' dedicated to Russian merchandise, cuisine, products, etc, and the other 250 for US merchandise, cuisine, and products. In essence, citizens living in West Berlin or the Northern United States could enter the 'Neutral Zone' between both countries, and experience a taste of what life was like in the Soviet Union, and vise versa.

  However, while this arrangement was more than satisfactory for both sides, the countries of the Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe and the American-controlled Western Europe were tired of being subjected to the rule of these global superpowers, and, in 1978, due to highly increased political movements and protests, the US and the USSR were forced to give control of the territories they had acquired during the Second Great War back to the independant nations they consisted of, and the 2nd half of the 'Cold War' began.

Summary: Backstory stuff that is slightly more important due to its explaining of what territories the US and Russia currently control.

Edited by NISSKEPCSIM
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Sorry about the exposition and backstory dump, but I felt it was kind of necessary to detail where the US and Russian launch sites were, and what regions they controlled, to give some historical, geographical, and political context.

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Post #13 - June 17th, 2017

Year 1, Day 62 (September 13th, 1964)

After the successful orbital test flight of the 'Dyna-Soar' 'X-20' shuttle during the 'STS-11' mission, work by the Rockomax-FTP Corporation immediately begun into the study and manufacturing of a reusable variant of the company's extremely successful 'Atlas' booster rocket, their first excursion into the world of commercial launch vehicles. Multiple concepts were proposed, including but not limited to those where the booster performed an RTLS (Return-To-Launch-Site) boost-back burn, and then landed vertically under rocket power, those where the engine segment of the booster detached from the relatively cheap fuel tank and landed on the runway at the KSC like an aircraft, utilising the 'Rogallo' paraglider wing. Other concepts proposed catching the booster out of the air with a massive, not-yet-in-existence helicopter using an enormous harpoon and net system.

But, finally, after weeks of arguments and design research, it was determined that the simplest and most effective solution was to utilise the enormous wings attached to the sides of the booster to counter the lift of the 'Dyna-Soar' lifting body, and fly the booster back to the Kerbal Space Centre using two large high-altitude, high-thrust turbo ramjet jet engines, where it would land back at the runway, and the full cost of the booster, minus the miniscule cost of the fuel, would be refunded, as the same booster could be reused tens of dozens of times, with only minor refurbishment required in-between.

However, this conclusion was not reached after numerous failures of another system that was scrapped in favour of the fly-back booster concept. Rockomax-FTP had begun work on a version of the 'Atlas' that augmented the wings with a buoyant bottom to allow landings in the ocean after the booster separated. However, the project experienced some... problems, to say the least. The first test of this water-landing booster resulted in a tragic loss of control, leading to a major stall, where the booster plummeted into the water and met its demise. The second test resulted in another major stall, however, this time, the remote operators regained control of the booster, and glided it down into the water... where it was shredded to pieces by the choppy sea.

And so, on August 23rd, 1964, a new study for the 'Atlas RM,' or Reusable Model booster was proposed - one where the booster would fly back to the KSC under the power of its own jet engines.

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The components required for this booster were manufactured, the design finalised, and the finished product rolled out onto the runway at the KSC on Year 1, Day 62 (September 13th, 1964), for the third test flight of the 'Atlas RM' booster, and the first test flight of this new, revised model of the booster, which was designed to land on... well, land, rather than landing on water. The booster's design was extremely simple; it was identical to the boosters used to launch the 'Dyna-Soar' shuttles, with the exception of being equipped with two canard at the front of the booster, and two small engine pods at the rear, each containing a 'J-X4' turbo ramjet engine for high-altitude, high-speed flight. This 'RM' model was also equipped with landing gear - all in all, only 5 extra metric tons of weight - quite a small penalty considering that the reward was full recovery and reusability!

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And so, after hours of pre-flight checks, with the media covering the launch and broadcasting it around the world (Though with less publicity than the previous 'Skylab,' 'Soyuz,' and 'ATV' launches). The spectators were eagerly awaiting the launch of the new booster, to view the rocket rising majestically upon a pillar of smoke into the heavens like a mythical bird. And, at 4:28 PM, the booster did just that, inspiring a generation of future aeronautical engineers at the marvel of space exploration.

The 'Atlas RM' booster rose through the air, its one great RE-M3 kerolox engine and three smaller LV-R1 vernier engines producing over 1.3 mega-newtons of thrust, more than enough to counter the force of gravity and propel the booster on an arcing suborbital trajectory. After cutting-off its main engine at an altitude of 45 kilometres, the booster coasted to Apoapsis. Forty-five seconds before reaching Apoapsis, the booster re-ignited its RE-M3 main engine to begin, but not complete, an orbital insertion burn. After completing the Periapsis raise burn, the booster aligned itself at a 15 degrees Angle of Attack (AoA), and prepared for re-entry. The booster re-entered the atmosphere 200 kilometres downrange of the launch site after 5 minutes of flight, travelling at under 1000 metres per second, barely enough to coax some flames from the atmosphere.

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After a flame-absent re-entry, the booster slowly banked back towards the KSC, and ignited its turbo ramjets. The J-X4 engines propelled the booster to speeds of over mach 3 - more that 1 kilometre per second! After another 5 minutes of flight, the booster shut down its engines and deployed its airbrakes, slowing itself down just as it passed overhead of the Kerbal Space Centre. A deafening sonic boom sounded across the cape on which the KSC was located as the booster decelerated below supersonic speeds.

The 'Atlas RM' booster glided over the runway, and started to bank, re-orienting itself to face the runway after flying around it to bleed off speed. The remote-controlled booster retracted its airbrakes to perform the final landing approach, extending its landing gear, and softly touching down after just 13 minutes of flight, with the rear gear touching down first, and then the nose gear. The airbrakes and drogue parachutes deployed mere seconds later, and the booster slowed to a halt on the runway at the KSC, performing the very first act of the recovery of a launch vehicle in Kerbal history.

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However, on Year 1, Day 63 (October 2nd, 1964), tragedy struck. President John F. Kermanndy's wife, Jacqueline Kermanndy, was killed by a bullet intended for her husband, during a presidential motorcade through Dallas, Texas. The shooter or the weapon was never found, with the bullet that struck and killed Jacqueline being shattered into indistinguishable fragments during the impact. The assassination attempt struck a fatal blow to the United States, sending America into political turmoil, with the Secret Service and the DOD questioning how they were incapable of detecting such a security threat, and the citizens of the United States in shock at how easily a terrorist just shot and killed J.F.K.'s wife.

However, the quest to the Mun was still a top priority, and John Kermanndy was in perfect health. Space exploration was not taken of the roster of things to do - in fact, it was moved higher up the priority list, as the assassination attempt was seen as an attempt to derail the exploration of the cosmos.

Summary:

USA successfully launched 'Atlas RM Booster' - first successful flight of a reusable booster - Year 1, Day 62 (September 13th, 1964)

Edited by NISSKEPCSIM
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The Kennedy assassination is a difficult topic, but it does have to happen (Or an alternate one at least) in any timeline that is set during the space race. Kennedy's death was a major turning point for the race to the Moon - in fact, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the USSR at the time, had even considered performing a joint international mission to the Moon with the Americans with Kennedy - but when Kennedy died, and Nixon replaced him, Khrushchev did not trust Kennedy's successor, and so plans for an international Moon mission were abandoned. But it makes you wonder, eh? :wink:

Edited by NISSKEPCSIM
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Post #14 - 24th June, 2017

Year 1, Day 63 (January 4th, 1965)

After the successful test flight of the 'Atlas RM' booster on Year 1, Day 62 (September 13th, 1964), the Rockomax-FTP Corporation and NASA were eager to integrate the reusable booster into the 'Dyna-Soar' space shuttle system, which would allow for reusability of both the first stage and the shuttle orbiter, with only the cheap and expendable second stage being thrown away. Although the integration of the hardware and systems of the 'Atlas RM' booster to the upper stages of the 'Atlas MII-200 launch vehicle and 'X-20' glider vehicle was delayed by the attempted but unsuccessful assassination of President John F. Kermanndy, the project reached fruition on Year 1, Day 63 (January 4th, 1965), when NASA successfully launched the 'STS 12' mission, the second manned orbital flight of the 'Dyna-Soar' after the success of the first manned orbital flight of the shuttle the year before on Year 1, Day 62 (July 28th, 1964), and the first ever manned flight of the 'Atlas RM-200' reusable rocket launch system.

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The enormous and ever-so-slightly disproportionate rocket took flight majestically, rising atop a pillar of flame, with a cloud of smoke shrouding the rear of the vehicle as it broke the speed of sound and ascended into space. The first stage burned-out and was separated at an altitude of 25 kilometres, with an Apoapsis of 40 kilometres, and the second stage ignited mere seconds later, raising the Apoapsis to 90 kilometres before cutting-off and coasting to Apoapsis, the computers calculating the DeltaV and maneuvers required to place the vehicle into Low Kerbin Orbit.

The second stage re-ignited with 40 seconds to Apoapsis, and was separated with a Periapsis still well within Kerbin, at an altitude of minus-280 kilometres! The third stage, which was designed to be the orbital propulsion stage of the 'Dyna-Soar' system, and was not designed to perform orbital injections burns, with a measly maximum thrust of 33 kilonewtons, was forced to perform a two-minute long burn to place the vehicle in a stable but highly elliptical orbit, with an Apoapsis of 120 and a Periapsis of 70.

This was due to a slight miscalculation by the engineers while developing the system, and future third stages would be fitted with the much more powerful, twin-nozzle FG-90 engine, the same engine that was used on the upper stage of the 'Hercules' lifters, which, by comparison, could produce a staggering 380 kilonewtons of thrust! The 'Space Oddity' shuttle would perform two burns, one at Periapsis and the other at Apoapsis, to circularise into a 90x90 kilometre orbit. The shuttle would stay up there for one week, testing out the various long-term life-support and orbital systems aboard.

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However, while the 'Dyna-Soar' 'X-20' shuttle was performing its orbital insertion and course correction burns, down on the ground, the hundreds of spectators who had arrived to view the historic launch were observing as the 'Atlas RM' reusable booster made its flight down, landing approach, and landing.

After the booster had separated, the fairing shrouding the aerodynamic nose-cone was jettisoned, and so was the decoupler that mated the booster to the upper stages. This decoupler would be the only component of the reusable first stage booster that would not be reused. The booster ignited its twin JX-4 turbo ramjet engines, where the atmosphere was thick enough to do so without the jets flaming-out, and began a flight down towards the runway.

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The booster then throttled down once it reached an altitude of 4 kilometres, and deployed its airbrakes, passing over the runway at a casula 180 metres-per-second speed, and banking around to face the runway once again. It then deployed both its landing gear and airbrakes, and slowed to a more reasonable speed of 100 metres per second. Due to the inability of the booster to slow down under 100 metres-per-second in time before the runway ended, it had to touch down at a speed which, for a normal aircraft, would shred the tires and rupture the hydraulics of the landing gear. But this was no normal aircraft.

The booster deployed its two drogue parachutes, and slowed to a halt a mere hundreds of metres from the end of the runway, something which could most definitely be classified as "unsatisfactory," especially due to the the fact that the runway itself was over 3 kilometres long. It marked the first manned flight of the 'Atlas RM-200' reusable rocket system, and another highly successful business venture for the Rockomax-FTP corporation, and a historic moment for aerospace history as a whole.

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The Times New Roman Rumors

Year 1, Day 63 (January 6th, 1965)

NASA Secretly Flying Tourists?

By Kerbal Sitting on the Side of the Road in Tinfoil Hat

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Above: A photograph taken of the 'STS-12' Dyna-Soar orbital flight, the first manned flight of the 'Atlas RM-200' reusable 1st stage booster - and it also may be one of the first ever NASA flights which secretly contained tourists.

Washington DC: Only two days ago, images were leaked by a source within NASA, containing incriminating evidence that NASA has been flying tourists in secret on their orbital 'Dyna-Soar' missions. Each photograph contains a 'Top-Secret' stamp in the top-left corner, and shows tourists entering and exiting the spacecraft, or simply training for the mission.

When government officials were questioned about the photographs, they left no comment. In fact, more evidence has been uncovered that NASA has been flying paying customers on suborbital hops in old 'Icarus' capsules, under the guise of test fights, in order to scrape up enough funds to pay for their Mun landing missions and other goals.

The French government also recently released previously classified files following the information leak from NASA, files that were contained within the records of their intelligence agency, classified 'Top-Secret.' They contained photographs of badly charred 'Icarus' space capsules, half-buried in sand or dirt, or splashed down in the ocean, with their occupants struggling to escape, with rescue crews hauling them out of the hatches. These capsules landed in French territory, and the US government seems to have had some sort of an agreement with them to keep the information top secret.

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Above: A modified Icarus capsule containing a tourist, splashed down in French waters.

When said rescue crews were questioned by our reporters, they disclosed only once piece of information: That they were forced to sign the act of secrecy beforehand. In fact, a handful of reporters from both our and other news agencies managed to locate a warehouse building, in which the 'Icarus' capsules that nearly led their occupants to a watery or fiery demise were found after many hours of investigation.

Though the past few days have uncovered a scandal big enough to unravel NASA itself, it didn't end there. After much interrogation by our reporters, one government source finally opened up. Though he wished to remain anonymous, he did have something to say about the matter:

"I think it is scandalous that NASA thought it could get away with secretly flying tourists on sub-orbital and orbital missions. I certainly didn't have a notion that this was happening until the photographs from NASA were leaked.

"I know that the majority of the public are outraged at these events, especially so that the tourists that flew in old and rusty 'Icarus' capsules nearly lost their lives to spacecraft that broke every single safety regulation in the book, and I'd like the public to know that I, too, share their outrage.

"In my opinion, this was the last straw, first with the 'Jool-1' rocket explosion, and now this - NASA should be shut down. It is no longer capable of running itself legitimately"

Summary:

USA successfully launched 'STS 12' manned space shuttle - first manned orbital flight of any reusable rocket system - first successful manned flight of the 'Atlas RM' reusable rocket system - Year 1, Day 63 (January 4th, 1965)

Edited by NISSKEPCSIM
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