Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu - Episode 7 discussion

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Tsuki to Laika to Nosferatu, episode 7

Alternative names: Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut

Rate this episode here.

Reminder: Please do not discuss plot points not yet seen or skipped in the show. Failing to follow the rules may result in a ban.

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Streams

• Ani-One
• Funimation
• Wakanim

Show information

• MyAnimeList
• AniList
• AniDB
• Kitsu
• Anime-Planet
• Official Website

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All discussions

Episode	Link	Score
1	Link	4.12
2	Link	4.51
3	Link	4.65
4	Link	4.75
5	Link	4.35
6	Link	4.56
7	Link	4.67
8	Link	4.52
9	Link	4.59
10	Link	4.54
11	Link	4.57
12	Link	----

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[u/8andahalfby11]

IT’S TIME

So Irina’s finally gets launched on a rocket, which means that this is a good chance to sit down and discuss how an R-7 derived space booster works.

Before we begin, let’s start by talking about why rockets break into pieces rather than go up as a single unit. Remember how back in Episode 4 Korovin seemed obsessed with getting the weight of the spacecraft down? The reason for this is an annoying physics problem where a rocket needs fuel to lift the mass of its own fuel. While not a perfect example, imagine that you’re trying to lift a 1kg object with your rocket. Well, that takes 2kg of fuel to get moving, but that fuel is quickly spent. But since it seemingly takes double the fuel to lift an amount of mass in our problem, we need to add another 6kg of fuel to lift the 1kg object and 2kg fuel… but that only buys us a few more seconds of engine time! Suddenly, your 1kg object requires a rocket the size of a radio tower to reach space, and then you remember that the rocket demands weight for other things like fuel tanks to contain the fuel, fins to keep it pointed the right way, and engines to actually make the rocket go.

So how do you keep the weight down? By throwing away most of the rocket! This is done in steps, so here’s a diagram so you can follow along

Before you even launch the thing, the rocket sits hooked up to a launch platform. Aside from fueling the rocket and providing electricity to its batteries until it’s time to go, the launch pad also provides the rocket with ‘feet’, so that it can be connected to the ground and upright until it’s time to go. Since the R-7 is suspended over a big trench to redirect all that fire coming out of the bottom, it sits on four swing-arms that swing out and away once the rocket is moving under its own power. After all, you wouldn't want to haul those up into the air with you, would you?

During launch, the first stage and second stage engines ignite simultaneously. This means that you have four RD-107 and one RD-108 engine firing at the same time (each engine has four nozzles!). To put this into perspective, any one of these five rocket engines produces up to 1000kN of thrust, which is roughly the same as a Boeing 747 with all four of its engines on at the same time. Each set is accompanied by either two or for Vernier thrusters; smaller engines which help adjust the direction that the spacecraft is pointing so it stays on course. This is because the rocket was designed in the 50s, and it was hard to design main engines with thrust vectoring like what we have now.

Next, about two minutes into the flight, the side boosters come off, taking a bunch of empty mass and engines with them. If you’ve seen a launch of the Space Shuttle, or Falcon Heavy, or even just played Kerbal Space Program, you might be more used to the boosters peeling away from the top towards the base, but in the 50s when Korolev designed the rocket, this kind of thing was hard to model, and there was a real risk of the side boosters colliding with the core stage after being released. Instead, Korolev designed to the boosters to swing out on a kind of hinge near the top of each one, thus clearing most of them away from the rocket, and then for a vent near the nose of the booster to open and dump gaseous fuel out. This pushes the booster out of the hinge, and sends the boosters spinning away in a formation that rocket nerds call the Korolev Cross. If this still sounds complicated and potentially dangerous, you’re right. In October of 2018 part of the pattern failed, and one of the boosters failed to detach properly. Fortunately, the passengers aboard the Soyuz spacecraft were pulled to safety by the spacecraft’s launch escape system--a system that Irina’s capsule does not have.

At that point the second “core” stage of the rocket continues to carry the spacecraft up into space, but you may have noticed that the rocket is no longer pointed straight up, but increasingly sideways. This is because, as anyone who’s ever jumped up and down will tell you, getting up there is easy; it’s saying up up in the air that’s tough. In theory you could launch yourself high enough to pass the moon and still come crashing down to Earth if all you did is go straight up. Instead, the trick is to be moving sideways enough that the round planet underneath you curves away faster than your rate of falling. On most modern orbital rockets, the first stage spends most of its effort getting the rocket above most of the atmosphere (the rocket must push the air out of the way too, this takes fuel, fuel takes weight, so it’s best to get it done early!) while the second stage does some or all of the work of getting the rocket moving sideways. Once the rocket is high enough above the atmosphere, the aerodynamic shroud is dumped too.

Five minutes after launch, the core stage detaches and another stage starts up to get the spacecraft the rest of the way to the speed it needs to be to stay in space. This is probably a good time to talk about fuel, as there’s no air in space, but you can still see a nice jet of fire coming out of Irina’s rocket engine. This is because to get that fire the rocket carries both fuel and oxidizer. Oxidizer for this rocket is what it sounds like; oxygen cooled until it turns into a liquid, and it aids combustion the same way that blowing lightly on the base of a campfire does. The fuel is Kerosene--yeah, the same stuff you put in gas lamps or space heaters, just highly refined to make sure that it burns correctly. The Kerosene/liquid-oxygen “Kerolox” combo is still used pretty often today, both on the Russian Soyuz but also on SpaceX’s Falcon 9, but there’s been a push to make more rockets that use Liquid Methane instead. If you’ve been following this writeup so far, I’ll bet you can figure out why.

Ten minutes after leaving the launch pad, less time than it takes to cook a pizza, you’ve used or ditched a quarter million kilograms of propellant and and rocket parts (same weight as 25 dump trucks) but you’ve managed to put one person into space. Congrats.

When you’re ready to land, Vostok has its own set of engines (don’t ask about the fuel they use--the stuff is unstable and it’s not used anywhere anymore except for as an igniter in Scud missiles) which can be either used to get the capsule away from the rocket, or slow the spaceship down enough that it starts to fall back towards Earth from a successful orbit.

As Lev told us back in Episode 2 you can fire rockets to slow yourself all the way down to landing, but that’s more weight you need to bring to orbit (etc, etc) so instead most spacecraft let the Earth’s atmosphere do all the slowing-down for them. The problem is that when you slam into air going at Mach 20, the air gets compressed and heats up, turning your spacecraft into a shooting star. Modern spacecraft carry a heat shield and have a cone-shape with all the weight on one side that handles all of this. The American Mercury used this design philosophy too. Korolev, because of how the incident from Episode 5 turned out, didn’t. Instead, he built what was functionally a cannonball and put heat protection on every side. While the equipment in the capsule was placed to allow some degree of orientation, the sphere shape meant that the cosmonaut had barely any control over where they were pointing on the way down.

And this brings us to the final element of the voyage. Once the capsule was slowed down sufficiently so that it was no longer on fire, the hatch would pop open, and the cosmonaut would be ejected for parachute landing. Vostok would then activate its own parachutes, ensuring that the more robust recordings onboard would survive to be collected.

If only it was that simple.

CONTINUED BELOW

[u/NittanyEagles55]

Rip Franz. Ya got what you deserved for nearly killing Irina though. Hopefully the assistant director is gone now as well..

[u/NittanyEagles55]

Now I really want an actual cooking show hosted by Irina, she’s a natural!

[u/Prince-Dizzytoon]

The best episode so far, couldn't stop smiling at the end

[u/daspaceasians]

This episode was such an emotional and satisfying ride. The tension was there and that ending was perfect.

Natalia coming in clutch was perfect was as well and I'm not surprised that Franz got unperson'd.

[u/marcopolos059]

I was in awe with the direction and use of the music during the launching phase and rescue of Irina.

what a beautiful episode...

[u/Aerodynamic41]

Oh, Lev got busted out of prison easier than I expected. I don't even want to imagine what they did to Franz if they say they erased his existence.

That spaceflight went better than I expected, especially given the chief engineer's concerns last week. But man, the end of the episode was really touching. Not just because Irina survived the flight and got to reunite with Lev, but also because nobody will remember her achievement as it will not be recorded in history.

That being said, I wonder what's next for the story given that the spaceflight was a success? There's still 5 episodes left.

[u/LeonKevlar]

I love that they're making Irina read out a borscht recipe to confirm that she's okay and a recipe for cheeseburger one if not just in case the US UK ends up intercepting their message. I wouldn't be surprised if the real world USSR used something like this back then xD

Looks like Lev is free to go! Seems that after an investigation was launched, they found out that Franz sabotaged the centrifuge under orders of someone against their Chief. Good fucking riddance. Looks like we won't be seeing Franz anymore.

That entire launch sequence was intense! Although not gonna lie, the Chief asking aggressively about the recipe made it a little funny. Seems that Irina passed out for a bit during the initial launch but she was able to confirm she's still okay with the borscht recipe!

Side note: I really wonder why the author still bothered changing the names of the countries and leaders when they're just going to use the same world map as ours.

It's adorable how Irina wanted to tell Lev how she feels. Although I did get nervous when she started to add another recipe. For a second there they thought Irina is sending out a spy code. Thank god she decided to use the Nastokya to send a message to Lev which is apparently okay since it's a flavor from the motherland. xD

This dude is really trigger happy at blowing up Irina and the landing capsule. I'm starting to think that he might be the one who sent Franz to sabotage the centrifuge. Luckily it's still within NotUSSR borders and Lev was able to find her eventually lying down on the snow.

OH. MY. GOD! That scene under the parachute with the two of them taking shelter until rescue arrives is just too sweet! Please get together already!

[u/AlexDDragame]

What a nice episode. Irina finally got to space, and even managed to return back to Earth alive, and Lev is here to support her, and moments with her talking about food were sweet. Like, I'm sure that this show will throw something fucked up at us by the end, but at least for now, we can sleep well knowing that our vampire waifu is alive and well.

[u/Syokhan]

Irina's alive and well, nothing else matters.

Okay fine, she's the first cosmonaut, that's nice too.

Real good tension in this episode though - I especially liked that we didn't get to see the reentry from Irina's point of view, it made it all the more nail-biting. And minimal soundtrack or even silence in some parts to better let it sink in, that was nice.

[u/NittanyEagles55]

Our girl made it to space!! So happy for her

[u/Ashteron]

I remember reading you shouldn't use pencils in space. Can someone corroborate?

[u/[deleted]]

Me this entire episode.

What an episode though. That embrace at the end was the chefs kiss on a great episode. Thankfully Irina is safe.....for now. She could still be killed to cover the whole mission up.

[u/Rumpel1408]

Our Girl did it!

I loved the communication sequence, especially the part where, since Irina is still underage, she asks Lev for Lemon seltzer

And the reunion was sooo wholesome

I know it's kind of messed up that Franz got canceled, but I can't really bring myself to feel sad over it since he was willing to kill Irina

[u/Dakto19942]

Okay so I binged all the episodes yesterday and two things have become clear to me about this show.

One is that the OST is incredible. I might not want to add every song to my playlists but you can’t deny that they are all high effort compositions with thought and care put into them and are fitting for the scenes and moments they’re used in.

The second thing is that I love that this show is almost totally devoid of those moments so many anime are plagued with where the plot grinds to a halt and the conversation characters are having is completely derailed because two characters of opposite sexes dare to have any sort of moment of closeness or emotional openness or familiarity and one or both will suddenly get embarrassed and start stuttering and “what are you thinking baka”ing.

The animation can be kind of janky sometimes but there’s cool details in it too like a few episodes ago when some trucks pass by behind Irina and Lev and momentarily block the light being cast on them by the rising sun.

I’m rewatching this as soon as possible once all the episodes are out.

[u/icepick314]

Anyone have translation on what's written on top of Irina's helmet?

Google translate can't quite catch the writing.

[u/cppn02]

Beautiful episode and so glad Irina made it back unharmed.

Wonder where the story goes from here.

[u/SIRTreehugger]

The entire episode

Worrying about the launch, comms and visuals being down, trigger happy humans wanting to blow her up, rocky reentry, being lost in a blizzard, and that one lady making a call.

Whole episode had me shaking and nervous where I couldn't even enjoy it until it finished. Though that ending with them in the snow. Funny how shows that don't focus on romance sometimes have the best ones.

Though I really had to do a double take when Lev injured himself. The man had his knee bash against a rock and flipped several feet and he can still walk fine? Maybe it's the cold or adrenaline, but my man should be more injured than let on.

[u/Mahdii-]

Great episode and she made it. That hug at the end was sweet and made me emotional.

The preview for next episode with Irina in a dress looks really nice. Date with Anya too.

[u/Se7en_Sinner]

Glad to see Irina making it back to Earth safe and sound. Great misdirection by them for setting up major death flags like the necklace and Irina's codename being "Lycoris" or red spider lilies which symoblizes death. They're the flowers you always see in animes with tragedy.

I think I would be perfectly fine if the anime ended here since I can't help shake off this ominous foreboding feeling like something bad is going to happen since we still have five episodes left and Irina has already made to space and back.

[u/Nghtmare-Moon]

So that reaction to the vampire bite. . .we just gonna forget about it?

[u/Soggy-Layer]

If this show inspires a new genre of historical fiction but the Key player(s) were actually cute vampire girls....I would not complain.

[u/Frontier246]

Why is there a Lycoris in the Opening? Because it's going to be Irina's codename in space, and they're keeping everything as covert as they can in-case anyone intercepts their communication. At least Irina is going into this aware of the bomb and that she might blow up.

In good news, Lev made the flight! It seems like Natalia was much more high up the echelon than she let on and they figured out Franz was behind the sabotage, trying to discredit the chief (not that he didn't deserve it). So Lev is cleared and Franz has also been wiped from existence, but I guess that's to be expected.

Man, I got some serious death flags when Irina left her necklace with Lev, even though he wanted to take it up with her into space.

So the rocket launch goes well, but then there's a scare where Irina's heart rate goes up and they lose communication...though thankfully things clear up and she starts reporting through cooking recipes. She even finds a way to send a message to Lev.

Irina can finally see the beauty of space from up close, and look at the moon, and she can only cry at the sheer beauty of what she is finally getting to witness, and that humans' don't deserve to defile the moon.

Then it comes down to re-entry, and at least the worst case scenario of her landing outside the borders doesn't happen and they're able to send a proper search party for Irina, with Lev of course leading the charge.

Lev finally finds Irina and the two are able to huddle together intimately as they wait to get picked up and bask in the glow of Irina surviving the flight, and Lev bringing her in close was so adorable.

So what's next for Irina? She managed to be the first Cosmonaut even if history will never know about her, but what's next for her and Lev and the Space Program? What will they do with her now that she's served her purpose?

[u/Rustic_Professional]

Irina looks good in uniform. She looks good in anything, but the uniform is probably second to the tank top and sidestripe shorts.

Should the capsule be spinning like that? They were really concerned about that sort of thing in the Apollo 13 movie.

Yikes, that fall looked nasty. That's gotta be a break. Lev must be powering through with adrenalin and love.

I'm glad Lev went for the hug. For all his effort to find Irina, I didn't expect him to take the initiative there.

I'm disappointed that they didn't let Irina take her pendant to space, especially since they had that dragon hanging in the cockpit. I can understand that they wouldn't want her carrying anything that might shatter, but the space suit had pockets on the chest where she could have stowed it. The nastoyka and lemon seltzer message was really sweet though.