Tysk-Skandinaviske Rum Compagnie

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Introduction

The Tysk-Skandinaviske Rum Compagnie / Deutsche-Scandinavische Raumcompagnie (German-Scandinavian Space Company) is a company chartered by the Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian Realm to carry out the exploitation of space through commercial means. It aims to provide costumers with affordable means to send payloads into earth orbit or beyond. Its charter also includes the authority to represent the governments of the Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian Realm if and when it explores space and contacts extraterrestrial civilizations.

History

Origin

The precursor of the Tysk-Skandinaviske Rum compagnie, the German-based Verein für Raumschiffahrt (VfR - "Spaceflight Society"), was established in 1927. It was an association of amateur rocket enthusiasts active in the Holy Roman Empire, and which pioneered the development of liquid fueled rockets.

At first, the VfR was privately sponsored and was also originally dedicated only to the research of space propulsion systems for civilian use. By 1932 the central government of the German Empire took notice of their developments for potential long-range artillery use and became its main sponsor.

Second Great War

During the Second Great War, rocket engines designed by the famous VfR member, Wernher von Braun, were used by the Holy Roman Empire to build rocket æroplanes and ballistic missiles, including the V1s and the V2s.

Since German rockets were originaly designed to drop warheads on British cities, they quite a lot of time and opportunity to fine-tune their technology. It would not have been long that they would have tested their big rockets, with a view to dropping an atomic weapon on London and Castreleon, had the war not come to an end.

It is known that "several" rockets of an essentially different kind were discovered at one facility in Germany after the war. The rockets that were tested in 2002 and the one that launched a satellite in that same year were among the things not discovered by the Allies.

After the war, Germany was decentralized. Only a few Northern German states and a few outside countries with which they were allied with during the Second Great War against Hessler continued sponsoring the VfR.

2002 launch

Without much funding, rocket research and development continued at a very slow pace without much publicity. A number of deals of varying degrees of legality were struck with nations that allowed the VfR to build facilities to track a satellite in orbit. They had a(n undisclosed) deal with the Russians. To this day, no one's been able to figure it out.

Suddenly, in the spring of 2002, the VfR surprised the world when it sent the first artificial satellite into earth orbit.

Germany *there* was more heavily into rocketry than even *here* and quite possibly was ready to launch something into space in the early 1950s, had the war gone more to their liking. The 2002 launch was really more of a dust-off of work already done and in hiatus. Perhaps a couple test rockets were launched, just to see if everything was functional, but no great amount of R&D was being done by the Germans since the 1940s.

German-Scandinavian partnership

However, it was clear to the current sponsors that further developments in the field would be difficult without more money and manpower. So in the 19th of February, 2004, the Tysk-Skandinaviske Rum Compagnie (TSRC) was formed, after Oldenburg and Holstein had requested that the Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian Realm work together to exploit space on a commercial basis.

The TSRC originally followed in Louisianne's attempt to use airships as mobile, airbourne launch vehicles but quickly found them inefficient, as Louisianne did as well. In late 2004 a rocket was launched from Gadangmeland carrying two negrito cosmonauts who were safely returned to Earth, one parachuting from space and the other riding the Rumgleiter back to safety on Earth.

The TSRC is thus far among the more successful of space interests in Ill Bethisad. With the Germans bringing years of research and the SR bringing the resources of the Realm, they seem pretty formidable.

Launch Record

  • 2004:
    • Spring: A couple of test satellites were launched using the Spitze I rocket.
    • 18th of August: A test flight wherein a chimpanzee, named Futte, was launched into suborbit using the Spitze I rocket. It proved that a primate can survive the trip in an airtight capsule.
    • 22nd of August: A test flight wherein two testæronauts, Georg Aleksandersen Gagadie and Josef Petersen Quitinga, were sent into suborbital space on board the Raumgleiter I. The Raumgleiter I itself was lifted into the upper atmosphere by the Spitze II test rocket, which uses the newly developed tripropellant rocket engine. Quitinga also performed the first ever freefall dive from suborbital space, and proves that man can survive the vacuum of space in a spacesuit. These brave testæronauts were both killed in the çunami of 26/12/2005.
    • 21st of October: The first launch of a commercial telecommunications satellite, constructed jointly with Rigets Radio and the Store Nordiske Telegrafselskab A/S.

Rocket Engines

The TSRC has several rocket engine designs at its disposal, all of which were designed by the VfR. The names of these rocket engines indicate what Rocket Fuels are used. E.g., the A/E motor uses A-stoff and E-Stoff as propellants. The ones currently used are:

  • K motor: A very cheap engine using the K-Stoff solid propellant. It does not have high storage requirements and can be stored for prolonged periods. It is also very reliable in that it can be ignited every time. However, its burn cannot be controlled or aborted. Once ignited, it will continue to burn off all of its solid propellant.
  • A/E motor: A bipropellant engine using A-Stoff the oxydizer and E-Stoff as fuel. E-Stoff has a fairly high specific impulse rate, which means that not a lot of it is need to propel a rocket. Only the A-Stoff has cryogenic storage requirements, making it cheaper though not as efficient as the A/H motor.
  • A/H motor: Very efficient bipropellant engine. But it suffers from extremely high storage reguirements in that; 1) both propellants have cryogenic requirements, and 2) H-Stoff has a very low specific impulse rate, which means that a huge internal volume for the tankage is required.
  • A/EH motor: A tripropellant engine. Uses both E-Stoff and H-Stoff as fuels, and A-Stoff as the oxidizer. The engine is basically two engines in one, with a common engine core, but two fuel pumps and feed lines. At lift-off the engine burns both fuels, gradually changing the mixture over altitude, eventually switching entirely to H-Stoff once the E-Stoff is burned off. It takes advantage of the different properties of each fuels at different altitudes.

Launch Vehicle Fleet

Although this has not been achieved yet, the TSRC aims to have a fleet of fully reusable launch vehicles to compete in all sectors of the launch market. The fleet currently consists of the Spitze I, the Spitze II, and the Raumgleiter I.

Spitze I

The current workhorse of the TSRC. A two-stage rocket, it has an A/E motor reusable first stage, and an A/H motor disposable second stage. Disposable K motor strap-on boosters can be added with the first stage for higher orbits.

In rocketry, staging is the use of multiple independent rockets to reduce the total amount of mass that needs to be accelerated. As the rockets, known as stages, run out of fuel, they are discarded. The advantage of this is that the rocket is able to take advantage of the different properties of different fuels at different altitudes. In the case of the Spitze I, at low altitudes, it takes advantage of the higher thrust and smaller structural needs of E-Stoff. At high altitudes, it will takes advantage of the efficiency of H-Stoff.

On the downside, however, staging requires you to lift engines which are not being used until later, as well as making the entire rocket more complex and harder to build. Almost all of the cost of operating the Spitze I is for the payroll for the army of workers needed to assemble the Spitze I before launch.

A single stage to orbit design would avoid some of this refurbishment, and thereby lower costs. In this case, the staging solution is not available, by definition, so it becomes harder to use both fuels.

Spitze II

Thus, the TSRC has developed the tripropellant A/EH motor. This tripropellant engine is basically two engines in one, with a common engine core within the engine bell, combustion chamber and oxidizer pump, but two fuel pumps and feed lines. The result is a single engine providing the same benefits of staging.

At lift-off the A/EH motor burns both ethanol and liquid hydrogen as fuels, gradually changing the mixture over altitude, eventually switching entirely to liquid hydrogen once the ethanol is burned off. The oxydizer is liquid oxygen.

The A/EH motor was first used in the Spitze II, which was the rocket that first took man to the suborbital space.

Raumgleiter I

This was an experimental two-seater rocket-powered flying-fuselage used to launch the first men in space. It was built to see if it was possible to fly men into space and then glide back to earth. Although it is a two-seater craft, it was designed to carry two 4-feet tall negrito pilots, so in reality it can only carry one normal size human-beings. The rocket is powered by an A/E motor.

Field Installations

The TSRC does not currently have a permanent Rumhavn / Raumhaven (Cosmodrome). Plans of building one in Bolama have been abandoned in favour of one in Tranquebar. Meanwhile, launches and mission control are performed in Tesji, Gadangmeland, while ground tests and research are performed at the SR's naval facilities in Bolama, Gjebaland, and in the north German village of Peenemünde, Preymern. Satellites are tracked from the facilities in Tranquebar and Tesji as well as other stations around the world, including the German possession of Rickerman-Insel.