PUCK Aerospace: An RP-1 Adventure (late1960: more aerospace records and polar satellite)

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News 1st January 1951

"In a surprise press conference this morning, eccentric Scottish multi-millionaire investor and self-described 'gentleman adventurer and treasure hunter', Peadar Ùisdean Cameron Kincaid (better known by his sobriquet 'Puck') announced an ambitious new project - he's entering the space race!

"Speaking from a hotel in the small town of Kourou in French Guiana, 'Puck' disclosed a recent agreement signed between his newly formed company, Puck Aerospace, the local authorities, the French government and the governments of the neighbouring countries of Suriname and Nova Alba. This agreement allows the construction of a rocket construction, testing and launching facility on the coast north of the town.  The governments involved have agreed to subsidise Puck Aerospace's endeavours in exchange for technology transfers and early disclosure of any scientific discoveries. While details were scant, Puck declared that he had already secured contracts and agreements from a number of the worlds leading companies in various technologies, with the goal of developing rockets capable of lifting scientific instruments, radio transmitters and other wholly  peaceful payloads, higher, faster and further than has yet been achieved.

"While he freely admitted that current technology has advanced only slightly since the infamous German use of V-2 rockets to bomb London and other targets during the Second World War, he firmly believes that sending large objects into space can be achieved in merely a few years with the appropriate investment of time, knowledge, expertise and of course funding.

"He spoke glowingly of a future when humanity will be able to throw off the shackles of gravity and travel to the moon and beyond to the other planets of our solar system. Whether his dream is achievable or realistic remains to be seen." 

===

Game info:

Spoiler

This is the announcement of my plan to start (soon™) a new RP-1 career mode game, based in an alternative history version of Earth (more on that later) where a fledgling rocket company will begin launching sounding rockets from their facilities on the north-east coast of South America in the 1950s.

I've had a long history of playing KSP, including several RP-0 career play-throughs some of which made it as far as manned moon landings and unmanned probes to the outer Solar System. I'm relatively new to RP-1 LC&P however, having only began playing it in the last couple of months.

The style of these postings will be mostly story based, often as short 'announcements' accompanied by a few pictures (I don't do video). I plan to share all craft files (crappy though they might be) on KerbalX and custom patches and configs. via a GitHub repository that I will be setting up shortly.

Initial work, starting today, will be relocating and partially hiding the 'stock' KSC; placing various Kerbal Konstruct buildings, launch pads and runways onto the Kourou landscape for actual operations; checking the various RP-1 contracts to make sure they will work with these alternate launch and landing facilities; creating flags, banners, and other artwork (like the above AI generated newspaper 'photo'); setting up waypoints and runway navigation etc. Actual game play should start within a few days and will be reported here with statistics on RP1 Career Log

Game settings will be Moderate difficulty:

• Advanced: Reduce G-Force tolerance to 0.5; Require signal for control; Plasma blackout
• Kerbal Konstructs: Visibility range: 45km; Open everything (we have to pay for LC via RP-1, I'm not double paying through KK as well, especially when prices may not be balanced with RP-1 in mind)
• Kerbal Renamer: Custom - Scottish, British and French names mainly with a small mix of other nationalities
• Kerbalism: Lifetime radiation; turn off notifications; message duration 20s (to give me time to read it if I'm distracted doing something else when it pops up)
• Realism Overhaul: Speculation Limit SciFi
• RP-1: don't include craft files; disable procedural avionics window auto open

Mod list - mostly installed via CKAN:

• RP-1 Express Install (8k RSS textures)
• Alternate Resource Panel / Olympic1's ARP Icons
• AutoAGL
• Capcom
• Contracts Window+
• Docking Port Alignment Indicator
• Historian Expanded
• HUD Replacer / ZTheme / (navball texture from Navball Texture Changer Updated)
• Internal RCS
• Kerbal Operating System (KOS)
• Kerbinside Core (for additional Kerbal Konstruct statics)
• Lazy Painter
• Mechjeb2 Dev Release
• Navball Docking Alignment Indicator
• NavUtilities Updated
• One Window
• PartInfo / Part Info in PAW
• RP-1 Techtree Compacted
• RSS Canaveral HD / Canaveral Pads
• Sensible Screenshot
• Smart Parts
• The Janitor's Closet
• Toolbar
• Tracking Station Evolved
• TUFX / profiles by balisticFox
• TylerRaiz Terrains Pack (Kourou)
• VesselMover Continued
• Waypoint Manager

 

Table of Contents

• Off-site links
  • Kerbal X craft hangar - craft will be added after their launch has been reported here
  • GitHub repository for patches, config files and artwork
  • Career Log - statistics tracking of information exported from RP-1
• STORY Chapters
  • 1^st January 1951 - Announcement of founding of PUCK Aerospace (this post)
  • 15^th January 1951 - PUCK Aerospace announces government sponsorship programs
  • 20^th April 1951 - First successful sounding rocket launch from Kourou
  • 23^rd April 1951 - Appointment of Mr Vincent Glasgow as Administrator for PUCK Aerospace
  • 13^th June 1951 to 13^th June 1952 - Flight operations reports
  • 14^th July 1952 to 11^th July 1953 - First contractors appointed and more sounding rocket grind
  • 31^st July 1953 to 16^th August 1954 - Multiple sounding rocket launches and failures; and a little controversy in the news
  • 20^th October 1954 to 14^th November 1954 - First monkey on a PA rocket and end of Suborbital Research programme.
  • 28^th December 1954 to 3^rd October 1955 - Finishing the suborbital programmes (3000km and 5000km milestones).
  • 14^th November 1955 to 3^rd August 1956 - First orbit and X-Planes
  • 3^rd September 1956 to 27^th December 1956 - More X-planes and a failed orbital launch
  • 2^nd January 1957 to 12^th May 1957 - More X-planes and 2^nd satellite in orbit
  • 29^th June 1957 to 30^th December 1957 - Planes, planes and more planes
  • 1958 - Attempted 1ton satellite launches
  • 1959 - Failure, success and a new aeroplane
  • January to June 1960: Stratospheric research, airplane altitude and speed records, and first woman above the Kármán line
  • August to December 1960: More aerospace records and a polar satellite

Edited April 27 by Aelfhe1m
Updated table of contents.

[Spikemaster]

Yay! looking forward to it

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News 15^th January 1951

"Scottish investor Peadar Kincaid was once again in the news today, as he announced the signing of major sponsorship deals with the governments of France and Nova Alba to develop rockets capable of sending scientific packages high into the sky to explore the fringes of the atmosphere and the edge of space.

"Governor William Sinclair of Nova Alba (pictured shaking hands with Mr Kincaid) was present to confirm a six year contract focused mainly on the development of the rockets themselves with the aim of sending them higher, faster and further than has thus far been achieved. The shorter contract signed with the French government on the other hand provides more money sooner and is focussed on the scientific aspect with goals to progress the ability to send cameras and other instruments to the edges of space and recover them safely. French Guiana's Prefect Robert Vignon stated that President Auriol had expressed a personal interest in the project and was watching with interest.

"Following the signing ceremony Mr Kincaid unveiled Puck Aerospace's new flag. The design combines the the flags of France and Nova Alba separated by a golden curved arrow symbolising a launching rocket.

"Mr Kincaid also reported that initial survey work of the intended launch site had been completed and that construction of two small launch pads and associated buildings was proceeding apace. His company is also cooperating with local authorities to upgrade the Kourou municipal airport runway and facilities to support larger aircraft that will be transporting various parts and equipment from overseas contractors. "

Spoiler

Gameplay info:

Accepted the Suborbital Research and Early Rocket Development programs (SR on breakneck and ERD on fast). Hired some researchers and began researching Post-war rocketry testing and Early solid rocket engines.

Repositioned KSC space centre and partially buried it so it doesn't interfere with any of the planned launch complex locations (default location as configured in the Kourou Terrain Pack overlaps with the Ariane 6 launch pad, so I moved it). Started placing Kerbal Konstruct statics for the two sounding rocket launch complexes ("Aerobee" and "V2" sized). A KK runway has been placed at the location of Kourou airport and configured as a launch site, since the KSC runway is inaccessible. I still need to add decorative buildings, taxiways etc. to complete the airport.

Designed the Nova Alba flag and began drafting a write-up of its history and the general alternate history of the setting.

Colour version of Puck Aerospace flag:

 

[Spikemaster]

Are those real pictures?

 

[Aelfhe1m]

Just now, Spikemaster said:

Are those real pictures?

 

No AI generated images with a newspaper effect added in GIMP.

[Spikemaster]

Alright...

...were the people real?

I like the story

Edited March 18 by Spikemaster

[Aelfhe1m]

16 minutes ago, Spikemaster said:

Alright...

...were the people real?

I like the story

Puck and Governor Sinclair are fictitious, but Robert Vignon was the Prefect of French Guiana in 1951 and Vincent Auriol was the French President.

[Spikemaster]

ok

onto the story...

Edited March 18 by Spikemaster
I want MOAR!

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News 20^th April 1951

"Puck Aerospace announced the successful launch of their first high altitude rocket. The launch took place just after twenty to eight this morning, local time (10:42 am GMT), when the 1030 kg rocket blasted away from the newly constructed PSR-01 launch facility.

"The Tiny Tim booster that powered the Zombie Arrow rocket off the pad was licensed from the US Navy, one of several surplus boosters from the US WAC Corporal program. In contrast, the U-1250 rocket motor used for the second stage was purchased from the USSR, part of a technology transfer deal brokered personally by Puck Aerospace's founder Mr Peadar Kincaid, earlier this year. A solid demonstration of how technology from different parts of the world can be integrated to achieve outstanding results.

"While the 117 km maximum altitude reached by the rocket is not quite as high as either the American or Soviet programs have achieved to date, it does represent a new record for a private, commercially operated aerospace organisation. The rocket's instrument package was successfully separated from the main body at the apex of its flight and parachuted gently back to Earth just ten minutes after it launched.

"In his announcement, Mr Kincaid stated that this is just the first of several launches his company intends to make this year, and that they received a bounty of useful telemetry and scientific readings from the flight that will be put to good use to further improve and develop their rocket technology going forward. 

"Brief statements from the US and Soviet governments welcomed the Scottish company's entry into the space race, although the tone of both missives might be considered slightly condescending by certain readers. Highlighting as they did, the use of purchased technology rather than developing their own.

"French President Vincent Auriol by contrast had nothing but praise for the achievement, stating in an interview with Le Monde newspaper that this was a vindication of the faith his government had shown in providing initial funding to Puck Aerospace's fledgling rocket program. He went on to state that he expected the future successes of the company to further demonstrate their ability and vision.

"Puck Aerospace has already begun work on assembling their next rocket and a second launch is expected to be announced in the near future."

=====

Spoiler

This fully automated flight (smart part for booster staging and KOS script for other events) successfully completed the "First Flight" and "Karman Line" contracts. Together with returning science from readings in flight and for successfully recovering the first flown vessel.

While I won't be documenting every launch in this much detail, I will try to cover all the milestone events and to summarise the other launches. Not every launch will be successful, Test Flight will no doubt cause engine failures from time to time and I will undoubtedly make the occasional catastrophic mistake myself. Such errors will be documented here as well, but in the event of a game glitch or bug, I reserve the right to revert a flight and try again.

 The craft file and all KOS scripts are available on my GitHub repository. The craft is also on KerbalX.

While the GitHub repository contains my Kerbal Konstructs placed launchpads and airport, these are still very much in the draft state and should only be used with caution. Most of Kourou airport is likely to be replaced soon. Note, I also decided to include Kerbinside Core in my installation to give me access to a variety of additional buildings and decorations. I also need to rearrange the pads at the sounding rocket launch complex, since I noticed from the aerial view that I had got a bit disoriented when placing them while zoomed in on the ground.

The layouts of the pads and airport are definitely fictitious and really only share general location with the real life infrastructure at Kourou. 

Screenshots from this launch and from simulations:

Survey flight over the airport

Simulated "V2" launch from second pad

 

Edited March 21 by Aelfhe1m
some of the images "escaped" the spoiler region

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 23^rd April 1951

"Puck Aerospace today announced the appointment of Mr Vincent Glasgow as their new head of administration. Mr Glasgow has a long and distinguished career in the aerospace industry, including heading up the rocketry development department for the Ministry of Defence during the latter part of World War II. More recently, he was director of development for Scottish Aviation at Prestwick in Ayrshire. Overseeing their work on manufacturing light airframes for the newer generations of post-war aircraft. Puck Aerospace stated in their announcement that they believed that Mr Glasgow's experience dealing with large technical staffs will allow more efficient use of their workforce and that his reputation within the aerospace industry may well be instrumental in the securing of more lucrative contracts.

"Mr Glasgow stated he had first been approached by Mr Kincaid, the head of Puck Aerospace, about a month ago to see if he was interested in joining the company. Negotiations had went well, leading to him accepting the role on Friday. He further said that he was looking forward to the challenges his new post would bring and hoped his appointment would help secure a firm foundation in Puck Aerospace's bid to become a world leader in aerospace development.

In other news, Puck Aerospace stated that construction work on the heavier launch facility capable of handling larger sounding rockets was continuing apace and that they expected to be ready to begin construction of their first rocket by the beginning of June. These larger rockets are expected to be able to take sizeable scientific instruments more than one hundred and fifty kilometres up and travel several hundred kilometres from their launch site, in order to study changes in the environment within the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere and the near space regime. Engines for the new rocket have been secured following a licensing deal with Hawker Siddeley Dynamics for access to their research into confiscated engines from German wartime V-2 rockets. The rocket notorious for their use in the bombing of London and other allied cities. Puck Aerospace's use of similar rockets, we are assured, will be for purely peaceful purposes."

Spoiler

Just a small update with the first leader appointed. Mr Glasgow is my fictional stand-in for Valentin Glushko, whom I chose for the reduced researcher salaries and increased reputation from contracts. As the first leader chosen, I don't think his downside has any effect. 

Construction of the second launch centre (10-14t) is nearly complete, although it will initially be understaffed until we can raise the funds to hire sufficient engineers. However, simulated testing of the first generation of  Yeti rockets (A-4+ analogues) has been completed, with KOS guidance and operation programs written and tested. And the first of that rocket family will begin (slow) construction as soon as the launch centre is available.

The misalignment of the KK statics at the sounding rockets launch complexes has been fixed and investigation continues as to why the runway at Kourou airport is behaving seriously glitchy, rendering it unusable at present.

Construction of the second Zombie Arrow sounding rocket is nearly complete and it will be launched to (hopefully) satisfy the first of the repeatable Intermediate Altitude contracts before mid June and ensure that our reputation (and hence funding) continues to grow.

 

[Spikemaster]

I should have asked this long ago: Is pathe news real?

[Aelfhe1m]

1 hour ago, Spikemaster said:

I should have asked this long ago: Is pathe news real?

Yes. See this Wikipedia article for more details.

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News Wednesday 13^th June 1951

"Puck Aerospace once again attempted to launch a rocket towards the edge of space. Unfortunately, unlike their first launch on the 20th April, this flight finished much more abruptly, when the U-1250 engine powering the main ascent stage of the rocket failed just seconds into the flight. Speaking to the press after the event, Mr Kincaid, the founder and chief executive of Puck Aerospace, said 'While we are sad that this second flight did not achieve its goals, these sorts of failures are only to be expected when working with such complicated and still experimental technology. Telemetry transmitted from the rocket during its brief flight is already being examined by our scientists and engineers, as well as those at the engine's manufacturer. Hopefully, the analysis will be helpful in preventing the next rocket, scheduled to fly in about a month's time, from meeting the same fate.' We here at Pathé News wish them well with their endeavours."

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 23^rd July 1951

"Puck Aerospace's third flight of their Zombie Arrow rocket went off without a hitch yesterday, when a 75 kg scientific package was launched to a maximum altitude of 112 km, well above the minimum target altitude of 80 km. Readings returned from the instruments recorded changes in the composition, temperature and pressure of the Earth's atmosphere at high altitudes, as well as more detailed information on the performance of the rocket itself and the stresses experienced during its launch.

"Chief Administrator Vincent Gordon stated that this was just the first in what was expected to be a long series of similar experiments as they slowly gathered better and better information in order to further our understanding of rocket technology and the very fringes of space. While US and Soviet rockets have also gathered data from these regions, several of the instruments carried in yesterday's flight were of improved or unique design in order to hopefully capture previously unrecorded phenomena. Scientists were also interested in discovering if the readings from above equatorial French Guiana showed any substantial differences to those recorded above Florida or the Soviet launch site, both of which are located much further north."

Excerpt from Pathé News Tuesday 2^nd October 1951

"Another rocket once again blasted skywards from Puck Aerospace's facility at Kourou in French Guiana today. The rocket easily exceeded the 80 km goal again, reaching a peak altitude of just over 109 km during its brief five and a half minute flight. It carried an instrument package similar to that on the prior 23^rd July flight (and the failed 13^th June attempt)."

Excerpt from Pathé News Tuesday 20^th November 1951

"Puck Aerospace today launched the first of their upgraded Zombie Arrow II rockets from their facilities in French Guiana. With an upgraded rocket motor and larger fuel tank, the new rocket was expected to reach even greater heights than the original design. And indeed, this did turn out to be the case, as the rocket set a new record altitude of 159.4 km (for Puck Aerospace, both US and Soviet rockets have previously gone higher). This first test flight of the new rocket carried only a minimal science package, but both it and the flight telemetry recording unit parachuted safely back to Earth and were recovered and delivered to waiting technicians for analysis. Founder and Chief Executive, Mr Peadar Kincaid gave a brief statement that he was delighted with the performance of the new rocket and that this should only be the first of several incremental improvements."

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 28^th January 1952

"Puck Aerospace began its second year of operation today, with the launch of their sixth rocket. Another Zombie Arrow II rocket, this one was equipped with the now standard 75 kg science package, with the goal of getting readings from at least 130 km above the surface. Once more, the rocket performed flawlessly, lofting its payload to over 145.5 km before falling back to Earth once more. With only one failure out of their first six launches, Puck Aerospace are certainly demonstrating their technical capabilities."

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 28^th April 1952

"In, what has quickly become routine, Puck Aerospace once again launched a scientific analysis rocket more than 142 km into space above French Guiana today."

Excerpt from Pathé News Tuesday 29^th April 1952

"Just one day after their most recent successful rocket launch, Puck Aerospace today unveiled the first of its newest family of heavy sounding rockets: the Yeti I. Fitted with a sophisticated automated camera system, the Bailey I, its goal was to take various high altitude images of the Earth from the edge of space and return the film safely to the ground. Alas, it was not meant to be, as the flight was aborted shortly before launch when telemetry discovered a problem with the Hawker Siddeley Dynamics supplied A-4 engine. The rocket will be defueled and returned to the assembly building for detailed analysis, but according to founder and chief executive Peadar Kincaid, engineers at both Puck Aerospace and Hawker Siddeley are confident that they will be able to quickly rectify the problems and prepare for another launch attempt in a little over a month's time."

Excerpt from Pathé News Friday 13^th June 1952

"Today marked the second attempt by Puck Aerospace to launch their new Yeti rocket carrying a Bailey camera package. Unlike their last attempt, this launch proceeded without any significant problems, the late arrival of one of the spectating officials not withstanding. Lifting off just before 11:46 am GMT (8:46am local time), the rocket performed perfectly, swiftly arcing off towards the east as it climbed towards its peak 185 km altitude. A few minutes later, small explosive bolts separated the camera and control systems from the main body of the rocket. After falling back into the atmosphere, parachutes deployed successfully once it dropped below 5000 m. A waiting boat recovered the returned camera from the ocean just over 410 km from its launch site.

"Mr Kincaid, founder and chief executive of Puck Aerospace, congratulated everyone involved in today's launch for demonstrating another step forward in their ability to send even heavier and more capable scientific instruments higher and further then ever before achieved by a private aerospace company."

====

Gameplay information and screenshots:

Spoiler

Craft files and updated KOS scripts have been uploaded to GitHub and KerbalX

All flights were fully automated using smart parts and KOS.

There seems to be an odd discrepancy between the screenshots I took of various events and the launch history on Kerbal Career Log. My screenshots are showing the 22 July launch as the one that had the engine failure, while the log shows the failure as being on the previous launch on 13 June. To be honest I can't remember exactly what happened while playing yesterday, so I've written the report above to correspond with the displayed launch history on the career log website but I've also included the screenshots below, so pick the version of history that makes sense to you I guess.

There wasn't actually an engine problem with the first rollout of the Yeti, but I needed to roll it back after I realised I had stupidly forgot to accept the film contract, which requires a new vessel to be launched. So, the reports above are my roll-played excuse for having to abort and redo the launch - although the career log does not record aborts from pre-launch. I'm trying to be transparent here with both my successes and failures - and even records of my moronic mistakes.

Some screenshots:

13th June 1951 - First launch of Zombie Arrow 75E

22 July

2 October

20 November 1951 - 1st suborbital recovery milestone contract

13 June 1952 - Yeti Bailey I - 1st low space film return contract

I probably won't be posting any more pictures of Zombie Arrow launches (except 1st space biological return milestone) unless there are any notable failures because they're very repetitive.

The Yeti flights will be a bit more varied, so I'll be posting a few more images from those in future updates.

 

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 14^th July 1952

"Despite the local Bastille Day holiday in France, Puck Aerospace were as hard at work as ever. Today announcing a new major contracting deal with the Douglas Aircraft Company for technical and engineering support. Puck Aerospace stated that shaving off weight wherever possible was crucial to designing ever more efficient rocket systems and it was believed that American company's experience in working with lighter materials in their aircraft and missile development would contribute greatly to this endeavour, including the start of a project to replace the heavy steel fuel tanks used on the Zombie Arrow and Yeti rockets with lighter, yet equally tough, aluminium tanks.

"This announcement follows a similar agreement with Hawker Siddeley Dynamics for joint development of rocket engine technology, following the successful first flight of the Puck Aerospace's Yeti rocket last month."

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 28^th July 1952

"Puck Aerospace today launched another Zombie Arrow sounding rocket. Marking their 7th successful launch with only one failure, the Zombie series of rockets is proving to be a highly effective programme."

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 25^th October 1952

"Puck Aerospace once again launched a Zombie Arrow sounding rocket high above the atmosphere, reaching a new best altitude of 180 km."

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 25^th October 1952

"It has been a busy few days for Puck Aerospace, following their successful launch of a Zombie Arrow sounding rocket, they followed it up today with the second launch of their Yeti I rocket with a Bailey camera package. The flight proceeded smoothly, with none of the last minute engine problems that had delayed the first launch. The camera took a large number of photographs during its more than 11 minute flight, as the rocket carried it just over 400 km downrange and to a peak altitude of 170 km above the Atlantic Ocean.

"This marked the final flight of the current design of Yeti rocket, as the next rocket will feature new aluminium construction based on Puck Aerospace's joint development contract with the Douglas Aircraft Company."

Excerpt from Pathé News Friday 25^th January 1953

"Their first launch of 1953 brought disappointment for Puck Aerospace, today, as their Zombie Arrow sounding rocket underperformed slightly and just failed to reach its 130 km altitude goal. They are not too disheartened, as the next generation of solid rocket boosters have arrived from their suppliers and they anticipate the next launch will more than exceed the designated target altitude."

Excerpt from Pathé News Wednesday 25^th February 1953

"Puck Aerospace's new aluminium bodied Yeti II rocket was rolled out to the launch site for its test flight today, but last minute inspection showed a flaw in the onboard guidance systems and it was returned to the assembly building for repairs."

Excerpt from Pathé News Tuesday 24^th March 1953

"Pre-flight inspection before today's second launch attempt of Puck Aerospace's Yeti II rocket, turned up a minor misconfiguration in the flight guidance switches but this was able to be quickly rectified on site and the rocket was cleared for launch from their complex at Kourou in French Guiana. The rocket rose gracefully into the clear morning sky but misfortune struck again, as the engine failed just 57 seconds into the flight. Despite only reaching 61 km of altitude and 84 km distance, the separation of the science payload and camera was flawless and they were fished out of the Atlantic Ocean 40 minutes later by the recovery boat. One hopes that the seeming glut of bad luck that has surrounded this rocket will not carry over to their next attempt."

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 11^th May 1953

"Despite Puck Aerospace's recent run of bad luck, today's flight of their Zombie Arrow III rocket went off without a hitch. The brief 12 minute flight carried a small capsule containing several dozen fruit flies over 200km into the skies above sunny Kourou, French Guiana, before parachuting them safely back to Earth. While this may seem trivial compared to the reports of monkeys flown several years ago by the Americans and Soviets, it does mark another milestone in Puck Aerospace's burgeoning space programme."

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 23^rd May 1953

"Another rocket launch by Puck Aerospace flew from French Guiana today, carrying a 75 kg scientific payload nearly 200km skywards."

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 6^th July 1953

"Yesterday, Puck Aerospace once more attempted to launch their new Yeti II rocket as part of their launch vehicle development programme. It once again carried another Bailey camera payload and 500 kg of other instruments. The flight proceeded flawlessly, setting new company records for speed and altitude while easily exceeding the targets set for this flight. Twelve and a half minutes later, the camera and instrument package splashed down safely in the waters 500 km from its starting point."

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 11^th July 1953

"Another canister of fruit flies was lofted into the skies above French Guiana by a Puck Aerospace rocket today. With a larger package of instruments onboard, the flies flew over 170 km straight up and were returned home safely once more. One wonders how the flies felt about experiencing both a peak acceleration of more than nine and a half time the normal gravity on the surface of the Earth and several minutes of floating in free-fall at the top of their arc?"

=====

Gameplay notes:

Spoiler

I keep forgetting to check for new options becoming available in the Administration Building, despite it being an integral part of RP-1 Launch Complexes and Programs, so the 14th July announcements is me belatedly assigning contractors which I should have done back in April when the first material science tech node finished researching.

I chose Douglas for their increased speed in researching future material science tech and Rocketdyne to partially offset the corresponding reduction in engine research speed. Rocketdyne's participation is being roleplayed as closer ties with Hawker Siddeley Dynamics, a British company that was doing similar research (although on a much tighter budget) during the 1950s. In my alternate history, they are benefiting from improved funding from Puck Aerospace, both through Mr Kincaid's own financial contributions from his other businesses and from the French and New Alba space development programs.

Looking back at the decision a few hours later, I probably should have left the primary contractor slot open at this time, since there are four other techs to research before the next materials science research will begin. Delaying the activation of the Douglas contract would have speeded up research on Early rocketry by 10% (about 20 days). Oh well, its only a small delay. Live and learn I suppose.

I will probably add Ilyushin to the second subcontractor slot in a couple of (game) years time, once I have a larger staff of researchers and their salary reduction benefit will offset the cost to reputation and confidence growth.

The 25 Oct 52, flight had a bit of a strange ending, as having easily passed the 400km downrange mark before re-entering the atmosphere, the orientation and aerodynamics of the return capsule caused it to begin flying back towards Kourou. Fortunately, the contract had already recognised the > 400km outward leg, so touching down less than 400km from the launch site did not fail the contract.

Spoiler

The 23 Jan 53 flight of a ZA fell foul of the random number generator and slightly higher residuals at engine burnout on both the SRB and main engine caused it to not reach the contracted altitude of 130km by the smallest of margins (it reached 129.8 km ) but c'est la vie .

Spoiler

The 25 Feb 53  scrub of the Yeti II launch was because of a last moment realisation that I hadn't checked whether the avionics would handle the addition of the 500 SRP - a quick check in the VAB before I hit the launch button showed that they wouldn't (only 13t configured but with the rocket now weighing 13.7t). So I had to roll it back and edit the craft to update the avionics before rolling it out again. A stupid mistake, but I'm glad I thought of it before launching rather than after.

24 Mar 53 - When I launched the Yeti this time, it had the wrong copy of the KOS script configured in its avionics, the craft file having been saved with a reference to the new draft script that I am still writing and debugging rather than the working launch script from the previous flight. Fortunately, it threw it's first error before starting the countdown, so I was quickly able to realise my mistake, switch over to the correct script and reboot the processor. With the correct script loaded the rocket launched fine - and then Test Flight struck and the engine failed only partway through its burn. I swear, KSP just does not like this mission plan for some reason. I also didn't have a backup rocket in the build queue, so I had to warp forward a few days to build up enough funds to buy one.

Spoiler

July 53:

Spoiler

 

 

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News Friday 31^st July 1953

"Puck Aerospace began construction today on a new launch centre for the next generation of heavier Yeti III rockets. The new facility will be rated to handle up to 25 ton rockets and is expected to be completed by mid December with the first launch from the new site occurring early next year. In the meantime, the several more Arrow and Yeti II flights will be regularly scheduled."

Excerpt from Pathé News Friday 21^st August 1953

"Puck Aerospace once again launched another Zombie Arrow III sounding rocket from their facilities in French Guiana. Soaring to just over 217 km. This marked the 12th successful launch of the Arrow programme, with only two failures."

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 24^th August 1953

"Puck Aerospace announced today that construction work at their new launch centre in French Guiana has run into some unexpected difficulties that have slowed work considerably. These delays are expected to push back the completion of the facility until February next year. In an interview with a local Kourou newspaper, site foreman and chief engineer Guillaume de Lautour said that while digging the foundations they had found some problems with fractured rock layers that had not shown up in the initial survey boreholes. To prevent the rock structures collapsing completely under the weight of the launch pad and rockets, it will be necessary to dig out the unstable rock layer and replace it with proper foundation material to provide the appropriate support."

Excerpt from Pathé News Thursday 19^th November 1953

"The thirteenth successful flight of a Puck Aerospace Zombie Arrow sounding rocket once more roared high into the sky above Kourou in French Guiana today. Reaching a peak altitude of only 211 km."

Excerpt from Pathé News Tuesday 8^th December 1953

"A Yeti II rocket again carried a Bailey survey camera package and science payload high into the skies over the French Guianan coastline. Reaching a peak altitude of 251km it travelled almost 500km during its brief 12 and a half minute flight. Angus McLean, the lead researcher in Puck Aerospace's space photography department, announced that the recovered film had been developed and showed that the slight adjustments to the camera equipment were functioning even better than expected. He also stated that he believed there would be little benefit to launching another camera over the Atlantic and that the next flight would be targeted inland instead to capture some high altitude imagery of the northern Amazonian rainforests and the Tumuc Humac mountains."

Excerpt from Pathé News Wednesday 17^th February 1954

"Puck Aerospace's first rocket launch of 1954 went flawlessly today, as a Zombie Arrow sounding rocket once more effortlessly soared more than 200km into the sky above Kourou in French Guiana."

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 15^th May 1954

"Surprisingly, today marked only the second rocket launch from Puck Aerospace's Kourou launch centre in 1954. This was also their most controversial flight yet, with a number of people objecting quite volubly to Mr Peadar Kincaid's decision to override the science team's planned trajectory for the latest rocket, sending it south-east along the coast rather than south over the Amazonian forest. Defending his decision to the press after the flight, Mr Kincaid argued that being able to take advantage of the Earth's rotation beneath the flying rocket to increase its range and by directing it over more varied and interesting geography, they had been better able to maximise the science expected to be gained from the examination of the photos taken during the rocket's planned 17 minute flight. Which, he reminded everyone, had proceeded flawlessly from launch to splash-down over 600 kilometres away in the Atlantic Ocean, 230 kilometres north of Belém, Brazil.

"He dismissed arguments that the rocket's path had taken it recklessly close to the town of Kourou itself and that its proximity to the airport had placed planes at risk. Pointing out that they always worked closely with the local air traffic control authorities to ensure that their rocket launches did not coincide with any flights taking off or landing at the airport. So passing closer to the airport on this flight did not represent any significant increased risk. As for the fears of some people that a faulty rocket might have fallen on Kourou or one of the towns further down the coast, possibly causing considerable damage to property and potential loss of life, he suggested that the threat had been greatly exaggerated by certain scare-mongering parties and the normal range safety precautions would have seen the safe destruction of the rocket long before it could fall on anyone's house. The greatest likelihood of failure, he pointed out, was generally within the earliest parts of the flight or as the rocket was nearing the end of its planned burn. Neither of those times, coincided with arcs of the rockets trajectory where a sudden engine failure would cause it to crash somewhere dangerous."

Excerpt from Pathé News Tuesday 18^th May 1954

"Despite controversy over the weekend about the chosen path of their last rocket launch, Puck Aerospace were today again launching another Zombie Arrow rocket straight up from their facilities in Kourou, French Guiana. When questioned about today's launch, Chief Administrator Vincent Glasgow told reporters that the ongoing series of Arrow rocket launches had demonstrated a perfect safety record and did not in any way endanger any nearby areas. Even the two failures, he further pointed out, had been safely destroyed by the range safety officer as soon as a problem was confirmed, and long before there had been any risk to anyone."

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 17^th July 1954

"Puck Aerospace suffered another set-back today as their first attempt at launching the third generation Yeti rocket from their newest launch complex at the Kourou Space Centre in French Guiana, experienced an engine failure shortly after take-off and had to be aborted.

"The Yeti rocket was powered by an upgraded variant of Hawker Siddeley Dynamics largest rocket engine, the HSD-103 and  was intended to act as the first stage of Puck Aerospace's most ambitious rocket to date. Dubbed the Scorpion (after the medieval siege weapon that threw oversized arrows, not the ten legged animal with a stinger in its tail), the second stage was based on the fourth generation Arrow rocket which it was hoped would be launched more than three thousand kilometres out over the Atlantic and most of the way to Africa, before burning up completely during its fiery high speed re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.

"Engineers from both Puck Aerospace and Hawker Siddeley are pouring over the telemetry returned from the rockets brief flight and hope to discover the cause of the engine's premature shut-down and rectify it prior to the planned launches of further Yeti IIIs later in the year.

"Mr Kincaid and Mr Glasgow gave a joint interview to the press who had gathered to watch the launch, stating that while disappointing, even failures could teach us a great deal about how to design better rockets going forward."

Excerpt from Pathé News Tuesday 16^th August 1954

"Another successful launch today at Kourou Space Centre, demonstrated the reliability of Puck Aerospace's Zombie Arrow series of rockets. This was the 16th successful flight of this rocket, with only two failures. Compared to this, their heavier Yeti rockets seem much poorer in comparison with only X successes out of seven flights.

Spoiler

Started today by designing rockets for the last three milestone contracts in the initial programs, and testing them and their KOS scripts in simulations to confirm they can achieve the goals (barring engine failures). With the rockets designed, I then ordered a larger launch complex (KLC-1) to support them, before going back to grinding out some more sounding rocket launches. But after I'd built up enough funds to add both an Arrow and a Yeti to the build queue, I started to run into a bit of a financial squeeze and had to lower the construction rate on the new LC - hence the roll-play announcement above of "unexpected difficulties with fractured rock layers". I've no idea how realistic this would be, and I considered passing it off instead as a labour dispute instead or an illness among the workers causing the slow-down, but in the end decided to go with my first idea for an "excuse" anyway.

8 Dec 53: This flight finished all the photo science from high flight and low space over Earth's water, so if I was to get any more science, I would need to fly in a different direction. Hence the in-story explanation by new fictional character Angus.

Spoiler

15 May 54: I changed my mind about the contract that the next Yeti would tackle, switching from a launch vehicle development distance flight to finishing the last of the low space film return optional contracts. The longer downrange distance needed by that contract (600km) required me to fly generally eastward to take advantage of Earth's rotation, but I still wanted to get some science out of the flight, so I wanted it to pass over land for most of the time. Hence Puck's "risky" flight plan and my chance to have a small scandal reported.

Map:

Spoiler

Spoiler

18 May 54: Grinding out another sounding rocket contract to keep reputation and confidence going up. The news report just adds a little flavour text to try and make it sound interesting - unlikely though that is.

17 July 54: The Scorpion is basically an oversized Bumper, using an RD-103 (roll-played as British HSD-103) on the first stage and a U-2000 on the upper stage. As this was the first flight of the 103, Test Flight reliability was not great and the RNG gods were not in my favour, despite several successful simulations. Next major event will be the first flight of the Yeti Mendel on its first attempt to complete the last milestone in the sub-orbital research program and allow me to move on to the more lucrative (and varied) orbital contracts. Another Scorpion (or more if my luck fails again) and its successor Ballista 3 stage rocket should round out the  Early Rocket Development program.

Spoiler

 

 

Edited March 25 by Aelfhe1m
Added newspaper photo of rocket

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 17^th July 1954

"In a surprise deal with the Americans, Puck Aerospace's second Yeti III rocket, was launched today from Merritt Island in Florida. Use of the launch site near Port Canaveral was arranged as part of a cross licencing agreement for various aerospace technologies developed by Puck Aerospace. The Yeti III rocket performed flawlessly, perhaps in order to impress the foreign dignitaries gathered to view this very unusual event - the first completely foreign built rocket launched from American soil since the testing of the confiscated V-2 rockets in the aftermath of World War II.

"The flight plan today was simple, carrying a large package of scientific instruments and a pressurised habitat housing a pygmy marmoset by the name of Isabelle, straight up to test her reactions to the various rigours of space flight and the environment of space a few hundred kilometres above Earth.

"The rocket reached a peak speed of over 2.5 kilometres per second (more than 9000 kph)   as it climbed just over 450 kilometres into the sky above Florida. The return capsule containing Isabelle's habitat detached cleanly from the launch booster and after a rather toasty trip through the upper atmosphere, it had slowed sufficiently because of air resistance for a pair of parachutes to be deployed at 5000 metres to bring it gently back to the surface.

"Initial examinations indicate that Isabelle suffered no ill effects during the 17 minute flight, although she was reportedly somewhat understandably upset and confused by the novel experience. The medical staff will be keeping her under observation for the next several months to ensure that no hidden problems manifest, but all involved are of the opinion that like most of the previous animals sent into space by the Americans and Soviets, Isabelle is none the worse for her experience."

Excerpt from Pathé News Thursday 11^th November 1954

"The last flight of Puck Aerospace's Zombie Arrow sounding rocket for 1954 performed immaculately once more today, carrying its science package over 210 km into the edge of space above French Guiana. With this flight, Puck Aerospace declared that all the goals of their scientific development programme with the French government had been completed more than six months ahead of schedule.

"After congratulating Mr Kincaid on surpassing their goals for the project by such a large margin,  Prefect Robert Vignon, announced that the French government was now convinced that Puck Aerospace would soon be able to get science packages to orbit the planet for days at a time gathering a host of new information about the world we call home. In light of this, and to speed the process along faster, they have signed a further development contract to rapidly develop the vehicles necessary to send sizable instruments into space. This 45 month contract will offer Puck Aerospace a sizeable funding boost with which to hire new staff and build new facilities and equipment in the furthering of this goal. The French government is not funding this endeavour alone, however, but as part of a multi-national initiative in association with The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the UK. Although all countries that were heavily impacted economically by the World War less than a decade ago, they are already seeing significant benefits from investments made in technological innovation, that are helping speed the rebuilding of their economies." 

====

Gameplay notes:

Spoiler

Short update, I spent most of my time fiddling with Kerbal Konstructs or designing/testing simulating (and then redesigning/retesting) orbital rockets.

When I tried to assign my new 25t launch complex to the Kerbal Konstructs launch pad I had built for it, the pad was not showing up in the list of locations on the KCT integration tab. On a whim, I selected one of the pads from the Canaveral Pads mod instead and was a bit surprised when it was accepted. So Yeti Mendel ended up launching from Florida rather than Kourou. This has potential for future careers playing as other countries with multiple launch site locations, where I would be able to share engineering staff across different launch sites provided there were recognised KK pads constructed at each - something not possible using KSC Switcher. This probably counts as an exploit, but it does come at the cost of reduced funds from the recovery of landed parts because of the distance from the actual KSC location. 

Marmoset image used for "news release" is edited from a public domain photo, found here. I tried to get A1111 to generate a marmoset astronaut image, but didn't like any of the results I got. They tended to have too complicated space suits on, more like Apollo astronauts rather than the rather simple flight suits used in early animal experiments (where any sort of "suit" was used at all).

Spoiler

Finishing the Suborbital Research Program at that point would have netted me 31.4 bonus reputation. However, I decided to delay it for a month to launch the last of my prebuilt Arrows (once the 90 days wait since the last flight rolled around for 100% pay-out of 11 rep and 50 confidence from the contract).

Spoiler

With the Arrow flight successfully completed on 14 Nov, I finalised the Program for a bonus of 28.4 reputation, so it was probably worth the wait even though I missed out on a month of higher funding that I could have gotten by switching to an Early Satellites Program sooner.

The decision on which Program to accept next basically comes down to whether to accept the Early Satellites (Heavy) on breakneck or fast. I ruled out  In my opinion, the extra funding for the heavy variant more than offsets the slight increase in difficulty compared to the light, and fewer contracts means getting to the more interesting later programs faster. Fast would give me a deadline of 5 years to do the 3 required contracts, while breakneck would reduce this to 3¾ years but with an extra 62,000 funds a year which would let me hire a lot of staff to speed things up. After a lot of humming and hawing, and testing what techs I would need to complete the contracts, I eventually chose to take it at breakneck speed. I'll need to invest heavily in researchers if I'm going to achieve it on time, but I believe it's doable.

 

 

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé News, Tuesday 28^th December 1954

“Puck Aerospace’s last rocket launch of the year seemed to start off well, with the latest Yeti III rocket blasting off from their new launch complex in French Guiana and soaring gracefully into a clear blue sky. But only a little more than a minute later, the engine developed a slight fault resulting in a precipitous drop in power. Despite continuing on gamely until its fuel was exhausted and a successful ignition and separation of the Arrow upper stage, the fault had taken its toll and the rocket burned up almost 400 km short of the planned target distance of 3000 km.

“Despite the failure, Puck Aerospace’s chief engineer, Mr Monty Scott, was surprisingly upbeat when talking to the press afterwards. He pointed out that despite the rocket not achieving the designated distance, it had set new company records for speed, altitude and distance. Only one of the two engines had developed a problem and all the other systems had apparently worked flawlessly. They had also gathered a lot of telemetry data from the engine, which would be examined, both by his team and by the engineers at the rocket’s manufacturer, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics, in England and he was hopeful that between them they would find the source of the failure and rectify it prior to the next Scorpion being ready towards the end of February next year.”

Monday 28^th February 1955.

“Puck Aerospace, today attempted to launch another of their Yeti III Scorpion rockets from their facilities in Kourou, French Guiana. Another flawless ignition, saw the rocket climb smoothly as it arced away to the east, beginning to spin slowly as it rose higher to help with stability during the final stages of its flight. Ninety seconds later, the technicians monitoring the telemetry signals from the rocket reported a clean ignition and separation of the Arrow upper stage and the rocket continued to accelerate smoothly until its fuel was exhausted. After that it was just a matter of waiting and tracking its progress. Going faster and higher than any previous Puck Aerospace rocket, expectations were high that it would easily reach the target 3000 km distance from Kourou.

“About twenty minutes after launch, the rocket was detected by tracking systems aboard the Puck Marine Salvage Vessel, Pieces of Eight, stationed in the Eastern Atlantic nearly 300 km south of the Cape Verde islands and 700 km west of the African coast. Triangulation of the signals placed the rocket roughly 650 km up and travelling at around 17,000 kph. The ship continued to monitor the rocket’s flight as it passed slightly south of them until it dropped below their horizon on its journey eastward. Estimates place its final point of re-entry and destruction in the Earth’s atmosphere 12 degrees 43½ minutes north by 17 degrees 37¼ minutes west, just 90 km west of the Senegal district in French West Africa, and almost 4000 km from the launch site.

“Speaking on behalf of Puck Aerospace, Chief Administrator Vincent Glasgow hailed the launch as a complete success and a marvellous vindication of the Yeti III rocket’s capabilities. He stated that plans were already in progress to add a small intermediate stage to the rocket and extend its range even further.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Thursday 10^th March 1955

“Puck Aerospace today launched another of their Bailey camera systems on a Yeti II rocket, this time aiming to fly southwards over the northern Amazonian rainforest. The rocket performed flawlessly, rising to almost 220 km above the Earth while travelling 560 km over the jungle to the south. While able to track the rocket quite precisely during its flight, its exact landing spot is uncertain and a small beacon inside the instrument package will send intermittent radio beeps for the next several days to allow the recovery team to find it amongst the dense trees.

“Speaking from the Kourou launch site, lead researcher Angus McLean admitted that the difficulty of retrieving the camera package from the dense Amazonian rainforest was a distinct disadvantage compared with the relatively easy recovery of splashed down cameras from the Atlantic. However, he stated that the potential scientific discoveries to be made from analysing the high-altitude photography of the area outweighed the inconvenience in his opinion.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Thursday 2^nd June 1955

“Another flight by the Puck Aerospace’s Yeti series of rockets ran into problems today over French Guiana. On what should have been a routine photography gathering flight south over the rainforest, the HSD-100 engine powering the rocket experienced a partial failure of the pump feeding fuel into the combustion chamber just 40 seconds after lift-off. This slowed the rate at which fuel could be burned and reduced the thrust being produced lowering the rocket’s performance. It also meant that there was still a considerable amount of fuel still in the tank when the engine reached its designed life time and the continued burning of the engine lead to a second partial failure and further reduction in performance just over a minute later, followed just 10 seconds after that by the complete shutdown of the engine despite a small amount of fuel remaining unused.

“All these issues combined contributed to the rocket failing to reach its designed altitude and range, although, according to their spokesman, the peak height of 117km and just over 400 km distance it travelled should still garner some useful results from the photographs and instrument readings taken.

“As always follows these engine problems, engineers at Puck Aerospace and Hawker Siddeley are pouring over the telemetry data to attempt to determine the cause and whether it can be fixed in future iterations of the engine.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 30^th July 1955

“Today marked Puck Aerospace’s first attempt to launch a three-stage rocket, the Yeti III Ballista. It used the same first and upper stages from the Yeti III Scorpion that flew, successfully, in February. Between those stages, a small additional conical fuel tank with three U-2000 engines (the same as on the upper Arrow stage) was added to give the final stage a little extra kick and send it even higher and further than before.

“The launch started well, with the Yeti III booster performing flawlessly. The technicians at mission control waited tensely to see if all three engines on the second stage would ignite successfully, which they did and things were looking promising as they steadily burned through their fuel and there was only a tried and trusted Arrow upper stage still to go. But it was not meant to be, and the U-2000 engine on the final stage failed to start. Without the extra energy from that last stage, the rocket ‘only’ reached a peak altitude of 338 km and a distance of 1500 km.

“Their next attempt at the 5000 km distance record will likely be in October.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 22^nd August 1955

“Yesterday, Puck Aerospace launched their third Bailey camera over the French Guianan rainforest aboard a Yeti II rocket. The flight proceeded splendidly, with the engine firing at full power until the fuel was exhausted. The rocket then continued to soar on a ballistic arc, carrying it to a peak height of nearly 210 km and over 570 km south of its launch site. How well the cameras performed remains to be seen, but telemetry from the flight suggests they also operated nominally.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 3^rd October 1955

“Today at Kourou in French Guiana, Puck Aerospace launched their second Yeti Ballista rocket and unlike their last attempt, all five engines performed flawlessly and the rocket easily exceeded the 5000 km distance goal with its 50 kg science package. Initial reports place the final destruction of the rocket somewhere high above the border between French Upper Volta, French Togoland and British Togoland, almost directly along the 0° meridian. More than 5800 km and 28½ minutes flight from its original launch point.

“Once verification has been received from various observation stations on the ground in the region, this will mark the conclusion of the last development milestone in the contract signed between Puck Aerospace and Nova Alba on 15^th January ‘51.

“With another successful launch and significant improvements in performance and range, it looks like Puck Aerospace are close to catching up and perhaps even exceeding the longer established American and Soviet space programmes.”

====

Gameplay notes:

Spoiler

Ugh! It took me forever to track down the reason why the new launch site couldn’t be selected as a launch complex location in KCT’s integration tab. Having to reload the game between each of the several attempts to try different changes, quickly became rather tedious. The annoying thing was that the launch site worked fine in sandbox and I couldn’t see why it wasn’t appearing in career. Eventually, I realised just what was different – when I’d configured the launch pad static as a launch site, I’d left most of the settings at their default values. For the other two (working) launch pads, I’d explicitly set them to be VAB/RocketPad. The default is Any/Other. Once I fixed that and loaded the game (AGAIN!!!), it worked perfectly. Hopefully, I’ve learned my lesson and will remember to set up future pads correctly.

28 Dec 54: Then, back in actual career gameplay, despite now launching from the correct location, Test Flight struck and the mission didn’t reach the contract goals. Que sera, sera!

Well, a replacement rocket went straight into the build queue and I went back to warping time and hiring staff while I waited for it to build. I also took the opportunity to dismantle the smaller sounding rocket launch complex since there wouldn’t be any more contracts to launch Arrow’s which are the only craft I currently have light enough to utilise it. That will save nearly 500 funds a year (and I really should have done it earlier after I completed that Program).

Spoiler

I also started the first Mission Control upgrade, although only at 20% construction speed for now, and upgrading the Astronaut Complex (at 10% speed). I know I’ll need them eventually and they take quite some time to build.

Note: the fictional character mentioned in the news snippet at the top of this post, Monty Scott’s first name is NOT Montgomery – it’s Lesley (full name Lesley Montague McKinley Scott but he never liked Lesley after being teased about it being a girl’s name in primary school).

28 Feb 55: no problems at all. Flight went perfectly and thanks to several test simulations was fully automated by KOS and smart parts, so I could just sit back and watch apart from pressing F2 and F1 occasionally for screenshots. Looking up the splash-down location and making measurements on Google Earth took more effort than the flight itself.

Spoiler

Screenshot from Google Earth used to trace map for above "news report"

10 Mar 55: another routine Downrange Distance LV Development (Difficult) contract (target distance this time was 320 km). I’m not sure how useful the relatively low-quality images from the cameras of the time would be in photographing the Amazonian rainforest in real life, but that was the direction I needed if I wanted some more science out of the camera … so Mr McLean provided a justification. Of course, in game recovery from the (tree less) Amazonian landing site was no more difficult than anywhere else on Earth, but role-play (shrug).

Spoiler

29 May 55: began construction of a Yeti III Ballista 3 stage rocket to complete the 5000km contract. This is basically a Scorpion but with a reshaped avionics section at the top of the first stage and a small 2^nd stage with 3x U-2000 engines to give it the extra range. For some weird reason I’d somehow got it into my head that I was using the second variant of the Veronique engine for the 2^nd stage, forgetting that I’d swapped it out for the U-2000’s during testing and so I wasted a lot of time waiting for the Early Rocketry tech to finish researching despite no longer needing it for this rocket.

(Possibly because the Veronique engine was used in a fairly recently watched YouTube video by Mike Aben which was a similar 3 stage design and I had tried out some designs using the Veronique in one of my previous career play-throughs)

I also drastically slowed the construction rate on both Mission Control and Astronaut Complex as they would finish long before they would be needed and I could instead use the extra funds to support faster tech research.

2 Jun 55: My next Y2Bailey was built, but with still another 50 days until the cooldown on that contract reached 100% rewards again, taking the contract then would only net 50ish% rewards so it was better to launch without the contract and get a slightly more than 100% return on the next flight. This turned out to be just as well as Test Flight failures meant that the rocket wouldn’t have met the contract parameters anyway.

Spoiler

I also checked my 1^st satellite prototype craft to confirm which technologies it needed (just Avionics Prototypes which was 10% researched and two SRB tech nodes – which would all finish by the new year at then research staffing levels, probably sooner at the rate I’m currently increasing staffing). The KLC-01 pad will need a small upgrade to support the vessels 25½t mass and different fuel requirements but that will only take 4 days, so there should be plenty of time after the Ballista flight (or flights if Test Flight is nasty again) is out of the way.

30 Jul 55: Yeti Ballista – 5 engines, 5 chances for Test Flight to rear its ugly head – and it waited ‘til the last engine to do so! Just as I was starting to relax! I decided to take the opportunity to upgrade the launch centre to support the upcoming orbital rocket before starting to build another Ballista (it was only a small upgrade with a four-day delay)

Spoiler

I also had the wrong guidance program configured in KOS - hence the errors in the terminal - it should have been running Y3 not Y2. This didn't affect the main part of the flight and only showed up after apoapsis when it tried to separate a non-existent payload for recovery.

21 Aug 55: Another Bailey launch. LV distance difficult (410 km) – no problem, the rocket’s done it before. Luckily Test Flight behaved and I got a nice return of science from the flight, but now the Tropics biome film science is complete, so unless I want to cheese things by launching from a KK pad at Canaveral to get forest biome science, the only other science within reach of a Bailey at the moment is shores which would mean skimming the coastline again and even then, would only be over the shores biome for part of the flight.

Spoiler

4 Oct 55: 2^nd attempt at a Ballista launch – warped forward to the 3^rd for role-play purposes to avoid an unnecessary Sunday launch. Modern country names for the final location are Burkino Faso, Ghana and Togo respectively (google maps).

Spoiler

Screenshot from Google Maps:

I have a Yeti Bailey in the build queue so I won’t finish the program yet. Let’s see how much of the 55.8 rep. bonus I’d get for finishing the program now that loses me.

After realising I hadn’t appointed a Chief Designer (I really need to remember to check the Administration Building more often) and weighing up the various options, I decided that at the moment I think Wernher von Braun’s is the best option. I believe his 10% faster research outweighs the 7% reduction in vessel construction and rollout (the hydrolox research bonus won’t come into play for quite a while yet)

Started work on a heavy (130t) launch complex to support my larger orbital rocket at 50% speed projected completion Dec 56 but it will need a mountain of engineers to staff it. Maybe I should investigate if I can design a lighter LV capable of a 1t satellite launch? Probably can’t do it with the upgraded Yeti I’ll be using for 1^st satellite – that doesn’t have much margin with just the very small satellite it’s carrying but maybe a three core Yeti Heavy? Something to look into tomorrow maybe.

 

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé news Monday 14^th November 1955

“In another exchange deal with the Americans, Puck Aerospace once again launched one of their Bailey cameras on a Yeti II rocket from Merrit Island in Florida. Travelling over 540 km north from the launch site, it took detailed high-altitude pictures of the mainland US beneath it.

“Chief Administrator Mr Vincent Glasgow said afterwards that he believed that they had probably extracted as much information out of these suborbital camera tests as they were going to and that the focus of the organisation would now switch to developing and testing an orbit capable launch vehicle. The first test flight of the first rocket is expected to take place in March or April next year.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Monday 2^th April 1956

"PUCK AEROSPACE READY TO TRY FOR ORBIT"

“Anyone who has been paying attention to the news, knows that there have been rumours for a couple of years now of programmes underway in both the Soviet Union and United States of America to place an artificial satellite in orbit around the Earth. Recently, there has been a new contender, Puck Aerospace, the brainchild of excentric multimillionaire Peadar Ùisdean Cameron Kincaid. In November last year they announced that they were moving on from the suborbital rockets they have flown so successfully lately to make an attempt to build an actual orbital launch vehicle.

“Today at a press conference in his offices in Kourou, French Guiana, Mr Kincaid announced that the rocket is now ready and is undergoing final testing on the launch pad prior to a planned launch of Wednesday. The members of the press were taken on a tour of the launch facility a few kilometres north of town, culminating in a look at the rocket itself standing proudly on its launch pad.

“Standing just over 24 metres tall and, according to the engineers, weighing in at a little over 25 tons, it certainly looked impressive in the blue, white and black livery that has become familiar from other Puck Aerospace rockets. Hidden away inside a protective cowling at the very summit of the rocket, we were told, sat the satellite itself. A small half metre cone of metal, weighing a mere 50 kilograms, most of that being the batteries that will power it.

“While carrying some scientific instruments, the chief engineer Mr Monty Scott, admitted that the batteries would only be sufficient to power them for a few hours before they would need to be shut down to conserve energy and allow the satellite to continue transmitting regular radio beeps to allow it to be tracked by observers on the ground. Even in this low power configuration, he said, the satellite would only be able to send out its signals for a few days before falling silent forever.

“I think I can speak for everyone present when I say that we are all eagerly looking forward to the launch on Wednesday.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Wednesday 4^th April 1956

"WORLD'S FIRST ARTIFICIAL SATELLITE LAUNCHED"

“’If I have seen further today, it is because I stand on the back of giants.’ Starting his press conference today in Kourou, French Guiana, Peadar Kincaid was in a jubilant mood as he quoted Sir Isaac Newton’s famous saying from three centuries ago. Why was he in such a good mood you might ask? Because his little upstart aerospace company had just achieved something that had eluded the might of the American and Soviet space programmes. Today, they launched the Earth’s first artificial satellite. Circling the Earth, high above our heads is a small metal cone packed full of batteries and electronics, triumphantly proclaiming its presence to amateur radio operators all over the world as it passes overhead.

Elaborating on his company’s achievement, Mr Kincaid acknowledged the considerable contributions in skill, technology and experience that they had received from many countries around the world, especially from Hawker Siddeley who manufactured the engines used in today’s rocket and the manufacturing breakthroughs that had allowed the construction of much lighter but still immensely strong fuel tanks. He further explained that it was his conviction that it had been through working as a small team with a single unified goal that they had been able to achieve what had escaped the grasp of the more fragmented efforts of their larger competitors…”

Excerpt from Pathé news Friday 27^th April 1956

“Puck Aerospace, today announced that they had hired French pilot Marguerite Laurent as their first test pilot for their fledgling X-Planes programme. Marguerite has several years’ experience as a test pilot for Avion Marcel Dassault (a French aircraft manufacturer)  and will initially be trained in the handling of the Hawker Siddeley experimental rocket planes. The training is expected to take a couple of months after which she will be taking HSXR-02 Nessie for its first flight and attempting to break the sound barrier and achieve some (company) speed and altitude records.

Excerpt from Pathé news Tuesday 19^th June 1956

“A heavy transport plane took off from the new 4800m extended runway at Kourou in French Guiana today, carrying a most unusual cargo. Tucked under the right wing was a small plane, and not just an ordinary plane either. This one was the second Hawker Siddeley eXperimental Rocketplane – the HSXR-02 Nessie, fitted with a powerful rocket engine that was intended to take it through the sound barrier and high up above the ground. The first HSXR plane was flown three years ago from the Woomera Royal Air Force base in southern Australia by RAF Flight Lieutenant Peter Simonson.

“Alas, it was not meant to be, as pilot Marguerite Laurent discovered when she dropped away from the carrier plane and pressed the button to ignite the rocket engine. Despite performing flawlessly during a ground test just the week before, on the day, something went wrong and the engine just failed to ignite. Cycling the systems and making a second attempt got no response whatsoever, so Marguerite was left with the sad realisation that she didn’t have enough height or speed to glide all the way back to Kourou and would need to ditch the plane in the Atlantic.

“Fortunately, the weather was calm, with only a moderate swell, so as she eased the plane down at a little less than 200 kph, only moderate damage was done to the airframe. The failed engine would have needed to be replaced anyway, so submerging it in salt water was not an issue.

“A support boat was dispatched from Kourou harbour to collect Mlle Laurent, and a barge will be sent to recover the plane.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Friday 3^rd August 1956

"THIRD WOMAN BREAKS THE SOUND BARRIER"

“Mademoiselle Marguerite Laurent again boarded her experimental rocket plane at Puck Aerospace’s Kourou facility in French Guiana today. The carrier aircraft once more took her 350 km off shore before she released the X-Plane from under its wing and ignited her rocket engine. This time, unlike the prior flight, the engine lit without a problem and Mlle Laurent began picking up speed and gently pitching up into a shallow climb. She reached a peak altitude of just over 20 km at 535 ms^-1 before levelling off and throttling down to hold her speed between 450 and 520 ms^-1 as required by the pre-flight planning.

“Roughly nine minutes later, her fuel was exhausted and she pitched down to glide safely back to land at the Kourou runway, travelling at a comparatively sedate 51.5 ms^-1.

“Mlle Laurent is the third woman to break the sound barrier, following in the footsteps of American Jackie Cochran and Jacqueline Auriol from France who both flew faster than sound in 1953. She is however, the first woman to do so in a rocketplane.”

====

Gameplay notes and screenshots:

Spoiler

14 Nov 55: It was a deliberate choice to launch from Florida for the first flight of this batch. Launching from Kourou again would have got almost no science out of the mission - LVD distance (difficult) 500km contract.

4 Apr 56: Rocket loosely based on a design I saw in a Carnasa YouTube video, featured RD-103 1^st stage, XLR35-RM-1 2^nd stage, and 2x GCRC upper stages. The flight was flawless and totally hands-off under the control of MechJeb PVG Ascent Guidance. It reached a 218.9 x 4724 km orbit with no problems. It only had battery life for a few hours, but transmitted back a decent amount of science before running out of power. Not an RP-1 record for 1^st orbit by any means, but still about 18 months before Sputnik I (Спутник-1) IRL.

Spoiler

Craft file is available on KerbalX.

If I’d chosen to go with Early Satellites (Light) rather than the (Heavy) variant, then this rocket could easily complete 4 more contracts (5 once the Geiger counter tech unlocks – possibly the polar contract with some strap on boosters). However, in the (Heavy) programme that I am running, I will need to wait for a larger launch complex and some tech unlocks before I can realistically consider attempting the other contracts.

Belatedly finalised the Early Rocket Development Programme (33.4 bonus rep) and accepted X-Plane Research to partially offset the drop in funding. I then took Supersonic Plane research in R&D and moved it to the top of the research queue as it would only bump the tech I was already researching down by 8 days and would allow me to mess around with rocket plane contracts while waiting for the tech I need for the other orbital contracts.

27 Apr 56: Marguerite Laurent (photo generated with A1111) was the first pilot on the list in the astronaut complex, so she got hired. After doing a little research into early aviation record holders, I considered editing my save to rename her as Jacqueline Auriol, the wife of Paul Auriol, son of French president (1947-1954) Vincent Auriol. Mdme. Auriol was setting various airspeed records in real life during the 1950s and 1960s (and later was a test pilot on Concorde), including being the 2^nd woman to break the sound barrier in 1953. However, I decided to leave it with the fictional Mlle Laurent since I’m not a great pilot and I might end up killing her in an accident at some point. If M. Auriol had still been in office, I might have justified it as a political move to hire her (as well as her undoubted talent and fame), but with him retired as President, I figured there would be less political influence to “encourage” Puck Aerospace to hire her.

19 Jun 56: Test Flight struck with an ignition failure. The choppy scatterer water caused the plane to summersault on landing, breaking the engine and rear cowling, despite setting down at a sedate 40 m/s in level flight. But recovered the rest of the plane and the pilot and it will go into the SPH for repairs – shouldn’t take too long, it’s a fairly cheap craft.

3 Aug 56: No Test Flight issues this time, so the Nessie completed the “Break the Sound Barrier” contract and then I flew up to 20km and alternated lowering and increasing the throttle to hold the plane at the speed required by the Supersonic Flight experiment. Didn’t quite manage to get the full available amount of science before running out of fuel, but it was enough to start researching the next aviation tech node. A nice smooth landing on the 4km runway and then off to R&D. I realised after the flight that I should have gone a little higher in order to unlock the Flight Director leader slot in admin, but I misremembered the X-1 cockpit’s initial flight ceiling (I thought it was just 25km, not the 30km I later confirmed in the part menu)

Spoiler

Banking into a turn over Kourou to line up with the long runway I added using Kerbal Konstructs

Nose Art (slightly edited from an image found on an open source clip art site):

 

Craft file also available on KerbalX
 

 

Edited March 30 by Aelfhe1m
Replaced some GitHub images with Imgur

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé news Monday 3^rd September 1956

“Yesterday, Mlle Laurent took her Puck Aerospace rocket plane up for its third test flight. In what was later described as another perfect text book performance, the engine lit on queue and Mlle Laurent climbed gracefully to just over 26,200m, hitting a peak speed of 604 ms^-1 before throttling back and descending slightly to collect more performance data on the plane’s systems and handling. Once the plane was out of fuel, she once more glided back to Kourou for a smooth and uneventful landing.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Wednesday 5^th September 1956

“Puck Aerospace today announced another important hire, appointing Christopher ‘Kit’ Malcolm Carson as Director of Flight Operations. Mr Carson’s duties will cover managing both continued testing of high-performance planes and the launching of rockets. Mr Carson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1917, and entered Edinburgh University in 1935 to study engineering, after his studies were briefly interrupted by service as a pilot flying transport aircraft for the RAF during WWII, he graduated in 1947 with a Master’s degree in aeronautical engineering. He went on to work at Vickers-Armstrongs (Aircraft) Ltd., as an operational manager in their flight research division.

“When Puck Aerospace began to make headlines a few years ago, Mr Carson wrote several letters to the company outlining his thoughts on organising and managing the handling of rocket launches and proposals for dealing with more long-term operation once orbit could be achieved. The detail and thoroughness of his presentations suitably impressed Chief Administrator Vincent Glasgow and eventually lead to his appointment today.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Tuesday 2^nd October 1956

“Today’s flight of Puck Aerospace’s HSXR-02 rocket plane, again went smoothly according to plan, with pilot Mlle Marguerite Laurent following a very similar flight profile to her last flight at the beginning of September.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Thursday 1^st November 1956

“After another successful flight of their HSXR-02 rocket plane today, during which pilot Mlle Marguerite Laurent once more broke personal and company records for both speed (708 ms^-1) and altitude (28,340 m), Puck Aerospace announced that they believe they have learned everything they can from the current plane. It will be retired pending the delivery of an upgraded replacement from Hawker Siddeley. Mlle Laurent is taking a brief sabbatical to travel to England to work with the engineers at Hawker Siddeley in the initial subsonic testing of a new experimental jet plane, before it is delivered to Puck Aerospace in French Guiana for a thorough investigation of its supersonic performance.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Thursday 29^th November 1956

“Puck Aerospace today launched their second orbital rocket. However, an ignition on the second stage engine prevented it from reaching space and the range safety controller activated the self-destruct system. This represents an expensive failure for the company and Chief Administrator Vincent Glasgow stated that the company would need to rearrange their budget and shift priorities to be able to afford a replacement in the near future.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Thursday 27^th December 1956

“After a break over Christmas, Puck Aerospace were again conducting high altitude rocket plane tests today. This time with their newly delivered HSXR-03 which they named The Flying Scotsman. The new plane features a number of design changes that Hawker Siddeley are keen to have flight tested, most noticeably the swept back wings and twin engines. These changes should enable it to fly higher and faster than ever before – and to support this the cockpit has been upgraded to maintain a survivable pressure for the pilot up to extreme altitudes.

“Marguerite Laurent was keen to test out the new planes capabilities and after being lifted by the carrier plane to her launch altitude, she released her plane and after dropping a safe distance from the carrier, lit her engines and began accelerating rapidly. Pulling back on the stick, she continued to accelerate even while climbing steeply. However, conflicting goals for today’s flight soon came into play. The engineers at Hawker Siddeley were wanting to collect data on the plane’s performance in the Mach 2 flight regime, whereas the 'Kit' Carson, the Flight Director at Puck Aerospace was looking to set new altitude and speed records. In trying to satisfy the requirements of the HSD engineers, Mlle Laurent throttled back during her ascent to keep the plane’s speed within their desired parameters, but that did not give her enough speed before her fuel was exhausted to reach Puck Aerospace’s target 40 km altitude. She did however, set a new company 36 km altitude record and 1347 ms^-1 speed record.”

====

Gameplay notes and screenshots:

Spoiler

2 Sep 56: Another successful ignition. Easily completed 1^st experimental Rocketplane optional contract (320m/s @10-12.5km altitude). Then climbed to 26km and broke the 600 m/s speed record for a little more rep before throttling back to collect more Supersonic Flight science (only 1.9 this time instead of 2.5 from the previous flight because of earlier manoeuvring eating into my fuel supply). Landed back on the 4.8km runway, but that didn’t count for the land on runway bonus for some reason – I need to investigate – for the moment I’ll keep track of the missed rep. and confidence (8 and 38 in this case) and add it into the save file manually.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Note: it says Tropics for biome.

Debug ramblings:

Spoiler

[Quick peak in the RP-1 code repository and contract definitions shows that the contract is looking for vessel.landedAt.Contains(“Runway”) – Hmm, that’s a micro-biome I think. Might be because the Shuttle Landing Facility and KSC runway both use the same Squad runway model. Is there something special about that static that isn’t in the runway (from Kerbinside Remastered) I’m using?

Quick trip to a test save: yes, Squad runways are different than KSR. Placed a scaled-up Squad Lvl 3 runway (same as Shuttle Landing Facility) beside the 4.8km runway at Kourou. Squad runway registers as biome “Runway”, the KSR 4.8km runway is “Tropics”. Pity, the 4.8km runway looks nicer, but I guess function trumps form in this case. Replacing the static for now at least.]

I remembered to go to Admin and select a Flight Director. I hummed and hawed a bit, but finally settled on Chris Kraft (role-played by the completely fictitious Mr ‘Kit’ Carson) for his boosts to speed of integration, rollout and rollback + speed of efficiency gains. He’ll make crew training more expensive, but that’s a minor hit at the moment.

Spoiler

Original portrait - generated with A1111:

2 Oct 56: 2^nd experimental rocketplane optional contract: 550 m/s and 20km. Collected another 2.2 Supersonic Flight science. Updated runway correctly registered for land on runway bonus.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Note: Biome says Runway this time!

1 Nov 56: 3^rd and final experimental rocketplane optional contract: 700 m/s and 28km. Only 0.6 Supersonic Science because of higher speed and altitude. Half of the runway seems to have gotten buried – I’ll need to raise it slightly and possibly tilt it to prevent this – because of my slightly overlong approach, I ran off the raised section onto the semi-buried section and I lost the land on runway bonus despite it still being the runway. It must have been buried just enough to register as “Tropics”.

Spoiler

Note: Biome is back to saying Tropics 

Debug rambling:

Spoiler

[Switched to test save to adjust runway – strangely, it didn’t look partially buried there. Raised runway 6m on general principles.]

Time to upgrade the plane to the HSXR-03 with the X-2 cockpit, swept wings and 2 engines for higher and faster contracts.

29 Nov 56: 2^nd orbit attempt. No contract for this. Just launching to get some more science and keep up the engineer efficiency at the LC (and give them something to do while waiting for larger LC to build). Unfortunately, a failure due to Test Flight preventing 2^nd stage ignition.

(Yes that is a recycled image - newspapers do that sometimes  )

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Also imported a twin-engine jet from a prior RP-1 save, tweaked its name and livery to fit with this save then started it building. Marguerite will get jet proficiency training after her next flight in the rocketplane.

27 Dec 56: I was trying to maximise Mach 2 Flight science gathered by throttling back during climb, but that meant I didn’t reach the 40km altitude for the contract – a stupid mistake, the plane could easily do it. However, I did get another altitude record and two speed records as well as 2.1 science, so not a complete waste. Marguerite is now of 20 days holiday then will start Jet proficiency training (120 days – am I the only one who thinks this is rather excessive since X-1 proficiency training is only 45days?) so it will be a while before I make a second attempt at 40km. If it looks like I can afford it, I might hire a second pilot and train them on the X-1 to get it back in the air sooner, although with the larger launch complex nearing completion, I’ll probably need all the funds I can get to tool and build my first of the new rocket series.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Nose art (just some crappy clip-art I got from a free site-can't remember which, I should try looking for it again to give proper attribution) but I liked the stereotypical kilted ginger bearded fat guy sitting on top of a drawing of the LNER steam locomotive Flying Scotsman :

 

 

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé news Wednesday 2^nd January 1957

“Puck Aerospace began the new year with the announcement of several new hires in key positions as they continue to expand their operations. Most noticeably, the hiring of Mrs Moira McKenzie-Poitier, a manufacturing processes efficiency expert who will be working to streamline the various processes involved in assembling and preparing rockets and space planes at their facilities in Kourou. Mrs McKenzie-Poitier graduated from Stirling University in 1929 and worked for McVitie & Price in Edinburgh. During World War II she worked in various bases throughout England as a quartermaster, before getting a posting as a production manager in the Avro factory in Chadderton where many of the Lancaster bombers were made. Following the War, she worked in various posts within Avro and their parent company, Hawker Siddeley, before her recruitment to Puck Aerospace today.

"Mrs McKenzie-Poitier has reportedly already identified several areas for improvement and the production of future rockets, equipment and buildings is expected to be measurably faster as a result of her innovations.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Tuesday 19^th February 1957

“Puck Aerospace Chief Administrator, Vincent Glasgow, today announced that they had hired their second test pilot. Madame Arlette Bertrand is a veteran test pilot who has recently worked on the new high performance hybrid jet/rocket planes being designed by Sud-Est. She had previously worked for Sud-Ouest, as a jet fighter test pilot and had been a technician in a Vickers aircraft factory in England during the latter part of WWII. Mr Glasgow stated that it was her wide-ranging experience with testing various planes that led to them offering her a place with their company. Mdme. Bertrand is currently settling in at Kourou and undergoing training on the operation of the HSXR rocket planes.”

Excerpt from Pathé news Saturday 13^th April 1957

“Puck Aerospace today launched their second artificial satellite. Slightly heavier than the first at 81kg, this satellite carried a Geiger counter to monitor radiation in low space and small solar panels to help recharge its batteries. Even with the panels however, it will eventually run out of power as they are not large enough to fully satisfy the probe’s electricity requirements.

“Puck Aerospace stated that both their own engineers and several of the companies that they contract work with are already working on researching improved panels, that will hopefully be both lighter (critical for space craft) and provide more energy.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 15^th April 1957

“At Puck Aerospace’s French Guianan facility today, The HSXR-03 The Flying Scotsman was once again carried several hundred kilometres out to sea by its carrier jet. It is perhaps ironic, that once again the pilot today was not Scottish (nor indeed a man) as French new hire, Mdme. Bertrand, took the cockpit.  She flew the rocketplane to set new speed and altitude records when it climbed over 43½ kilometres into the sky. Unfortunately, the weather at Kourou had unexpectedly deteriorated during her brief flight, and visibility was poor during her approach to the runway. But luckily there was a break in the clouds just as she approached and she was able to see clearly during her landing. The after-flight briefing highlighted a control issue in the very rarified atmosphere at the heights achieved today. Experts at Puck Aerospace and Hawker Siddeley are already working on a system to use compressed gas jets placed in strategic locations around the aircraft to compensate for this.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Friday 27^th April 1957

“Disaster was narrowly avoided at Kourou in French Guiana today, when test pilot Marguerite Laurent took Puck Aerospace’s new HSXJ-01 Kestrel for its maiden flight from their facility. Despite the aircraft performing flawlessly during its initial testing at the Hawker Siddeley factory in England, something went catastrophically wrong during her landing today and only her fast reflexes and a last-minute use of the ejection system allowed Mlle Laurent to survive, when the plane swerved violently to the left and began to tumble immediately following touch-down. Such low altitude ejection is always a risky prospect, but the doctors who examined her after the incident are confident that she will make a full recovery.

“The wreckage of the plane is being examined to try and determine the cause of the incident and a replacement jet has been ordered from Hawker Siddeley’s factory in England. Fortunately, they had a partially constructed plane available and it is expected to be completed, tested and delivered in mid-June.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Saturday 12^th May 1957

“The new thruster system on Puck Aerospace’s experimental rocket plane were put to the test today as Mdme. Bertrand once again set new altitude and speed records, reaching just over 68 km at the peak of her flight and almost 1250 ms^-1. She reported that the systems were a great success and she was able to position and orient the craft effortlessly even at those extreme altitudes.”

====

Gameplay notes and screenshots:

Spoiler

2 Jan 57: Satellite Era material science tech unlocked, bringing with it an improvement to LC efficiency – role-played as the new hire in the news section.

19 Feb 57: I might regret this, but decided to hire a second pilot – Arlette Bertrand was the only pilot on the Astronaut Complex applicants list, so she gets the place by default. The list is 50/50 M/F so two female hires in a row is probably a coincidence. Immediately started her on X-1 proficiency training.

[French names are coming up a little too commonly in the new Astronauts offered for hire (despite PA’s strong ties to the French government), so I adjusted the strengths of the various country contributions in my custom Kerbal Renamer profile to make Scottish/British names more than 10x more likely than French. I’ll adjust the profile to be more internationally inclusive as ‘history’ progresses more towards the modern era.

Also trying to get the AI to generate a non-pinup picture of a woman pilot is something of a chore and the less said about the mangled jets in the backgrounds of most of the pictures the better.]

AI Generated portrait (unedited):

Spoiler

Had to crop her feet, shadow and parts of the "plane" in the background to get something useable.

April ‘57 looks like it will be a busy month, with Arlette finishing her training at the start of the month, which will quickly be followed by a flight in The Flying Scotsman – definitely focussing on reaching 40km first this time before worrying about the science collection. Then the next orbital rocket will be rolling out to the pad. Mid-month the next launch centre finishes construction and I can start construction of my heavier orbital rocket (with downgraded avionics that I’ll need to remember to replace when the tech unlocks) and finally Marguerite finishes her jet fighter training at the end of the month and will be starting to work on the supersonic jet contracts. I need to design a high-altitude plane and X-15 analogue (once I get enough science to start researching that node)

[I’m now drafting these notes as I play and then writing up the news stories afterwards, so this marked an overnight break, hence the forward-looking tone, but there wasn’t really enough for a full post – so the next notes are my next day’s play]

13 Apr 57: No Test Flight issues, so satellite successfully reached orbit. Unfortunately, it is poorly angled relative to the Sun and its panels are not compensating for the drain on power from avionics let alone transmitter and experiments. Hopefully this will change as the Earth progresses in its orbit and the satellite will wake back up – I think I set up the Kerbalism automation correctly. I should have done more simulated launches to work out the best time of day to launch to get good panel exposure. The one sim. launch I did do lucked out to a good orientation, so I didn’t even think about it. But it did transmit a little science before its batteries went flat, so not a complete loss.

[Future note: thinking about it, I always simulate with 18h (not relative) as the time offset as 18:00 UTC on 1/1/1951 is a nice bright sunny time – so maybe doing another simulation just before launch using a relative offset to check lighting would be a good idea]

Screenshots:

Spoiler

14 Apr 57: KLC-02 heavier launch complex completes construction so I nip into the VAB to tool Xanthos XG-2 rocket. Not enough credits/funds to unlock/buy one.

15 Apr 57: HSXR-03 w. Arlette. 40km contract still active. Max Alt 43.575 km. Descended to 20 km to bleed off speed (air is too thin to lose speed at 40km) and collect Mach 2 science. 1.0 science collected before fuel exhausted. Settle in for long glide back to Kourou. Landed smoothly although I was a little worried about cloud cover reducing visibility briefly on approach, but luckily it cleared before final. That flight pushed back Arlette’s retiral date by 138 days (plus the push back for training in X-1 proficiency and mission). Next up for the rocketplane – high altitude optional 55km, should be no problem for this design. After vessel recovery added RCS (HTP) for control at that altitude and some HTP/Helium to the cockpit to run the RCS.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

27 Apr 57: Marguerite completed her jet proficiency training (+112 days to retiral date) so I immediately started her on (the very brief) mission training, made sure to set jet’s launch site to the long runway and then she was off to complete the contract. Set autopilot to climb to 12km, then once level set velocity control to 455 m/s. That quickly satisfied the contract, then I just settled back to collect the last of the Supersonic Flight science, before turning back to Kourou. Everything looked good, but then as I touched down the jet lurched to one side on the runway and it was only a quick press of the abort/eject key that saved it from being a complete disaster. However, I have lost the collected science, the jet and will need to redo the contract. Better practice jet landings some more in simulation – I thought I had them down pat.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Miraculously a few parts including both engines and their fuel tanks survived intact and I was able to recover them, so the jet rebuild will be a little quicker (and cheaper) than it otherwise might be (still about 800 funds and 50 days though).

[Crash image sourced from WFAA Twitter via https://nypost.com/2022/12/15/video-pilot-ejects-himself-from-jet-as-it-crashes-during-landing/ I believe I’m transforming it enough to be within copyright. I was too busy to capture a screenshot as it happened and all attempts to get AI to generate an image were laughable.]

12 May 57: Got enough unlock credits for the Xanthos but Early Avionics is only a month away, so I decided not to faf about with partially building a rocket with downgraded avionics and then remembering to upgrade the avionics again after unlock – especially since I don’t have downgraded avionics in those sizes tooled so I’d need to save up more to purchase an un-tooled rocket and it would build slower anyway. I added a third light satellite instead – this time with larger solar panels and the TV camera experiment. Simulations showed that the light launcher could get this 100kg satellite into a 150 x 350 km orbit. At Kourou’s launch inclination of 5 degrees that won’t cover 4 of the biomes, but it will eventually get the rest.

26 May 57: Arlette in HSXR-03 on 55km contract. Ballistic climb reached 68 km. RCS control: maintained orientation nicely. A little too high on approach meant a slightly fast landing (64m/s) but nothing the plane can’t handle (100 m/s would be OK). 1.1 science from High Altitude experiment + we now have 70% of flying high crew report.

Screenshots:

Spoiler

 

 

Edited April 3 by Aelfhe1m
fixed a minor typo

[Aelfhe1m]

Excerpt from Pathé news 29^th June 1957

“After a week of very thorough inspections, Puck Aerospace today declared their replacement high performance jet (another HSXJ-01 Kestrel from Hawker Siddeley) to be ready for its first test flight and pilot Marguerite Laurent climbed into the cockpit and took off, heading south along the French Guianan coast. Mlle Laurent reported that the jet performed flawlessly as she took it up to high altitude and pushed the speed up to nearly twice the speed of sound. After flying down the coast for about ten minutes, she slowed and turned back to the airport. Unlike her fellow pilot’s unfortunate crash a couple of months ago, the plane landed smoothly and was immediately taxied into a nearby hangar to be examined closely by the waiting ground crew.

“But apparently, despite a seemingly flawless flight, the observers from Hawker Siddeley were not quite satisfied and have asked that Puck Aerospace schedule a repeat of the flight to gather a second set of performance telemetry.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 1^st July 1957

“Having fully recovered from her near disastrous crash a couple of months ago, Puck Aerospace pilot Mdme Bertrand was undaunted as she once more took to the skies at the controls of a plane. This time she was back in the cockpit of the HSXR-03 The Flying Scotsman, setting yet another record for altitude, climbing an astonishing 73,046 metres above the Atlantic Ocean before flying back to Kourou for a flawless landing.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Wednesday 24^th July 1957

“Despite pushing the Kestrel experimental jet to even higher speeds in her test flight today, Puck Aerospace test pilot Mlle Marguerite Laurent was reportedly a little disappointed that overheating warnings on her plane’s engines prevented her from pushing the plane above Mach 2 as she had hoped.

“By contrast, the engineers from Hawker Siddeley were much happier with the flight and declared it to be a complete success. Information gathered today and in the earlier flight will apparently be instrumental in developing several upgrades to the engines that should see them capable of pushing for significantly higher performances.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 11^th November 1957

“After being grounded for a couple of months while its engines were upgraded, Hawker Siddeley’s experimental jet was once more being put through its paces at Puck Aerospace’s facilities in Kourou, French Guiana today. The new engines reportedly performed flawlessly and pilot Marguerite Laurent was able to hold the plane in a Mach 2 supersonic cruise down the South American coastline for several minutes before returning northward at a slightly more sedate Mach 1.3.”

Excerpt from Pathé News Monday 30^th December 1957

“Test pilot Marguerite Laurent finished 1957 with a bang – or at least a sonic boom or two – as she once more flew down the coast of French Guiana from Puck Aerospace’s test facility near Kourou. She held her Kestrel experimental jet above Mach 2 for over six minutes today, before throttling down to conserve fuel for her return to the airport. Both she and the engineers in charge of the plane are reported to be very pleased with its performance today.”

====

Gameplay notes and screenshots

Spoiler

Some brief notes about my debugging the issue I had with the plane in its first flight (no screenshots)

Spoiler

[Interlude: serious debugging simulations to find out what’s wrong with the jet and why I CAN’T land it.

Step 1: test the jet landing at Canaveral Shuttle Landing Facility to test if the problem is the runway instead of the jet. NOPE: unstable on landing there too.

Step 2: load an older version of the jet from an earlier save to test it – maybe something got corrupted? Found oldest version of jet still on file and launched it from Cape SLF to test. Planted the landing first attempt – maybe it is the plane? Retest at Kourou – first time again, no problems. Definitely the plane – I’ll rebrand this variant instead. And replace the rebuilt version in the hangar.

Oops, that version used a more advanced variant of the engines I haven’t unlocked yet (47 days) – downgrade engines and retest.

First attempt I rushed it a bit and came in too high and too fast, so … retry.

More patient this time – much better approach, landed perfectly. So, build this version. Only a couple of hours – Marguerite’s already mission trained, time to warp to morning]

Now back to the career save:

27 Jun 57: Avionics unlocked. Time to start building the Xanthos – except I don’t quite have enough unlock credits, and that means I don’t have enough funds. Oh well set a budget alarm for when I CAN afford it.

29 Jun 57: Jet mission. Climbed to altitude, set autopilot, waited for science to collect. Completed – back to Kourou. Landed fine ! But contract didn’t complete  – I’ll give it one more chance by cancelling and retaking it – then I’ll cheat it complete. At least Marguerite’s retirement date got pushed back just a little more.

Craft file on KerbalX

Screenshots

Spoiler

30 Jun 57: Arlette’s X-1 mission training completes, time for another record-breaking flight (70 km). Reached 73,046 m. Finished crew report and collected some more High Altitude Flight (1.8). Smooth landing.

Spoiler

18 Jul 57: Finally saved enough funds to buy a Xanthos 1t+ launcher with satellite. Transferred as many engineers as I can spare to the new LC, stripping hanger and KLC-1 to bare bones staffing, but even so I’m going to need to start hiring a lot more engineers to get it built in a timely fashion. Oh well, more of the warp and hire dance.

24 Jul 57: Last minute check to make sure I’d switched Supersonic Flight for Mach 2 Flight and Marguerite was ready to take the jet up again to try for the (re-activated) contract. I need more science – I’ll finish researching everything in the queue in just another 21 days. Climbed to 17km and opened throttles, but 1^st gen J57’s red-line their temperature gauges before reaching the minimum 620 m/s for the Mach 2 contract – so back to base. Another textbook landing and contract finally completed, so no need to use the cheat menu. I will need to save a little funds before upgrading the engines however.

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10 Nov 57: Marguerite took upgraded Kestrel for its maiden flight and Arlette started training for jet proficiency since there’s nothing much more to do in rocket planes until the X-15 cockpit unlocks (which needs 0.3 more science to start researching). Next contract (500 – 550m/s for 3 minutes level) then Marguerite can pick up some speed to get some Mach 2 science. Collected max 4.7 science it would let me then back to Kourou. Dropped to 450 m/s at 5km for return trip. Came in nice and low and slow and the wheels touched the runway at just over 110 m/s. Braked smoothly to a stop, although I could have done with being a bit more central on the runway.

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30 Dec 57: Marguerite ended the year with the Mach 2 milestone contract (625-650 m/s level for 5 mins). An extra minute to exhaust the allotment of Mach 2 Flight science and then back to Kourou again. The current plane might be able to handle the next supersonic optional contract (700 m/s) but if I’m going to get any of the remaining milestone contracts, I’ll need to design something like U-2 and X-15 analogues. Will need to finish construction of Astronaut Complex upgrade before I can start either pilot on X-15 proficiency training (increased to 5% until I have funding margin to crank it higher – it’s been sitting at 0% for a while now).

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[Spikemaster]

New story in progress?

[Aelfhe1m]

4 minutes ago, Spikemaster said:

New story in progress?

Yes, I've made several abortive attempts at writing up 1958 and early 1959, but I'm struggling with it. There weren't many launches (a lot of waiting around for stuff to build/upgrade/accumulate funds) and the launches were mostly disastrous due to Test Flight not being kind during this period, and I made several stupid mistakes on top of that. Trying to wrangle that into a coherent story is proving difficult, but I should have the next update soon™.

Peek at log:

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https://rp1careerlog.azurewebsites.net/?careerId=65f6f6cba645f8df89e84f57&tab=launches

 

[Spikemaster]

Oof! 3 straight failures! well, I think you can turn that around. 

14 minutes ago, Aelfhe1m said:

soon™

alright, looking forward

And thanks for the career log

One question tho, I see that, in your analytics, near the end od 1954, there was a substantial increase in program funds and a substantial decrease in confidence.

What happened? I can't find any info in your stories.

thanks

Edited April 9 by Spikemaster

[Aelfhe1m]

1 hour ago, Spikemaster said:

Oof! 3 straight failures! well, I think you can turn that around. 

alright, looking forward

And thanks for the career log

One question tho, I see that, in your analytics, near the end od 1954, there was a substantial increase in program funds and a substantial decrease in confidence.

What happened? I can't find any info in your stories.

thanks

11-14 Nov '54 was when I finished the Suborbital Rocket Research Programme and started the Early Satellites (Heavy) Programme (it's at the end of this post). In RP-1, you need to spend confidence points in order to start any programme at anything other than Normal speed (i.e. Fast or Breakneck). The tighter the deadlines you choose, the more funding per year you get for the Programme.