On the Shoulders of Giants

[Stevphfeniey]

Howdy y'all! Some of you might remember me from some of my previous mission report series but for those who don't, I'm Stephen and this is On the Shoulders of Giants. Before we get into the thick of things I just want to give a shoutout to everyone and everything that allowed me to build, fly and write this series. To the outstanding mod makers who are the engine behind this game, to the poor stand-up guys who read my drafts, to Squad, to the writers who continue to inspire me every day, to the people who helped me troubleshoot my install, and to all the mad lads coming up with wild ideas in the space program, I say thank you to all. None of the things I've done would be possible without y'all and I dedicate this to you.

Anyway, soppy stuff over, welcome to On the Shoulders of Giants! Like I said I'm Stephen and in this series we're going to be looking at the transition between the first generation of reusable launch vehicles and the second generation, as well as anything beyond, in a JNSQ 1.8.1 install. The overarching idea behind this series is, unlike previous series I've done where we look at one or two launch systems, we're looking at several spread across the globe. Along with that, expect a few vignettes along the way.

The full mod list can be found here, and a special thanks to Zorg and his TUFX profiles that can be found here.

So, without further ado, I humbly present for your viewing and reading pleasure:

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PROLOGUE:

The Space Transportation System Booster "Enterprise" on the pad ready to liftoff on STS-161

 

The Crew Chief could see a lot of long days and oceans of paperwork ahead of her. As the hangar door closed, the warm sunlight of the late afternoon was replaced by the cold halogen lights of the building. Three years with her leading the bird's sprawling hangar gang and not a single hiccup. Until today. She chafed at the thought. She was grateful it was in mostly one piece, and she offered a silent toast to the pilots who brought her back on a wing and a prayer. As if on queue, the STS-161’s booster commander and flight engineer walked over to her after surveying the damage for themselves up close. They looked ashen, like they'd just seen their own ghosts.

“What say you about this, Chief? Enterprise is your bird after all.” the commander asked in his wide drawl.

“I'd say you two are the luckiest sons of guns out there.”

She led the two back to the looming engine section, battered and blackened. One of her four massive main engines completely gone, and the other three in various states of damage.

“When number three blew, shrapnel was about an inch from taking out your aileron hydraulics line.” She pointed her flashlight on the hole punched out by the offending hunk of metal, hair raisingly close to the yellow hydraulic lines. The Chief then pointed at the damage sustained by engines two and four.

“It was a good call opting for single engine abort. Trying to restart two and four would've sent the two of you to an early grave.” The three of them got quiet for a second, fretting at the thought of the great booster Enterprise plummeting out of control at Mach 5.

“Well,” the flight engineer started, “I estimated us at about Pucker Factor 9.0 at the time. Something tells me my estimate was way low.”

“Like I said, lucky.”

The commander crossed his arms and furrowed his brow, unsatisfied, but couldn’t think of any reason why his very presence in the hangar couldn’t be explained by plain luck. He looked past the Chief at the two suited men being pointed in his direction by one of the investigation team. 

“That must be our ride down to the capitol,” the commander took a deep breath, “I don’t know who has the more unenviable task Chief.”

She laughed, “Definitely you two, I don’t have the patience for congresscritters. Enterprise might be a cranky old girl, but she’s my cranky old girl.” 

The three shook hands and over his shoulder the flight engineer called out, “Take care of her, she’s a good bird and I hope to see her again soon.”

“Me too,” the Chief said quietly to herself.

The Chief wasn’t Enterprise’s first handler, or even her second or third. Enterprise was getting old, the entire booster fleet was and The Chief knew it. She stepped outside and took a good long look across the Cape. Past the gaggle of press outside the hangar, out past the company launch pad, was the competition. Younger, meaner and leaner. Securing contracts that her team couldn’t. She felt a breeze, and over the hills to the west she could see thunderheads. Change was coming to town. 

What seemed like an eternity later she flopped onto her bed, but after a concerted effort she found sleep elusive. Her future, a future with the Space Transportation System program, wasn’t so sure anymore. Minutes and hours ticked by as she, consciously or not, weighed different implications for today’s events. She decided that sleep was a fool’s errand tonight and rolled out of bed and lumbered to the coffee pot, making a pit stop at the liquor cabinet on account of the late hour, and over to her desk. It might’ve been paranoia, or good sense, but either way the Chief gave her resume a thorough update. As the first whispers of dawn started blotting out the stars she was satisfied and sat back in her chair, feeling sleep finally sneak up on her. 

Before tucking in, for giggles, she took out her rolodex and looked up the contact information of NASA’s chief astronaut she’d met at an STS contractor symposium. Attaching her working life’s story to the email she was confronted by a blank page asking to be filled. She thought for a second and decided to let the liquor take the wheel.

“Per aspera ad astra.”

She hit send, shut down her computer, and settled in for the night.

"Enterprise" in the hangar after its harrowing launch

Edited June 8, 2020 by Stevphfeniey
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[Stevphfeniey]

reserved

[Zorg]

yoooo, looking forward to this one!

[KerballingSmasher]

OOOOOOOH I'm interested... this gets a follow!

[Stevphfeniey]

Howdy y'all!

First of all I wanted to give today's shout out to the good technicians, engineers, program managers, and all the support staff at both NASA and SpaceX. Without them, Crew Demo-2 would never have lifted Astronauts Hurley and Behnken and the capsule Endeavour safely to orbit on target to the International Space Station. These are some pretty wild times suffice to say, and yesterday's flight remind us of the light in the darkness. Second of all, I'm immensely grateful for the support the prologue post got, keep em coming lads.

Anyway intro spiel complete, let's get into the good stuff with:

 

Before the STS-161’s booster Enterprise aluminum skin had cooled down the great craft was swarmed by emergency personnel, and officials from NASA and the NTSB. Superficially the problem was obvious, the craft’s number three Space Transportation Booster Engine (a derivative of the famous Lindor V’s own main engines) had for one reason or another exploded, nearly crippling the bird entirely leading to the crew’s certain death. As the booster was rolled to the hangar for a more in depth inspection, search teams were combing the bottom of the sea east of the Cape looking for any evidence as to what had happened on 161.

The clock is running on STS-161

Finally, after weeks of searching, investigators got what they were looking for. STBE-C-052’s massive liquid oxygen turbopump, the very heart of the engine, was dredged up from a depth of 500 meters. Despite the damage from impact and its weeks long bath in salt water, the picture was abundantly clear. Evidence of impact damage on the turbopump’s casing pointed in the direction of FOD being ingested into the turbopump, damaging it and leading to the engine’s ultimate catastrophic failure. Simulations run by General Rocketry, builder of the STBE and STOE engines on STS, confirmed that a 1mm piece of aluminum could lead to a massive failure of the machine. Inspections done on the inside of Enterprise’s oxygen tank revealed microcracking, as the craft’s tanks had been cycled with cryogenic propellant over 40 times at this point in her long career. Out of an abundance of caution pending inspections of the rest of the STS booster fleet, the NASA Administrator announced a halt to all Space Transportation System flights pending the final results and a fix.

As the investigation, and hope for a potential return to flight, dragged on from weeks to months the implications in the greater space ecosystem were drastic and far reaching. STS’s domination of the commercial launch market, as well as being one of two man rated vehicles in the world at the time, meant that everything from commercial communications satellite launches to crewed orbital flight were affected. Starlab, the joint US, European and Japanese orbital outpost that like STS was ageing, had fortunately received the crew of Expedition 66 a month previous to STS-161 aboard the shuttle Aphrodite. With a commercial resupply imminent, the crew of Expedition 66 agreed to extend their four month stay aboard Starlab to seven months until their Tsurumaru ECRV was due for replacement, at which point the station would be mothballed and abandoned pending STS and Shuttle return to flight. 

Starlab circa Expedition 2, the only time two Shuttles were docked to the station

But while NASA fretted at the thought of abandoning their great orbital station, STS’s competition on the commercial market was giddy with excitement. Although STS’s massive size precluded it from reasonably lifting many of the payloads that made up the bulk of the commercial launch market, innovations like dual launching payloads meant that STS came to dominate the lucrative geostationary transfer orbit market. Across the ocean, the European MinerveSpace stood at the most complicated position. Although its fully expendable but technologically advanced Minerve 5 rocket saw a notable uptick in bookings for its services, the joint European-American Poseidon shuttle which was the lynchpin for crew launches to Starlab was grounded along with STS. Additionally the institutional payloads which were Minerve 5’s bread and butter were facing pressure as European governments fretted at the high cost to launch aboard the fully expendable system which featured advanced staged combustion hydrogen engines. 

The joint US-European Shuttle "Aphrodite" returning the crew of Expedition 66 home from the recently abandoned Starlab.

Japan’s Hoshidoro Heavy Industries on the other hand was downright ecstatic. Its partially reusable J-IIA and J-IIB had seen a reasonable amount of success handling payloads on the lower end of STS’s capability. The company pioneered the use of a recoverable engine pod that landed on parachutes as a cheap and effective method of cutting launch costs. Additionally despite the STS stand down Japan’s Tsurumaru ECRV and supply craft was still needed to support Starlab and, should STS be grounded permanently, Japanese space planners quickly dusted off plans to man-rate the J-IIB and use Tsurumaru as the sole crew vehicle for Starlab. However, with Japan entering its second decade of economic stagnation, Hoshidoro still faced great difficulties capitalizing on its success compared to their European counterparts.

Perhaps the firm which was most neutral to the ramifications of STS-161 was the American private launch firm Starlift Launch Services. With the firm pioneering fully reusable spaceflight with its Mark I launch vehicle, the vehicle’s relatively limited payload capacity meant it came to dominate its own segment of the launch market: satellite constellations. Indeed, SLS was founded explicitly to launch the coming swarms of communications satellites cheaply and quickly, rapidly attracting funding and attention with its vertical landing booster and parachute recovered orbiters. However, the constellation contracts were not coming into the firm as quickly as had been anticipated and the firm relied on Commercial Starlab Resupply Service flights on its Mark I to keep a steady cash flow. In turn this severely hampered the development of the firm’s future, and highly ambitious, fully reusable launch vehicles to directly challenge STS’s heavy lift domination. 

An SLS Mark I Orbiter modified for pressurized cargo duties approaches Starlab on CSRS-Demo 1

Any potential work would have to wait. Outgoing President O. Closof was unwilling to commit to a massive NASA development program so close to the end of his term, meaning that the future of the Space Transportation System, NASA, and the global space ecosystem would rest on the incoming president and their chosen NASA administrator.

Edited June 8, 2020 by Stevphfeniey
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[Stevphfeniey]

Happy Sunday y'all, on today's chapter of On the Shoulders of Giants we'll be taking a look at some of the goings on beyond the American STS while the system is grounded. So strap yourselves in, and get ready for liftoff of today's chapter of:

The mainstay Russian medium launch vehicle "Revolutsiya"

To call the Russian space program a survivor would be an understatement. Despite the economic nadir Russian space officials found themselves in at the time of STS’s stand down, they had succeeded in maintaining the gains made since the actual dawn of spaceflight. Mriya, yet to be completed Russian station, hung as the pride of the Russian space program in orbit. Indeed it, and the Revolutsiya and Zarya launch vehicles were the last remnants of the last great space dreams of the old regime. In the brave new world where the Russian design bureaus needed to compete internationally to survive, the partially reusable Revolutsiya and the simple but large Zarya, themselves derivatives of the aborted Soviet response to STS, were found to be attractive on the international markets. With the Russian launch industry consolidated behind OKB Oktyabr’, the last of the great design bureaus, the company was not willing to let a good crisis go to waste.

The last best hope of the Russian space program in the face of shrinking budgets and STS domination, Revolutsiya again demonstrates its flyback reusable first stage.

Russian space planners were hard at work developing the next generation Vakhta-M radio astronomy satellite as well as the Joint X-Ray Observatory Program with ESA. Indeed for the first time since the old regime, Rosaviacosmos began the planning stages for an interplanetary probe. Christened Ayk-Grunt, the mission aimed to continue a long tradition of robotic sample return missions pioneered by the Müna and Minmuz missions of the 1970s. Planned to be launched by a Zarya heavy lifter to the Duna-Ike system the probe would then land on the surface of Ike, gather samples and perform observations of Dunan space, before launching a return capsule to be recovered back on Kerbin. As the Russians prepared their grand return to the fields of high energy cosmology and interplanetary exploration, elsewhere in the world other players were making their first forays into spaceflight beyond Kerbin’s orbit.

Despite its poor optimization for Beyond Low Kerbin Orbit missions, the extremely low price of a fully reusable Starlift Mark I launch made it an attractive option for exploration missions within the Kerbin system. Having demonstrated solid reliability of its pioneering fully reusable vertical landing design, the Mark I subsequently won the contract for the NASA/JPL Minmus Reconnaissance Orbiter to help map in detail the surface of Kerbin’s second moon and determine its value in future exploration programs. Minmus’s weak gravity well precluded the need for a heavy satellite bus to delivery the vehicle to a low orbit around the moon, and in turn a heavy transfer stage, putting the total vehicle mass at the outer edge of capability for the Mark I. Starlift for their part began work on a proper interface between the STAR series solid transfer stage, and on the planned Extra-Extended Long Bay upgrade for its Mark I to accommodate the payload. 

Starlift Launch Services makes its debut to the space exploration market.

Exploration beyond the confines of low Kerbin orbit continued throughout the year, with ESA following the MRO launch with the launch of their own COsmic Microwave Background Observation Satellite (COMBOS) aboard a Minerve 52. The launcher, while expensive, proved to be the global leader in beyond LKO missions owing to its design philosophy of “a pure rocket”. As such, the one ton COMBOS satellite was easily placed in its orbit far from the noise of Kerbin where it would map the very depths of time over its planned two year mission. Perhaps more practically, NASDA and ISAS hoped that exploration of near Kerbin asteroids would yield economic fruit as the flying mountains in space promised access to vast resources, something notably Japan historically lacked. Launching aboard a J-IIA the Fuji probe, the first in a series of planned asteroid exploration missions, was thrown onto its long solar orbit toward asteroid GIR-042. Owing to the name of its mission the asteroid was given the more memorable epithet “Fuji-san”.  

Amidst the STS standdown, the Europeans and Japanese take the lead on space exploration.

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More pictures today. If y'all haven't noticed I'm aiming for about a weekly schedule of updates to be published on Saturdays or Sundays. As always feel free to provide feedback, words of encouragement, or tell me to go stick it. Stay tuned for the next chapter of On the Shoulders of Giants!

 

Edited June 8, 2020 by Stevphfeniey

[IncongruousGoat]

Nice K-1 replica! I take it the OV handles re-entry OK?

[Angelo Kerman]

Loving the new series!

[Stevphfeniey]

11 hours ago, IncongruousGoat said:

Nice K-1 replica! I take it the OV handles re-entry OK?

It does! Rule of the game is you want mass up front, drag in the back, like a shuttlecock. I had to fudge the heat tolerances to make it not explode since those parts aren’t really intended for this purpose. 

[KerballingSmasher]

Awwww this is so cool!

[Venturer2Space]

Hi I'm new to the forums but I have played the game for a few years now. I really enjoy your Mission Report and I particularly love the reusable winged boosters that you came up with 

[Stevphfeniey]

2 hours ago, Venturer2Space said:

Hi I'm new to the forums but I have played the game for a few years now. I really enjoy your Mission Report and I particularly love the reusable winged boosters that you came up with 

Hey partner I’m glad you like the series! I’ve been having a lot of fun writing and flying for this and I’m just happy somebody even read it lol. It’s worth noting here though that I didn’t actually come up with these big winged booster designs. The American one is actually heavily based on the Reusable Saturn from the alternate history timeline Right Side Up (and I highly encourage people to read that), and the Russian one is almost a 1:1 copy of the Baikal booster idea. 

[KerballingSmasher]

Yeah, can we acknowledge WINGED BOOSTERS?!? I mean, COME ON!

[Stevphfeniey]

1 hour ago, Kerballing (Got Dunked On) said:

Yeah, can we acknowledge WINGED BOOSTERS?!? I mean, COME ON!

The whole point of this save and series was for me to move beyond my standard rotation of VTVL boosters!

Anyway I have some news, since I'm gonna be moving across town this weekend I won't have the time to do my weekly update for OTSOG. So to make up for it we're gonna do a little step back in time from when the series takes place, and take a preview of Starlab's neighbors in orbit.

[Stevphfeniey]

Well after many trips back and forth between my old and new place, many boxes packed and unpacked, and some slight damage to my spine carrying a couch down 3 flights of stairs (never live above a second floor in a place without an elevator kids), I'm more or less moved! I'm honestly just glad to be back in the regular rotation of things, which means that I finally have time to post the latest edition of.......

Almost a year after the STS was grounded a return to flight was announced by representatives from NASA and STS contractors. The STS-161 Accident investigation Board’s report was published not long after detailing changes to STS operations following the near disaster of the flight. It first outlined the major concerns with the aging STS fleet. Although microcracking had only been found in Enterprise’s liquid oxygen tanks, the board recommended a drastically reduced flight rate for the famously rapid fire launch system. In addition, a firm retirement date for STS was set to no later than a decade away and that a replacement should be available to maintain American dominance of the launch industry. With the report in hand, the newly sworn in American administration wasted no time beginning their own review of the American space program.

While the presidential review took place engineers from the Ortmann Company, MacDonald Stonewell and General Rocketry put the final touches in place for STS-162, the return to flight of the Space Transportation System. After nearly 14 months of forced stand down, the booster “Constitution” was rolled out to the pad with its L-IVC upper stage and a mass simulator. With special care taken to tank inspections prior to flight, STS-162’s STBEs roared to life without a hitch as it pushed the rocket off the pad, then back to its own launch site. As the drag chute deployed after a safe touchdown, NASA made the announcement that it was recertifying STS for regular (albeit reduced) service with STS-163 slated to carry the Shuttle “Athena” and the crew of Starlab Expedition 67 on a mission to reactivate and repair the abandoned station.

STS-163, carrying Starlab Expedition 67 up to the abandoned station.

Riding on the back of careful attention to detail, STS-163 saw a flawless flight to orbit putting Starlab 67 on course to rendezvous with the station. After an uneventful two day trip, Starlab 67 was ordered to do a fly around of the station to verify its external condition. The crew meticulously documented the station’s exterior condition from the windows of “Athena”, which showed no immediate signs of damage beyond a jammed solar array on the Japanese Kōgō module. With the necessary inspections complete “Athena” was cleared to dock with Starlab when it encountered a second issue. Upon activation of the vehicle’s Radar Ranging and Alignment Array (RRAA) neither the crew aboard the shuttle nor ground controllers could detect a return signature that would normally be broadcast from a functioning docking port aboard the station. While the crew held at 100 meters to station, photographs beamed down through the TDRS network revealed that the small radar array dish on the station docking port was apparently misaligned and damaged. With the order to retreat and reattempt docking on the Endeavour module’s axial docking port, and within a few hours the crew of Starlab 67 was finally aboard the station.

Expedition 67 highlights, the mission would reveal many of the shortcomings of the nearly two decade old station.

Over the next two weeks the crew of four categorized necessary repairs to the station left to the harsh environment of space for nearly a year. As the list of repairs to be conducted by Expedition 68 and 69 piled up the picture in mission control and the whole of NASA administration was becoming abundantly clear: Starlab, not unlike the venerable STS which had facilitated its construction and operation, was rapidly aging with the effects of the stand down exacerbating existing issues aboard the orbital outpost. Although replacements had been slated for after Starlab’s originally planned retirement age of ten years, the end of the Cold War (and subsequent budget cuts across the board) had put such plans for Starlab replacement stations on the back burner. With the necessary work to bring the station back up to its prime projected to take 6 months the crew of Starlab 67 safed the necessary systems aboard the station for another month long stand down before Starlab 68 and a replacement Tsurumaru ECRV could be launched, and returned to Kerbin aboard their shuttle. As the astronauts touched back down at the Cape after their two week mission the great gears of American space bureaucracy began to grind for the first time since the completion of Starlab, and the wider space world awaited the results of what came to be known as Orion Report. 

Japan's workhorse station lifeboat Tsurumaru is launched aboard a J-IIB to re-enable constant habitation of Starlab as of Expedition 68.

[Stevphfeniey]

Hey y'all! It's the weekend which means it's time for this week's new chapter of On the Shoulders of Giants! No pics from KSP today, but I'd argue this is one of the most consequential updates in the series. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the mundane nature of government reports in this chapter of....

The Orion Report's major conclusions, laying the groundwork for NASA priorities for the next twenty years...

[Venturer2Space]

Very nice @Stevphfeniey ! Will there be a chance of seeing some version of the Commercial Crew Program coming about? 

[davidy12]

@Stevphfeniey where'd you get the letters on the rockets?

[Stevphfeniey]

5 hours ago, Venturer2Space said:

Very nice @Stevphfeniey ! Will there be a chance of seeing some version of the Commercial Crew Program coming about? 

I guess you'll just have to keep reading, liking and commenting and find out in upcoming chapters

4 hours ago, davidy12 said:

@Stevphfeniey where'd you get the letters on the rockets?

NEBULA decals, with some homebrew decals I made. Although Cineboxandrew has released on a Conformal Decals mod which (from what I've seen) is superior in just about every way. I don't use it in this save because, well, I'm lazy but I'd check that out if I were you.

[Stevphfeniey]

Good morning y'all!

We're gonna continue the story of the Crew Chief today! She's had a few changes in her life since we last saw her, wild times mirroring the wild changes coming to the space program. But without further ado I humbly present the next chapter of...

 

Not even a year ago did The Chief expect to be meeting the President. She didn’t expect to be doing a lot of the things she’d been doing for the past year, but here she was. As always the heat around The Cape was punishing and close during the summer and Chief always thought the sun seemed a little bit brighter compared to her folk’s place further north. While she thought her NASA astronaut jumper made her look cool, it made for terrible choice of clothing in the home climate of the American space program. She remembered what she was standing in the sun for and tuned back into the president talking about the future of that very program.

    “...which is what makes me proud to introduce the next generation of astronauts that will make the dreams of Project Orion happen.”

    He gestured over towards the group of two dozen blue jumpsuited, newly minted astronauts standing in formation, Chief included. While the applause waxed and waned she took a moment to look around her at all the beaming faces of her astronaut classmates. There was Gomez the Marine Corps pilot, Willow armed with her dual astrophysics doctorates, Noguchi the Japanese electrical engineering wizard, Freeman the space doctor, and Chief the ex-grease monkey who’d been arms deep in STS for a decade. She felt very small for a second before the president began to speak again.

    “It is my sincere hope to see these fine men and women walking on the surface of Duna in my lifetime.”

Despite the intense interview with the Chief Astronaut, despite the flight training in supersonic aircraft, despite the physiological and psychological training, despite all the nights brushing up on her orbital mechanics, it was only when the president proclaimed his dream of seeing someone like Chief on Mars did she realize that this was it. She thought back to watching the original STS missions as a little girl and being amazed by the ship’s pilots doing high altitude ballet. Chief was one of them now. The acrid taste of nervousness and the spine stiffening sensation of pride mixed in her body, and she stood up a little straighter. 

 “By joining forces with our commercial and international partners we can make the highest ambitions of Project Orion a reality. The Next Generation Launch System Program promises to make access to space safer and cheaper than before, the Enterprise Program will strengthen mankind’s position around our home world to facilitate new research and economic opportunities in outer space, and the Exploration Office will chart out our next steps into the heavens. In the coming months my administration will work with Congress on the budgetary details…”

Chief decided to tune out at the first mention of the riveting subject of governmental budgeting. All this was already hashed out in the Orion Report, or really the Joint Review of Blah Blah Blah Blah. Between it and the STS-161 Accident Board’s report, Chief was sad to see STS go and she hoped she wasn’t too far down in seniority to fly one for herself. She thought it was funny that she had the Booster’s technical specifications and dynamic tolerances down to a T, but she didn’t actually know what the thing flew like in the air. There were still a few good years left in STS before she got to pass the torch to the next pair of huge reusable rockets. Already the fight to build the next big thing in spaceflight was getting hot. 

By the time the meet and greets, autographs signed, hands shaken and pictures taken was over with the sun had gone down, and Chief listened to the bugs in the night while she drove back to her house. The cool air helped clear her mind. In the dark a police cruiser glinted behind a billboard and she let her foot off the gas to coast back down to the speed limit. The darkness was interrupted by the dim green light of her cell phone in the center console. She rolled up the window and flipped it open.

“You looked great on that stage today!”

“Hi Dad!” It’d been awhile since she’d last called, and Chief hoped her friends and family understood what with the career change and all.

“Tell me, does that bonehead Freely smell as weird as I think he does?”

“I hope you can feel me rolling my eyes right now,” she admonished, “Besides I can’t talk shop about the president, he’s kinda my boss now.”

But it was too late, her dad was already heartily laughing at his own joke, and she smiled like she was in the room humoring him. He always thought he was the funniest man in the world. But he was gifted with a contagious laugh, so her amusement wasn’t completely a front.

“So how do you feel?”

How did she feel? Over the past year since her first day on the job she hadn’t really considered that, too busy. She thought back to her nerves during the speech and her memories for a second.

“It’s weird,” she started, “I almost don’t get why they picked me out of all the smart people who applied.”

“Okay two things princesa,” her dad interrupted, “you’re just as smart as all the other people on that stage, and definitely smarter than Freely.” He laughed again.

“And second I’m not sure if there’s anybody out there that knows how rockets actually work more than you.”

Chief smiled, “I’m just the humble daughter of an auto repairman.”

“A damn good auto repairman too. But more importantly I’m also the proud father of a humble rocket surgeon, and now she gets to fly them too. You’re gonna do great, corazon.”

That was true, she was going to get to go to space on a rocketship, and maybe one she’d personally worked on. She thought about hydraulic fluid on her jumper and the tedious wiring and rewiring that ate up so many of her days. It was a comforting thought, knowing everything to know about her ship. 

“Okay, well I’m driving right now so I’ll talk to you guys soon. Tell mom and the little ones I said hello.”

“I will, we’ll talk soon.”

And he hung up. She put away the phone, chastised herself for using the phone while driving, and rolled the window back down. She let the cold wet air and the thoughts of what lay ahead wash over her. Her bones groaned at the prospect of high g acclimation training on Monday. Her stomach got queasy at the idea of being a local hero during her interview with her home town newspaper. In a few months she would know when her first flight assignment was. She knew every astronaut in NASA passed through Starlab at least once in their career. Then what? A Mun landing? Duna? Maybe a sweet book deal. The butterflies in her stomach were replaced by a tingling in her spine, and Chief decided that whatever it was she was ready for it.

With the stage set for the future of NASA, the partially reusable government lifters like STS will pass the torch to the upcoming fully reusable commercial lifters.

[Pipcard]

I like seeing the alternate Japanese and European space programs being given some attention.

All I want is to see is the timeline where Japan isn't suffering through economic stagnation and develops something like space tourism for millions of people.

And Starlift is based on the Kistler K-1, it seems.

Edited July 1, 2020 by Pipcard