New World UnionBoard

I just got an old NWU trading card! “The United Earth Republic of The Mantle”. Great flag!

also my wealth gaps keep going DOWN even though I’m trying to do the OPPOSITE WHY GAME WHY

_{Deep Breaths}

^{Louis Bühler sat awestruck at the sight before him. Just 62 miles below was the Moon in all her glory. The trip to get there had proven easy, four days of gentle cruising through the heavens, surrounded only by the stars and interrupted only by the Van Allen sheltering procedures. Inside of the Hermes’ cargo bay rested his ride to the lunar surface: a one man lander named Kurierin. It was a gangly creature, a stop gap solution engineered by the fine folk back home to get a man landed as soon as possible. It was a horrific mismatch of spherical fuel tanks, support trusses, antennas and engines, but as far as Bühler was concerned, she was beautiful.}

^{His mission was rather simple: Go down to the surface, plant a flag, take some samples, and return to Hermes in the course of 26 hours. The whole effort had been rather slapdash in nature, as far as the rest of the country knew, Hermes was just doing some more technical tests in low lunar orbit. His landing wouldn’t be made public until he successfully returned to Hermes. Originally, there hadn’t even been a plan for him to be on this mission. With the Frostriese still under research and development, the planned ARFLL mission was at least a year to two years away depending on how testing went. Unfortunately for anyone at the KLR wanting to have a normal work schedule, the Treasury Board had to stick their nose in.}

^{It had become the Treasury Board’s decree that by the end of the year, KLR had to have a Switzer on the moon. If they failed to reach that stipulation, funding would dry up, and with it kill any future hopes of extraterrestrial escapades. This meant that the engineering team at Delley-Portalban had to figure out how to scramble together a lander. Their solution came in the form of old antiques and an unfinished lunar sample return lander. By mounting a large bathysphere-like habitat on a central service module system, they could remove the return launcher and instead more or less slide in the crew cabin. However, this meant the craft couldn’t be launched with crew aboard, which is where Hermes came in. Simulations ran in Bern showed that the slapdash lander should be fine, but there remained one trouble on everyone’s mind: It’s new engine.}

^{Recently Vince Strässler had successfully acquired the rights to produce and modify some old British engines, namely the Rolls-Royce RZ.2 and the Gamma family of engines. It had been another cost cutting move; why engineer a new engine when the guys who did it 94 years ago already did the expensive part for you? Especially considering the development costs related to the Frostriese, it was deemed a vital engineering shortcut. Of course, in the interest of not piggybacking off another power’s engineering prowess, the propulsion lab in Reitnau set about improving the engines. This mainly consisted of figuring out how to rework the engines with modern alloys, alongside any tweaks that could be made to further uprate their burntimes and specific impulse. Every ounce of delta v mattered. This led to two variants of the RZ.2, deemed the RMU-1 and RL-2 respectively.}

^{Originally, the RL-2 was intended for the automated probe program. Ground tests had proven the theoretical capability of the engine, but there were still no guarantees it would operate flawlessly once it was propelled into the heavens. Subsequently, it had been fitted to the lunar sample return lander, the hope being that it could be tested on the probes before potentially being used on a manned lander. After the Treasury Board got involved, the team chose to directly mount it to the service module of the bathysphere. To make this work, external fuel lines from the lander's spherical tanks would be connected to the service module. During descent only the fuel in those tanks would be used. To ascend, the lines would disconnect via small separating charges, and then the engine would use the central service tanks to return to orbit. This meant the engine would have to reliably fire up twice, and suffer no other issues, to ensure the lander could safely descend and return. It was more than a small gamble.}

^{Now, 62 miles above the Moon, Bühler was trusting the jerry-rigged contraption to get him down and bring him home. He didn’t have much time to worry though, he was far too busy contemplating what to say. Sure, he was hardly the first man on the Moon, and assuredly he wouldn’t be the last, but still, he was to be the first Switzer on the Moon. Would he quote a poet or philosopher? Maybe some of Brupbacher’s works? Or maybe a cheesy line? He figured it would come to him in the moment.}

^{A few more minutes flew on by, and then from the flight deck came the voice of Commander Enzo Leuenberger.}

^{”Suit up, it’s about time you get out of here.”}

^{He didn’t need to hear anything else after that. Those words hung in his head like an opium fog, lifting his spirits and bringing in a sense of tranquillity at the same time. No longer were there the nerves of first words, nor an astounded stupor from the lunar scenery. It was just him, a spacesuit, and a lander named Kurierin. So, stepping into the airlock, he listened as the atmosphere gently whistled out into the vacuum around him. Laying sideways in the payload bay was Kurierin in all of her metallic beauty. Gently grasping the EVA handles of the cargo bay’s walls, he made his way for the ladder. Grabbing on, he weightlessly swung himself onto it, orienting with the entrance. Once inside, he flipped on the electrical and manoeuvring control systems. After he heard the gentle whirring of the life support fans, he gently manipulated the translation controls, pushing the relatively tiny lander out of the Herme’s agape midsection.}

^{”This is Kurierin to Hermes, do you read?”}

^{Seconds later, Leuenberger’s voice echoed back in kind.}

^{”Clearer than Lake Zurich. Geneva is listening in as well.”}

^{”Copy that. Everything’s looking nominal on my end, green for descent.”}

^{”Geneva says you are go for descent burn, best of luck and godspeed Kurierin. Hermes is now Radio Geneva.”}

^{Bühler could feel the gentle push of the engine as it successfully lit. It almost purred underneath his feet. For a minute, it was just him and the engine. And then it stopped. Nothing except for the gentle humming of the life support interrupted what otherwise was near silence. Looking out the window, he watched as the lunar horizon grew in the window mounted altitude finder. At just over 23,000 feet above the lunar surface, he again pushed the throttle up. He gently manipulated the control stick, bringing the lander to the correct descent angle. His hands were constantly busy, either managing the craft’s throttle and orientation, or inputting the next required program code. Soon enough, the cabin was gently basked in red light. From the control panel, a red switch flickered off and on, black lettering above telling him that it was giving him his last out before final descent. Looking at his fuel readouts, he made his choice. The little lander pressed onwards.}

^{At around 5,000 feet above the surface, he shutdown the flight computer. It was all manual from this point on. In his ear, a familiar voice finally rang through the relative qu iet of his spacecraft. Manfred Schreider.}

^{”Geneva to Kurierin, you are go for final descent. We’ve got all green here.”}

^{”Roger that, beginning final approach.”}

^{Again he throttled the engine back up, burning hard as the little lander raced towards the lunar surface. He was doing excellently on fuel, orientation was still golden, and the surface continued growing closer and closer. He knew that Schreider was still talking to him, but at this point he was hyper fixated on bringing Kurierin safely down. Streaks of different greys passed mere hundreds of feet beneath. As the craft came lower and lower, he could see formations of boulders and jagged rocks, their shadows casting long against the frozen land. He was slightly off from his exact landing spot, but he estimated the variation to be in the range of about 500 metres off, which by no means was terrible.}

^{As the surface grew to be just over 100 feet below, he continued scanning the surface. He needed a patch at least as wide as the craft’s resting area, and just in front of him, like a field in the middle of a forest, was a lone spot. Throttling hard, he watched as his fuel consumption picked up. He kept her steady, listening to the gentle whistling of the reaction systems. Watching through the window, he looked at the lunar horizon gauging his altitude. Dust began to kick up, blocking his view, and so, he throttled down, trying to float lower and lower. With a final few seconds of burning, a new colour emanated through the tiny cabin: blue. The lunar contact light had activated. He had successfully brought Kurierin down with 18 seconds of fuel remaining. Activating the landing stabilisers, he listened as the SRB’s fired, pushing the lander down into the soil. Switzerland’s messenger to the Moon had landed.}

_{Visual inspiration for the lander is taken from the Virgo landers in Fallout, except with a ladder. If my explanation of how the lander splits apart was unclear, it’s the same way the LK splits. The Frostriese development post is up next, though it won’t be flying for a while longer.}