New Prestige First - Two-Capsule Rendezvous

[peyre]

I've been thinking about those Jt Manned Orbitals Docking missions. I don't know that anyone flies them; I certainly don't - why endanger two crews and risk your spacecraft twice for something you can do with just a DM?

If we want to keep these missions (as opposed to repurposing the slots for other missions maybe), perhaps we could add a prestige first that would reward flying it at least once. This would reflect the Soviet accomplishment in Soyuz 4/5 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyuz_5).

It would have a mission profile very similar to the MOL, which gains the player 6/4 points for a prestige first/second. Maybe for Two-Capsule Rendezvous it could be a little lower, like 4/2? Or perhaps it should get 6/4 and the MOL raised to 8/5 to encourage players to fly it?

This could be in addition to gaining 2 Safety points to the spacecraft as in #328.

[hweimer]

To me, two-capsule rendezvous sounds more like Gemini 6/7, while Soyuz 4/5 would be called manned two-capsule docking. That aside, it sounds tricky to implement such a prestige because there is no unique step that needs to be completed to achieve it (it's just a docking step under some special circumstances).

[peyre]

I hadn't thought of that, that there's nothing specific to trigger the awarding of a first for that. That does add a complication.

You're right, what was done on Gemini 6/7 is called a rendezvous (which is a little confusing next to the LOR and EOR terms). Vostok 3/4 did one as well. Now that I think of it, both space programs did a spacecraft rendezvous before attempting docking - maybe that should have been made a mission milestone (and prestige first) for docking.

I suggested a prestige first like this as something that could be done with Mercury/Vostok in the event we took EVA away from the one-man spacecraft (#393). I called it Joint Synchronized Orbit there, but rendezvous is the more proper term.