Nano-fic: A Sense of Urgency

It was my first time in command of an Auxiliary Craft Mission.

My nose was burning from the oxygen feed as the Payload Officer finished strapping us in. In the forward capsule, half a dozen Espos were already locked and loaded. I sat between our pilot to the left and our flight engineer to the right. The hard foam of the acceleration couch was of little comfort and was going to become less so in a few moments.

The PLO sketched a salute and floated back out the hatch. The heavy door sealed up with a puff of increased pressure that made me have to pop my ears. Next to me Egg - still what? Only fifteen? - was figeting with his straps and Oxy hose. I sat next to him on his first trip into orbit on a real rocket. Am I sitting next to him on his last?

I shook my head. There was no time for that kind of thinking; the countdown was beginning. The whole rocket shook and a deep hollow clang sounded and the docking ring uncoupled. I sounded off through the Go/No Go check list without really thinking about it. All around me, keys were pushed, switches were flipped, and we reached the end of the countdown.

The Patrol Boat we were leaving was massive, heavily armed and and armored and could boost to Moon and back without running out of fuel. But for all of its power, it only boosts at a half g acceleration. The Cygnus rocket was tiny, had half the Delta V of the PL and was unarmed. But it could pull three gs at full burn and when when the countdown reached zero that's exactly what it did.

Feeling my body crushed into the couch as we boosted into open space, the rocket kind of reminded me of the Espos we were hauling. It moved with a sense of goddam urgency.

Building a Space Navy IV: Fleet Missions- Service Roles and Missions

Hope everyone enjoyed their holidays or whatever.  Some of us had birthdays since my last post, including Ken Burnside and...me!  I'm thirty-eight!  Considering I was expected to die at thirty-two, I am enormously pleased.  Every birthday is a gift.

Just this one.

Anyway, back to the subject at hand:  The fleet missions for our UNSF and UNEC (Espatier Corps).  Because this section is so lengthy, I'm breaking it up into its constituent sections, starting with Service Roles and Missions.  In Conjunction, Why are their just two service branches?  Why just in space?  Are they just a glorified coast guard, or a real military?

In order to begin to answer these questions, I studied up a bit on how the UN is currently set up, how the UN Peacekeeping forces are set up, some problems they have, and some of the problems they face.  The results, were then combined with the meta-fiction considerations of what I wanted to focus on, what I thought would make a good story and a semi-plausible progression from today to Conjunction.  Here's what I've come up with so far:

Fist of all, the Peacekeepers are not a military, in the conventional sense.  The UNSF is more akin to Heinlien's Space Patrol in that they are an organization whose purpose is to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of military men. In this case, the dangerous weapons are not nukes or bio-nasties or anything, but the ultimate in WMDs: multi-ton, NTR rockets. 

This is an example of Jon's Law:

"Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It only matters how long you want to wait for maximum damage."

Caused be a piece of foam

I'll put it another way: Our little Patrol rocket uses a plain-vanilla chemfuel engine similar to what we have today. At a dry mass of 72 tons or so, going at its top velocity of 8.2 km/sec, it would hit something with the explosive power of almost two hundred thousand  kilograms of dynamite. Or, in the language of nuclear weapons, 200 kilotons.  That's the power of a couple of nuclear warheads, in case you were wondering. This is because, according to Robinson's Law: 

"Something hitting at 3 km/sec (kips) delivers kinetic energy broadly equal to its mass in TNT."

So yeah, the UN takes a dim view of its member nations running NTR rockets around at each other.  Other than that, peacekeepers, you know, keep the peace.  They ensure compliance with UN mandates, stabilize conflict regions so that the officially accepted government can catch its collective breath and get on with governing.  They do not invade; they neither take or hold territory, and they rarely, if ever, are expected to fire a shot in anger.  If they do fire, then the solids have hit the separators indeed.

Moving forward, the reason for the UN to only operate space-based forces is twofold.  First, the history of the UN Peacekeeping forces involved cleaning up after countless coups, juntas and other examples of why governments should fear their own militaries the most.  Since Naval/Marine forces are less likely to overthrow their governments, the UN&C only keeps a standing Space Force and Espatier Corps.  For planetary actions, they draw from a pool of national armed forces same as they do now.

This happens all. The. Time.

The other reason involves the UN&C's modified charter.  They only operate space forces, and the member nations only operate planetary forces.  The UN also does not maintain a nuclear arsenal, while the member nations may not operate nuclear powered spacecraft without a UN inspection team.  Since planetary attack is not nearly the turkey shoot that old school science fiction made it out to be, these trade-offs make the UNSF and a national nuclear powers about evenly matched, so tensions are theoretically reduced.

Theoretically.  It's gone all political.
 So now that we've established some of the setting-specific particulars of the UN's Not-military, we can move forward to their missions and service roles.

More outline!

1. Service Roles & Missions
   1. UN Space Force
      1. Patrol major commercial orbits
      2. Convoy escort
      3. Patrol orbits of actively mined NEOs MBOs, KBOs and other potentially dangerous objects
      4. Operate and Maintain Navigation Lasers in Terran, Martian, Main Belt, Jovian and Chronian orbits
      5. Power Projection in orbital space of Main Belt and Saturn (Fleet in Being)
   2. UN Espatier Corps
      1. Space Expeditionary Force
         1. Mobile Fleet Contingent (Combined Arms)
         2. Peacekeeping Zone Contingent
      2. Space Force internal security
         1. Spacecraft security/boarding parties
         2. Security contingent at nav-laser installations
      3. Inspection Team security
         1. Nuclear spacecraft inspection teams
         2. Patrol craft boarding parties 

 Most of the above is self-explanatory.  A few curious notes: MBO means "Main Belt Object" if there is an official term for this, please let me know.  "Chronian" is used instead of "Saturnian" because the Chonians themselves prefer it. Which, of course, means I do.

Next time, we tackle Concept of Operations (CONOPS).  This involves chains of command and charts and stuff, so it could take awhile.  I will of course be unable to resist drawing spacecraft and other cool stuff, so I will probably post in the meantime.  Enjoy!



 

Happy Holidays! Have a Rocket

This is the same one from the other day, only dressed up with a nice logo and some stats.  These are realistic capabilities made courtesy of the charts and other information available from Atomic Rocket and inspiration from Rick Robinson's Rocketpunk Manifesto.

 

My PL differs from the one in Rick Robinson's article in a few key areas. The main difference is that it is not made for long hauls.  It only has a delta v of about 8200 m/s.  This will not get one far in the solar system but it allows a forward deployed Patrol Craft a sufficient "range" to perform many of the missions we discussed in the last post on Building a Space Navy.   Our little A-Class has Enough Delta V to shape a light-second orbit around a convoy in deep space, conduct SAR missions anywhere in cis-lunar space, or to reach any moon of Saturn from any other moon.  Obviously, this rocket is mostly propellant (mass ratio 5).  If you drew lines through the side view of the rocket that bracket the docking rings, you would encompass the entire pressurized volume.  I've got to say, it's nice to work on a warship for a change - I don't have to make it economical to run! 

 

One of the interesting things about this design is actually the freedom the little carried craft gives me.  It was a throw-away touch, originally - a design borrowed from another project.  But as I got to looking at the little thing, I realized that it's about the size of the Saturn V stage/Apollo/LM stack.  That means it should be able to go from Earth Departure to Lunar orbit.  That means that it has the Delta V to ferry crew to and from a Patrol Craft on station away from the convoy.  That means, like submarines, our Patrol Craft can have two crews and stay out for a lot longer than otherwise.  This is one of those realistic touches that I hope add to the charm of the rocket's design.

 

Anyway, I got sick kids and it's Chrismas Eve, so you all enjoy the Holidays and I'll post again later!