When the Dutch went to space, (Yet Another RP-1 Playthrough YARP 2.0)

[MacLuky]

Imagine WW2 never happened, imagine that the Dutch would have developed a far better relationship with their colonies than that did in our universe. Perhaps rather than consistently marrying Germans, the royal family would marry Indonesian royalty, and rather than speaking of the Dutch-Indies, the economic scale would speak of the Indo-Dutch. Regardless, the world is a different place and we find ourselves in 1951 as we start a new playthrough in the north of the Netherlands as we try to avoid the US and USSR tech lines as much as we can since I've already done playthrough with these.

Episode 1: Fresh beginnings

In this episode, we launch several V2-derived rockets from our new launch complex at Texel Island and discover that film and parachutes do not work well together.

Epsiode 2: Bio-breaks

In this second episode the Dutch stretch the performance of the V2 and manage to send a hamster to space. It's about bio experiments and many things break, hence the name

Episode 3: Orbit

In this episode, we finally make it to orbit finish our Kerbal Konstructs work at Texel Island, and finally get our downrange contracts done. Big thanks to @seyMonsters as we are using a lot of his engines. Go check out his work in "a very British space program". I have taken some inspiration and am making configs from the Delft Sparrow project but that will come much later.

Episode 4:  A Plane Escape 

Our finances look grim and we take the program we didn’t want to take: planes! Over more than 20 flights we get our space program back on track, but it will rack the nerves and your bandwidth. We'll call it a plane escape. Skip to the end if you just want to see the last rocket of the year and learn why it is called the “Van Speijk” class.

Episode 5: Space Planes

In this episode, we continue our exploration of low earth orbit with the IRAS program which has a real-life Dutch analogy. We explore the story of the heen-en-weerwolf and return our hamster from orbit. And we have the first woman passing the Karman line.

Episode 6: Look at you

In this episode, we play with orbital cameras and deploy our first Nautical Navigation Constellation. We continue our search for high-radiation particles and optimize our current fleet of rockets.

Episode 7: constellations

Comm Sats and spy eh weather satellites are the main topics for this episode. Finally, we have good coverage in LEO! and we scour a lot of science. Stick to the end, because we give a peek view at the new launch complex in the Molukken called Surya base!

Episode 8: hello neighbour

As we wrap up the Earth observation satellite program, we launch an orbital perbutation experiment and then start sending the Chandra probes towards the moon. By the end of the episode, the Moon has a new satellite.

Episode 9: Manned Orbit

We complete our communication network in LEO, and have a flyby of Venus, in 2 days! After the US and put the first woman in space despite major issues with our ascent guidance computer.

Episode 10: Evolved

In this episode, we start with the European Space Agency (ESA) and soft land on the moon. We also show off the new volumetric clouds and HUD replacer changes.

Episode 11: Moon cheese

Our new European Space Agency (ESA) wastes no time and sends 8 probes to the moon to discover its composition. Half of them soft land on the moon, the other half.. Hugens 4 becomes the first probe to orbit another planet and we start mapping the surface of the moon.

Episode 12: Firsts

We turn back to Texel where we launch the next-generation spacecraft that can carry 2 astronauts. We have the first spacewalk, rendezvous, and a tedious and difficult first docking.

Episode 13: Fly me to the moon

In this episode, we land rovers on the moon, but that doesn't turn out as expected. The Dutch put up a prototype space station, man and resupply it and we see two attempts to do a manned lunar flyby as well as an unexpected lunar lander.

Episode 14: Lunar manned orbit

In this episode, we put the first astronauts in an orbit around the moon, spacewalk with a tether, and add the first international module to our space station: jita kyōei. We also have yet another failed rover, but a successful test of our little lander.

Episode 15: First on the moon

In this episode, we become the first to put a human on the moon, using a launcher that can only bring 20t to LEO. This mission could have gone wrong on so many levels! The docking fails, ladder shenanigans, we forget to stage the drop tank of the lander, and some advanced parkour when our astronaut runs into major problems but then thinks of Newton's first law.

Episode 16: International spacestations

After deorbiting our first space station it is time for a fresh one, a bigger one, a better one, a more collaborative one! We will see an unexpected new arrival, upgrades at the lunar gateway, and finally working rovers. That and a secret launch for the Dutch military.

Episode 17: back to the moon

After our collaboration with the Soviets in Spacestation Alpha, it is time to get our focus back on the moon with JAXA and NASA playing a pivotal role in this episode. We also launch a probe to Jupiter, and test a new spacecraft that has some suspicious activity in polar orbit.

 

 

 

Edited May 25 by MacLuky

[MacLuky]

Updated main post to reflect new missions so far