THE BARTDON PAPERS - "Cancel all previous directives."

[UnusualAttitude]

1 hour ago, Starman4308 said:

I'm getting some serious flashbacks to @CatastrophicFailure's Kraken fics here.

I'll take that as an awesome compliment, since I find that Cat is the most entertaining writer on these forums.

However, no supernatural Kraken beasties here. This is hard sci-fi. Cam's tortured mind is due entirely to the hardships that he has endured.

1 hour ago, Starman4308 said:

Also, was Chief Pilot Aniline temporarily paired with a certain Remote Flight Navigator's Assistant until nobody could live with the two of them together anymore?

Huh? Sorry, it's late here and my brain hurts. Please clarify.

[Starman4308]

5 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Huh? Sorry, it's late here and my brain hurts. Please clarify.

Aniline and RFNA (Red Fuming Nitric Acid). Part of the book "Ignition!" describes how, in the early days, they were experimenting with an aniline-RFNA propellant mix, and thoroughly hated it due to how corrosive and toxic the propellants were; you had to load them at the last minute, in the field... and again, toxic. Its sole redeeming feature was that it worked at a time when they hadn't yet fully discovered how amazingly useful the hydrazine+MON/RFNA propellants were.

[TotallyNotHuman]

Holy crap, that was one subtle pun. I didn't get it either, until you explained it.

Rep'd.

[NotAgain]

@UnusualAttitude, can you remind me what LDRO stands for?

[UnusualAttitude]

On ‎11‎/‎05‎/‎2017 at 11:06 AM, NotAgain said:

@UnusualAttitude, can you remind me what LDRO stands for?

Lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit. 

This is the orbit that was considered as a likely destination for NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission. It is stable over long periods of time (centuries), and getting to it requires less delta-vee than Lagrange points L4/L5. Such an orbit allows you to eject to interplanetary easily, as well as access the lunar surface.

Transfer there takes longer than to Low Lunar or L4/L5, though. At least a week, sometimes two. Let's hope Sol's undying light is kind to our Kerbals and blows no solar storms their way. That little capsule has little in the way of radiation shielding....

[NotAgain]

16 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

At least a week, sometimes two.

Eeek.

17 minutes ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Let's hope Sol's undying light is kind to our Kerbals and blows no solar storms their way. That little capsule has little in the way of radiation shielding....

Double eeek.

[Laythe Squid]

Woo!

[Laythe Squid]

On 5/9/2017 at 5:23 PM, greenTurtle1134 said:

Prosperity is delivering a load of asteroid products to low Earth orbit.

"Hey, Astrice, Kimet, Ering... the Resource companies are jerks, right?"

"Right"

"Right"

"Right"

"Right. Just wanted to make sure you have no problem with this. Set destination, Trans-Pacific Headquarters."

Ha ha.

[greenTurtle1134]

1 hour ago, Laythe Squid said:

Ha ha.

Two and a half weeks later, and someone finally laughs at that.

[Plecy75]

is this thread still alive? it's been a month

[0111narwhalz]

4 hours ago, Plecy75 said:

is this thread still alive? it's been a month

Not forg-- Wait, wrong thread.

[superstrijder15]

On 29-6-2017 at 3:05 AM, Plecy75 said:

is this thread still alive? it's been a month

Compared to the threads of @0111narwhalz, it's still incredibly lively, although I hope both will get a lot more lively soon! New chapters should of course come soon^TM

[0111narwhalz]

7 hours ago, superstrijder15 said:

Compared to the threads of @0111narwhalz, it's still incredibly lively,

 Burn!

[53miner53]

On 7/6/2017 at 3:53 PM, 0111narwhalz said:

 Burn!

Burn for where?

By the way, great story!

Edited July 11, 2017 by 53miner53

[Cydonian Monk]

Wow, finally got caught up again on this thread. (I started over from the beginning since it'd been so long.) Still a great read.

Gotta echo what others have said - those SSTO spaceplanes are dead sexy. And impressive, as such beasties are not easy to build or fly in RSS/RO/FAR, even if you're using a custom "ideal" config for the engines. 

Hope all is well.

Cheers,

[Geschosskopf]

I just got caught up myself.  This thread is so great on so many levels.  The story, the characters, and the ship and mission designs are all stunning.

I was rather disappointed to learn of the crash of Mars mission after all the amazing effort getting home at all.  Somehow, I figure that's not the last we've heard of that lot (otherwise there'd have been pictures of the wreck), but after all this time, where could they be hiding?  And where could the "crazy space lady" be taking the purloined documents when she jumped ship?  Is there some "Resistance" movement they know about but we don't?  And if Camwise is officially dead, how will the hypothetical Resistance even know to look for him?  All very mysterious.  I hope to see more of this.

 

[michal.don]

Oh, for a second I hoped for another chapter when this thread popped up again... Nevermind, I'll keep waiting, I just hope @UnusualAttitude is allright, since his last visit on the forums was almost three months ago....

[UnusualAttitude]

Uhm... hello.

Thanks to you all for chiming in and keeping faith while I've been away for a bit. This summer I decided I needed to get fit again and so I've spent most of my free time during these past three months on a bicycle of some shape or form, riding up and down any hills I can find in my area, grinding alongside the runways to work against vicious headwinds, and generally getting leaner and muddier. Mmmm... Refreshing.

But the weather is now turning grim, and I've been missing Camwise recently. Also, the end of Cassini made me want to boot up RSS right back up and get out there into the great black desert. So, if all goes well, more will be coming soon^TM.

On 9/16/2017 at 9:58 PM, Cydonian Monk said:

Wow, finally got caught up again on this thread. (I started over from the beginning since it'd been so long.) Still a great read.

Gotta echo what others have said - those SSTO spaceplanes are dead sexy. And impressive, as such beasties are not easy to build or fly in RSS/RO/FAR, even if you're using a custom "ideal" config for the engines. 

Hope all is well.

Thanks! Glad you made it in the end. I too have some catching up to do with the Forgotten Ones and I hear that great revelations are afoot... 

The RSS spaceplane is such a fun challenge, but with hindsight I think I should have introduced it later on in the timeline of the story. It jars a bit with some of the other tech my Kerbals have been using until recently. Maybe I should have started with a shuttle, which I guess is another daunting challenge of its own...

On 9/17/2017 at 10:12 PM, Geschosskopf said:

I just got caught up myself.  This thread is so great on so many levels.  The story, the characters, and the ship and mission designs are all stunning.

And your encouragement has almost single-handedly kept me writing it at times, in particular back in the early days.  Thank you so much, it's awesome to see you back. I'm looking forward to reading the Circus' new shenanigans. I love the Alternis Kerbol system!

23 hours ago, michal.don said:

Nevermind, I'll keep waiting, I just hope @UnusualAttitude is allright, since his last visit on the forums was almost three months ago....

Thanks pal, I'm fine. I just needed to open the capsule window for some fresh air. Thank you for being so patient!

[linuxgurugamer]

I stumbled across this the other day.  Seriously good stuff here, I'm enjoying it a lot.

Thank you, and keep up the good work. 

 

[UnusualAttitude]

OK. Just to keep you guys in the loop, I have made good progress in the last couple of weeks, and the next part of the Logs is nearly ready for release. If you don't believe me (and I don't blame you at this point), here is a gratuitous screenshot of the next part of the adventure.

And for those of you who are joining us, or who have read the Logs but can't remember what the hell they are about after all this time, here is my best attempt at a brief summary of the story so far...

Part One: the Moon vs. Me

Spoiler

 

In Part One: the Moon vs. Me, we are introduced to Senior Engineer Camwise from Omelek Space Centre and his pilot Catbeth, who are stranded on the surface of Luna in the South polar crater Drygalski after a crash-landing caused by a poorly designed lander.

Despite this drawback, they struggle to set up a surface outpost and then travel several hundred kilometres across the Lunar highlands to visit a structure spotted from orbit. It turns out to be some sort of spacecraft that is clearly not of Kerbal origin, and has apparently lain in the dust for many thousands of years. This, along with the discovery of a massive arch-shaped structure during a previous mission, suggests that the Sol System was visited by some kind of extra-solar intelligence in the distant past.

Camwise and Catbeth make it to orbit using the moonbase's utility shuttle and return to Earth safely.

 

Part Two: the View From Phobos

Spoiler

 

In Part Two: the View from Phobos, Camwise is recruited by Principal Investigator Angun and his deputy, Planetary Investigator Margaret, to take part in the Kerbals' first crewed flight to orbit Mars. Officially, it is precursor mission with the goal of operating rovers on the surface from orbit.

However, Angun has a secret agenda. Years before the space programme was launched, he discovered the abandoned datacore of an ancient artificial construct on the bed of the Pacific Ocean that continuously emits a signal that he eventually managed to decipher. It depicts a pyramid on the surface of the Red Planet, and Angun intends to find it and study it, whilst keeping his intentions from the Board of the Resources Companies that sponsor their venture.

During the long flight to Mars on board the ship Cernin, Camwise realises that Angun hasn't told him the whole truth, and that Margaret is concerned that the hypothetical extra-solar presence may be connected to an extinction event that wiped out most of Earth's land and marine life about a million years previously.

Working from Martian orbit, they manage to land a rover near the Pyramid and approach it, but find no entrance and detect no further signals. Meanwhile, Camwise, Angun and their pilot Jonnie make the first crewed landing on the satellite Phobos, collecting samples and possible proof that Phobos was created from Martian impact ejecta. Upon returning to orbit, they pursue and briefly observe what looks like the remains of a large cephalopod drifting above the moon, but are unable to capture any video footage of the encounter.

They rendez-vous with Cernin, but Margaret refuses to allow them to dock, explaining her concerns that Earth might once again be contaminated by some sort of harmful pathogen that she believes was carried from Mars to Earth, causing the mass extinction. She then attempts to leave them behind in space.

 

Part Three: Lunacy

Spoiler

 

In Part Three: Lunacy, we are introduced to Acting Principal Investigator Bartdon, who has replaced Angun during his absence. We learn that the Space Centre lost contact with Cernin and, shortly after, an impact was observed on the surface of Phobos, leading Omelek to believe that Cernin was lost along with her crew. Meanwhile, a space probe in the Jupiter system has begun to detect familiar, strange structures on some of the giant planet's moons.

Bartdon goes through the list of anomalies on the Lunar surface and decides to lead a mission there himself. Accompanied by the new Senior Engineer Froemone and Theoretical Investigator Steledith, he returns to the Lunar South Polar region. His team set up listening devices in locations where Bartdon suspects further datacores might be hidden. The crew also discover another strange construct that looks like some kind of antenna array, built into a deep crater. However, no new signals are detected and the Resource Companies are beginning to lose faith, threatening to withdraw their support of the space programme.

It is then that Cernin returns from deep space, desperately pulling off an Earth capture, and we learn that thanks to the swift actions of Camwise and Jonnie, Cernin was boarded before impacting Phobos and disaster was averted, although all means of communicating with Earth were lost. Margaret was killed in the ensuing struggle, and Camwise blames himself for her death.

The crew of Cernin are blamed for their disastrous mission, and Camwise is offered a choice between imprisonment or an engineering assignment in Antarctica. He chooses the latter and serves onboard an Icecrawler – a type of nuclear-powered polar supply truck – called Montbrun. There, he meets Junior Engineer Gemxy, and in the harsh polar conditions, his anger at the callous monopoly of the Resource Companies begins to grow.

 

Part Four: Too Big to Fail

Spoiler

 

In Part Four: Too Big to Fail, we learn that one of the listening devices Bartdon placed on the Moon has allowed a datacore to recharge and reboot, and begins emitting messages down to Earth. Froemone and Steledith are elected to speak with it, and it introduces itself as the Second Engineer of Colonisation Mission Seven. It explains that the datacores are the remnants of constructs that were sent to the Sol System on board a ship called Transmare with the goal of finding a suitable place for their Creators to settle.

The Second Engineer encourages the Kerbals to reach out into the System, in search of his Crewmates, suspecting that they may still be present on other bodies. He provides Froemone with blueprints for an advanced fission reactor to help them, but warns that his Crew are programmed to carry out their mission at all costs. Steledith reveals that she has deduced the Crew's home system thanks to the orientation of the antenna situated on the Moon: a star named Beta Hydri some 24 light-years from Sol.

The Kerbals send off a new generation of probes (the Fontanes class) to study the gas giants, and Bartdon is instructed to begin plans for a mission to the surface of Mars immediately. He does not trust the Board, and is wary of disturbing ancient, buried dangers in the outer System. He hand-picks his crew for the mission, including Camwise's cousin Karanda, as well as his former love, Lisabeth. Their ship is called Laroque.

Overcoming many technical challenges, Bartdon and his crew make it down to the surface of Mars and Bartdon undertakes an epic three-month rover journey across the surface with Second Engineer Mitzon onboard an Arcambal rover. Bartdon delays the moment he must comply with the Board's orders, but he eventually makes his way to an oddly shaped hill near Tharsis Tholus, which turns out to be a stone sculpture of a Kerbal face: apparent proof that the Crew did actually make contact with the Kerbals when they were still primitive savages.

The Kerbal Face transmits a message pre-recorded by the Transmare's First Mate via Arcambal's uplink. He claims that the other Crewmates made their way to the moons of the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter, and instructs the Kerbals to make contact with them, setting a deadline of ten years. Bartdon cuts off the transmission at this point, and he and Mitzon alone hear the end of the message. The First Mate's message reveals that the Crew have the ability to wipe out life on Earth if the Kerbals do not comply.

Bartdon and his crew return to orbit and rendez-vous with Laroque. Their mission continues with further prospection of the Martian moons, Phobos and Deimos. However, the Board has grown tired of Bartdon's insubordination. With all the data they need to begin their ambitious plan of colonising the System, they attempt to get rid of Bartdon and his crew by detonating hidden explosives onboard both Laroque, and Bartdon's lander. Both ships are crippled.

In an attempt to salvage the situation, Omelek Space Center operates independently from the Resource Companies, and recovers Camwise from Antarctica. He helps them devise a rescue mission, allowing Lisabeth and the crew remaining onboard Laroque to save Bartdon and his team on Phobos. They then proceed to refuel Laroque and perform a transfer back to Earth.

 

Part Five: L'Enfant Sauvage

Spoiler

 

Part Five: l'Enfant Sauvage begins with a secret meeting between Camwise and Froemone in the Australian outback. Froemone explains how all operations have moved to a new site in Guinea called Madang, and that the Board is designing and building the hardware necessary to mine Near Earth Asteroids and gather resources for exploration and colonisation missions to the outer Sol System. He also confirms that Bartdon and his crew were apparently killed whilst attempting to return to Earth onboard the Martian shuttle.

Camwise shuns his old friends and goes undercover, assuming the identity of a deceased technician called Kerski. He manages to rejoin the space programme, and is sent to work on the first asteroid mining ship, Prosperity.

Meanwhile, Steledith receives a visit from Special Investigator Samrod who reveals the Board's plans for a crewed mission to the Jupiter system. She manages to steal the last images recorded by Fontanes Three of the giant planet's inner moon, Metis. She flees Madang space centre to an unknown destination.

Camwise and his pilot Jenbles, are sent up to Lunar Distant Retrograde Orbit where they board Prosperity, heading to asteroid Y13-HO3. They are to be the first crew of deep space resource miners.

 

Workin' on it, see you guys soon...

Edited October 19, 2017 by UnusualAttitude

[Geschosskopf]

And there was much rejoicing!

[Garibaldi2257]

woot woot!

[UnusualAttitude]

YEAR 14, DAY 248. CAMWISE.

Because she was designed for efficiency and hard work rather than gazing idly into infinity, the good ship Prosperity's only windows into space were situated at the front of the vessel, on the bridge.

Jenbles and I therefore took turns to observe our final approach of asteroid Y13-HO3 from the jump seat at the back of the flight deck, as Commander Astrice and Second Pilot
Kimet manoeuvred the great solar-powered ship cautiously into a position close enough to deploy the hardware that we had brought to this fight.

Naturally, Prosperity faced away from our destination as she ended the burn to match orbits with the lonely space rock. The manoeuvre had been a long one. Although it had taken just a few dozen metres per second to eject from Lunar Distant Retrograde, in the interests of stepping up the pace of our conquest of the Solar System, a swift transfer had been plotted. Four million kilometres sunwards and prograde in just three months.

It had taken more than two kilometres per second of delta-vee to arrest our velocity relative to the target. Although Prosperity's revolutionary plasma thruster was orders of magnitude stronger than the ion drives that equipped the probes we had sent to the outer planets, the correction had nevertheless lasted several hours. The ship's rear facing radar told us that a massive obstacle, hundreds of metres across, lurked in the darkness right behind us. A last puff of ionised water was jetted out of the thruster nozzles, and our velocities were finally matched.

Only then could Prosperity perform her slow about-turn that brought Y13-HO3 into view.

Jenbles and I elbowed each other to catch a first glimpse of what was to be our home for the next year or so. We might have not bothered: at first glance, it wasn't much to look at.

Y13-HO3 was a hulking body with an irregular shape and about two hundred metres across at its widest point. Being a carbonaceous type asteroid, most of its surface was as black as pitch and seemed to suck up the sunlight that fell upon it, in ways that not even the lunar Maria did. There were a few areas that presented subtle nuances of very dark grey, and here and there, the odd patch of the deepest browny blue imaginable.

But mostly, it was just black.

Its surface was lumpy, but on the whole fairly spherical compared to some of the weirder-shaped potatoroids and contact binaries we knew to be out there. There were a couple of larger hollows that had probably been carved out by ancient impacts dating back to when our star system was still young, but none of these features seemed worth writing home about.

Y13-HO3 was covered almost entirely in a thick layer of dust that had been tilled by billions of years of space-weathering and micrometeorites. And it looked old.

I have seen ancient landscapes before: the tired, worn-down precambrian hills of northern Europe, the frozen pre-nectarian highlands of Luna. But this was something else. A tiny, lonely geological microcosmos, unspoiled since the dawn of our system. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of what was basically star stuff with most of the hydrogen and helium removed... and several million kelvins cooler.

I must admit that I felt guilty about my own scathing appraisal of what was, after all, a fascinating celestial body that had meandered through the inner system for ages before we had arrived to disturb its relatively uneventful existence. I had known many Planetary Investigators from my former team at Omelek who would have readily given up significant portions of their own anatomy in exchange for a chance to study this relic of the early days of our star system's history.

A glimpse of genesis, frozen in time through long aeons. A silent watcher in the eternal light that had gazed upon our star and seen her through the throes of a violent youth, then her growth to maturity. A star that bestowed her warm, steady glow upon the spheres that made up her inner cohort. Nurturing the third rock from the sun. The special one. The one that would harbour life: plants, animals, and eventually small green creatures that would haul themselves ponderously out of her gravity well and venture beyond the protective cloak of her atmosphere. Blinking in the pure, harsh light of the vacuum, their destiny was to contemplate the new worlds that surrounded them in sheer wonder...

...and then bring up the nukes and the drills to mine this insignificant dump, turning its guts inside out for every last drop of rocket fuel that it could provide.

Way to go, Kerbals. In your face, Solar System.

My train of thought was interrupted by Prosperity's Commander.

“Time to saddle up, Kerski.”

I looked around the bridge at Astrice, Kimet and Ering. Here was a crew of earnest greenhorns who had risen to the challenge of taking an unproven, revolutionary ship on her maiden voyage into deep space. During the three-month transfer, they had bonded and formed a close team. I had no doubt that they would remain fast friends if ever they made it back home alive.

I was reminded of the spirit of camaraderie that I had experienced on the Icecrawler back in Antarctica, but this time I would have no part in it. I had stubbornly refused to become friends with anyone else on board: a luxury afforded by the comparatively vast accommodations of the great solar powered vessel. I was and would remain Kerski, that strange, impenetrable dude who rarely spoke to anyone.

Kerski, and his sidekick Jenbles, who had just arrived at their stop and were about to be kicked off the ship for a long winter in the outback.

“Don't worry, Kerski.” Astrice seemed to read my mind. “Someone will come for you next spring.”

“Well, the Board will certainly want their water. They might want their nuke back, too. So we can always hitch a ride on one of the tugs,” I said. “But we might not meet again, so take care Commander.”

Indeed, Prosperity's crew was scheduled to rotate back to Earth once they had returned the ship to dock at LDRO station. Prosperity would be back for us at some point, but it would be with another crew, so it was unlikely that our paths would cross again. And with this cursory farewell out of the way, Jenbles and I headed aft to the docking hub and prepared the MUV for launch.

A couple of hours later, our tiny vessel had undocked and, dodging the hazards of our mothership's hull and centrifuge, we set out purposefully towards the asteroid with the massive reactor and several year's worth of food in tow.

We wouldn't be planting flags on the surface of this new world. They probably wouldn't stick anyway. No, we would be planting a nuclear reactor coupled with a high powered laser to melt the asteroid's surface...

As the MUV drifted slowly across the gap to our target, propelled at mere centimetres per second by solar power wired into miniature versions of Froemone's ELF thruster, the epic scale of our surroundings suddenly struck me.

Behind us lay the long and wiry shape of Prosperity. Even without the expanse of her solar arrays, which had been retracted out of harm's way during our undocking procedures, she looked impressive. The finest spaceship that my humble species was able to field.

Before us loomed a massive, uncaring wall of primeval rock that made my head spin the closer we got. In a sense, Y13-HO3 felt like the biggest single thing I had ever seen. Not as vast as an entire planet or a moon, which is objectively several orders of magnitude larger. But the thing is, seen from orbit, a planet never feels like an actual thing, but more like an immense abstract landscape. You can't see the minute details. You can't take it all in one glance, unless your orbit is high enough to begin using quaint metaphors such as marble or jewel.

In contrast, we were about to get up close and personal with a pile of gravel and stone that massed the best part of half a million tonnes. Subjectively, an asteroid punches far above its weight in terms of size.

And in between, our tiny utility vessel. Hopelessly small. Completely outclassed in the overall bigness of things, we bridged the gap to our target ever so slowly, rejected by our mothership. Then, as I watched over the proceedings from my seat behind Jenbles, an idea came to me.

“Hey, pal. This ship just got a name.”

“What, the MUV?”

“Yeah. You gotta call her L'Orphelin du Vide now.”

“Uh... what..? Is that your eastern European dialect?”

“Sort of. It means 'Void's Orphan'.”

Jenbles turned and rolled his eyes at me. “I'll never remember that.”

“C'mon. You have a whole year to practice getting it right.”

“Yeah, but can't I just call her Orf..?”

And so we bickered over the name of our ride as we made our way slowly round to the sunward side of the asteroid where we were to make our initial test-run of the drilling rig. The first borehole was important: it would determine the composition of the asteroid and would also serve as living quarters for Jenbles and myself, and any subsequent crews that may be sent to watch over the mining process.

If all worked as planned, the rig would melt and suck up molten material from the rock's interior, then inject it back in to form an airtight pocket that we would then be able to pressurise and live in, once we'd moved all the necessary furbishing across from L'Orphelin's tiny crew cabin. We would get to keep our vacuum toilet, and enjoy the added bonus of many more cubic metres of living space and several metres of hard rock above our heads.

Thus, in theory, we were guaranteed to be safe from solar storms, cosmic rays, and the risk of slowly going crazy.

Pointing our nose away from Y13-HO3, Jenbles finally backed up until the surface was a huge, dark wall filling the screen of our docking cameras. Following his training, he gave a long blast on our puny thrusters in order to make contact at sufficient velocity for the drilling rig to stick. With a muffled crunch and a gentle kick, we came to rest at the bottom of one of the depressions in the asteroid's surface.

“Contact...” muttered Jenbles to no-one in particular. Comms had been cut off as metres of rock had come between L'Orphelin and Prosperity.

Once we sure that our expensive package would not try and escape the moment we turned our backs on it, we undocked and made our way around one of the outcrops to find a suitable place for temporary stowage of our life support. This was a mere matter of pitching it somewhere and coming back for it later.

Boulders, dust and pebbles slid by L'Orphelin's viewports just metres away, clinging improbably to a soaring cliff that stretched away in all directions. Even the whispering caress of our electric thrusters raised small clouds of powdery material in our wake that would settle minutes, or even hours later in the weak gravity that somehow kept Y13-HO3 together.

Our final task of the day was to return to Prosperity one last time to retrieve the water tanks that we were supposed to fill in the coming months.

Once these were safely docked to the mining rig, we recovered the life support unit and parked L'Orphelin for the night.

While we rested, Prosperity would manoeuvre sunwards and put some distance between herself and the asteroid, enabling a clean comms link whilst staying clear of the radiation when we powered up the reactor for the first time. If this test was successful, she would leave us to it and return to Lunar orbit for her next assignment.

I never thought that I'd feel homesick after all that had happened back on Earth. Maybe it was just fear of the unknown. Maybe the fact that after weeks on the float, we'd finally struck something that vaguely resembled solid ground once more. Or maybe the stinging irony of my long journey: I'd gone from growing up as a cave-dweller in the bowels of planet Earth to becoming one of the first troglodytes in space. Burrowing down for safety, as our species always had...

Whatever the reason, I couldn't help feeling a moment of loneliness as Prosperity rose majestically over the nearby crest that was our horizon. But by the time she had sailed off into the sun's undying light, the cold emptiness – and my resolve – had returned once more.

We are kerbonauts, and our destiny is to be abandoned over and over again.

The secret is, each time it hurts a little less.

 

Edited October 20, 2017 by UnusualAttitude

[MatterBeam]

Yes! We're back!

This time face-to-face with a giant asteroid, with none of that flags-and-footprints nonsense. Straight up nuclear reactors.

Although... vacuum toilets?! That's just one accident away from, eh, a de-pooppressurization event.

[Geschosskopf]

2 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

Because she was designed for efficiency and hard work rather than gazing idly into infinity, the good ship Prosperity's only windows into space were situated at the front of the vessel, on the bridge.

As is right and proper   Why go there at all without a purpose, and what purpose is there that doesn't require hard work?  If it was easy, it would have been done already by couch potatoes without this trip being necessary.

 

2 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

A glimpse of genesis, frozen in time through long aeons. A silent watcher in the eternal light that had gazed upon our star and seen her through the throes of a violent youth, then her growth to maturity. A star that bestowed her warm, steady glow upon the spheres that made up her inner cohort. Nurturing the third rock from the sun. The special one. The one that would harbour life: plants, animals, and eventually small green creatures that would haul themselves ponderously out of her gravity well and venture beyond the protective cloak of her atmosphere. Blinking in the pure, harsh light of the vacuum, their destiny was to contemplate the new worlds that surrounded them in sheer wonder...

...and then bring up the nukes and the drills to mine this insignificant dump, turning its guts inside out for every last drop of rocket fuel that it could provide.

Way to go, Kerbals. In your face, Solar System.

Does the beaver ask permission of all its neighbors along what has for countless generations been just a creek winding through the forest before building its dam and turning it all into a lake, which after the beaver has gone turns into a swamp and then a meadow, displacing and even extirpating millions of lifeforms several times over?  Does the elephant ask the forest critters if it's OK to turn their habitat into savanna?  Does the termite ask permission of the building's owner before eating it?  And when did photosynthetic lifeforms ever apologize for nearly ending all life on this planet with their toxic waste, aka O2?  I don't think any of them have ever shed a tear for what they've done to other species in their own self-interest, so Camwise should have a clean conscience, as should humanity in general.  We're way down on the scale of this planet's worst biologically induced ecological disasters.  Green plants hold that dubious honor and doubtless will keep it until the sun goes red giant and destroys Earth.

 

2 hours ago, UnusualAttitude said:

“Hey, pal. This ship just got a name.”

“What, the MUV?”

“Yeah. You gotta call her L'Orphelin du Vide now.”

“Uh... what..? Is that your eastern European dialect?”

“Sort of. It means 'Void's Orphan'.”

Somehow, I see this and the chapter heading morphing into "l'enfant terrible".  Will Camwise get a Napolean complex?