Stranded: Chapter 1: Worlds apart.

[Kerbalstar]

Okay, so after reading @Ultimate Steve‘s mission report, I decided to give the Whirligig world mod a try. @GregroxMun , the creator of the mod has his own “mythology” about the mod which is here:

Spoiler

Two centuries ago, explorers from the far off planet Kerbin left their home to colonize other star systems. Preliminary transit data suggested the third planet of Kaywell's star had an oxygen atmosphere and water. It did not.

Unable to correct their course due to piloting error, the U.S.C. Manifest Destiny crashed into the massive, 70 Kerbin Mass planet Mesbin. Luckily, Mesbin spins. Once every twenty eight minutes it spins, and the centripetal effect pushes the equator outwards and negates some of the gravity. The 13 gees of gravity at the poles is reduced to a tad over 1.2 gee at the equator.

The payload of the ship survived, but the engines and fuel tanks were reduced to a lot of metal rubble along the surface. Unable to find somewhere else to go, they buried themselves underground and set up a stable ecosystem and environment down there. Eventually the colony was sufficiently industrialized to start looking up again.

I thought that was fun, but I didn’t like it for this, as it would make it just like every other Whirligig World play through, so I created my own “mythology” about how Kerbals came to be on this world. This is, of course, the dramatic prologue to this story. 

Spoiler

 Will, somebody messed up. We're done for. How are we going to get out of this? Let me back up.
 
Two days before we left Kerbin, a huge asteroid was detected on a collision course towards Kerbin. The Kerbal Citizen Union's military had been building warships, in secret, for several years, excepting a conflict with the Kerbin Republic. When they saw the asteroid, they quickly retro-fitted three of those ships, the K.C.U. Turco, the K.C.U. Ethan, and the K.C.U. Spaatz into colony ships. They picked 2000 people from the military and government to go on each of those ships, and head to three potential colony targets: Laythe, Kerbol System, Mesbin, Kaywell's Star System, and Gael, Ciro System. A total of 6000 Kerbals got off the planet before the asteroid hit. The launches were all conducted in secret, at night. Nobody knew that they happened, and even if Kerbals managed to survive on Kerbin, nobody would notice 6000 missing people. We thought that Mesbin had an O2 atmosphere and water. We were wrong. As the K.C.U. Turco neared Mesbin, we realized that we had been wrong. Then we saw one of its moons. This moon had an atmosphere, and water on the surface. We realized that our Kerbin based astronomers had been seeing this unnamed moon, and mistaken it for its parent body. We decided to name this moon Kerbmun, as it was like Kerbin, but also a Mun. Not that that was much of a priority for us at the time, as we were going to crash into Mesbin. I was the captain of the ship at the time. Here's what happened.
 
Bridge of the K.C.U. Turco.
"Sir, we've got a problem," The navigation officer said to me.
"Yes?" I asked.
"The planet we're heading to, Sir," He said.
"What about it?" I asked.
"Our sensors are showing that it is 70 Kerbin masses, with a minimal atmosphere, and no surface water, or life of any kind," He said.
"What?" I asked. I didn't believe him. It couldn't be true. It couldn't be...
"Look at it for yourself, Sir," He said. I looked at the screen. He was right. There was a gray, oval-shaped planet on it.
"It gets worse, Sir," He said.
"Worse? How?" I asked with disbelief.
"One of its moons, the third one, has a thick atmosphere, with oxygen in it, and liquid water on the surface," He said.
"Can we go there?" I asked. Oh please, let the answer be yes.
"No," He said. "We're being pulled towards Mesbin and don't have enough fuel to capture into orbit."
"What are we going to do, then?" I asked.
"Calculations show that we have just enough Delta V for a suicide burn, which should put him down safely,” He continued. A suicide burn? That’s all we have fuel for?
“How long well the burn take?” I asked. What I really wanted to know was the ship’s TWR, and therefore the gravity of Mesbin. 
“5 minutes,” He said. “And to answer your real question, the ship has a starting TWR of 0.9,” He added. “If you’re wondering why it’s so high, it’s because Mesbin spins. There are 5 gees at the poles, and 1 g at the equator. Luckily, we’re going to crash- I mean land- on the equator.” 
“Well that’s good,” I said. “When do we need to start the burn?” I asked.
“30 minutes from now,” He said.
“Okay, I’m going to go lay down,” I said.

30 minutes later. 
The K.C.U. Turco approached Mesbin, the huge planet growing bigger in the portholes. 
“T-minus 10 til burn,” The navigational officer said. “5, 4, 3, 2, 1, ignition,” He continued. Nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. I didn’t feel any acceleration. “Engines failed to ignite! Restarting in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, re-ignition!” He continued. This time I felt the engines roar to life beneath me. 
“How are we doing?” I asked.
“We’ll have some fuel left over, but...” He trailed off.
“But what?” I asked.
“We... we’ll hit the ground at 100m/sec,” He said. 
“Uh-oh,” I said.
4 1/2 minutes later.
The K.C.U. Turco hit the surface of Mesbin at 100m/sec. It hit engines first, to protect the delicate passengers and crew. The engines exploded on impact, followed quickly by the massive fuel tanks and power truss. Then the bridge, put in the middle of the ship, to protect it from impacts, was hit. It survived the impact, being hardened against it, but the g-forces from the impact were enough to kill the captain, who had not put on his restraints tight enough in the confusion of the pre-crash. The ship stopped, angled at 45 degrees. Then it fell over. It hit the ground again, this time at a gentle 10m/sec. The crew checked the captain, and upon finding he was dead, the second-in-command stepped up. 
“Status report,” He asked.
“All stasis pods are functioning normally, but...”
“But what?”
“We’ve lost the payload section,” The nav said.
“What does that mean?” The first officer asked.
“We’ve all of our industrial equipment. All the mining, refining, construction, and industrial equipment is gone. Even the shovels.”

Now that that's all done with, on to the Mission Reporting bit of this Mission Report!

 

Chapter 1:

Spoiler

Hi, my name’s Sara Kerman. I am one of the first Kerbonauts in this new world. 5 years after we first landed, we started a new space program. Our goal was to get all 1999 Kerbals on this planet, off the planet, to somewhere more habitable. Our first goal is Kerbmun, and our telescopes have also discovered what appears to be another habitable planet, farther away. A probe will need to be sent to investigate it. We built this space center to look like the old one, out of materials we mined from Mesbin. Unfortunately, we had to do mining the old fashioned way, with picks and shovels, because we lost all of our industrial equipment in the crash. Since we didn’t have a lot of materials to work with, the space center wasn’t as epic as the other space center we had back home, but we even put in the now fairly useless SpacePlane Hanger and Runway. We even made the runway look like a dirt one since we didn’t have the concrete to “pave” it. I was a pilot in the Kerbin Citizen Union Space Program, back on Kerbin. When there was still a Kerbal Citizen Union. Back before we left, there had been some talk of all the nations of Kerbin banding together, and digging tunnels to try to survive. Personally, I didn't believe it would work, but then again, I did volunteer to get launched on a big can o' boom from an alien world which a huge, high-tech ship barely survived landing on, and I think that'll work, so maybe their plan worked, but I doubt it. Anyway, enough with all the boring stuff! It's almost time for the launch of the FIrst Steps 1, a probe designed to gather some science data and test if it's even feasible to launch something from this planet. Its command module is the Kaputnik Mk. 0, and it has 3 Cavern Goo modules, which are apparently some sort of tasty possibly sentient goo, that can give us great science data by simply observing how it reacts in different situations. Anyway, I'm going to shut up now and watch the launch.

 

 

"T-10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, gathering science data, 1, ignition! Liftoff!"

"Gathering science data..."
"Touchdown! A successful flight of the First Steps 1!"                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Well, that was pretty cool, huh?  

2 days later...

Our science team managed to gather some valuable data from the Cavern Goo, which somehow told them how to make better rocket engines, and now we have liquid fuel engines! I don't know how goo translates into rockets, but I don't care! If it gives us better rockets, I'm in! Oh, and I'm literally in. I'm sitting on top of the First Steps 2, waiting for launch. The goal of this mission is to ensure that we can return a Kerbal safely to Mesbin and also collect some more science data. Oh, and for some reason, the Mesbin World First's society didn't count our 5 meter hop into the air "launching" anything, so we're also planning on getting that contract completed. 
"Sara, we want you to get some temperature and pressure readings, record your observations, then step outside and record your observations there." MSC Control said.
"Roger that, MSC," I said. "Stepping outside the capsule now. Not much different from before I got in."
"Wonderful, now if you could take the clipboard from inside the capsule, take it out, put it in your suit pocket, and then put it back in again, that would be great," MSC Control said.
"Roger that, why?" I asked.
"I don't know, First Steps 2, our scientists say its some science thing," MSC Control said. I did what they said, and got back in the capsule, waiting for launch. Fun fact: I was a newly minted Kerbonaut in the K.C.U. space program and I hadn't even been to space. Until I signed onto the K.C.U. Turco, that is. Before I knew it, the countdown reached 0 and the rocket engine roared to life beneath me. I felt the g's as I accelerated into... Well, not space, Mesbin didn't have an atmosphere, not at the equator at least. As I accelerated into the Great Beyond, I guess. From Whence I Came. Anyway, now it's time for science! More jotting notes and taking the temperature and pressure.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   Then I started heading down.
"Hey Sara, by the way, the Mesbin World First's society still didn't consider your flight a 'launch' so we sent Frank over, and needless to say, we got our money," MSC control said.
"Wonderful, thanks for telling me!" I said. I shuddered a little bit at the thought of the poor Kerbal who had to meet Frank at the door. Frank is a big Kerbal. A very big Kerbal. Looking out the window, I saw something. The VAB. It was almost right below me...
"MSC Control, I'm going to try something, but this is going to require a lot of focus, so I'll be going silent for a bit," I said.
"Roger that, First Steps 2," MSC Control said.                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

3

Sorry about the low quality, the forum is being weird and not respecting the enter key. Also, I usually take to many screenshots, but this time I took too few. It will certainly improve! I hope you liked it!

Edited November 6, 2018 by Kerbalstar
Fixed typos.

[Chel]

15 minutes ago, Kerbalstar said:

I hope you liked it!

I certainly did! Keen for chapter 2!

[Kerbalstar]

Just now, The_Cat_In_Space said:

I certainly did! Keen for chapter 2!

Thanks! Me too!

[Ho Lam Kerman]

Oooh, nice! Sounds nice so far- I can't wait for Chapter 2!

[Kerbalstar]

4 hours ago, Ho Lam Kerman said:

Oooh, nice! Sounds nice so far- I can't wait for Chapter 2!

Thanks! Chapter 2 is coming Soon^TM!