Alpha 360

Sure, I'll invite you to join our private chat.

Chapter 10: Fate of the Munar-5 / Part 4 - Exposed "How much longer until we can fix the computers?" Jeb asked worriedly. Three days passed from the confrontation with Ivan. Ivan hadn't tried to break-out yet, but that could have been because Jeb equipped his guards with metal struts which acted like clubs. "I don't know. The malware is top-grade. It is on-par with military, or government malware, and they make their stuff is impossible to crack." Orbee replied, tapping away at the keyboard. "Only 15 more days until we return to Gaia." Jeb breathed quietly. Orbee didn't hear him. He pushed himself down into the secondary command module, and then into a hydroponics bay. Stable waited for him there, as he previously arranged. "I can't believe Ivan would do such a thing. He would know how space requires all the teamwork possible to survive." "He's a Kusian, he has to obey his government or lose his position." Stable stared at Jeb in disbelief, "Kursia is our ally, and always has been. Sure they're government is a little rough, but all the trade deals with the Gaian States means that if they sabotaged the mission, they would lose those trade deals. What would they even gain by disrupting this mission?" "They would be able to get rid of this mission for the short-term. Then they could easily sneak something pass us." Jeb explained. "Jeb. You are talking rot." Stable accused. "Maybe. Gene told me, so I believe him." Jeb replied glibly. "Why do you take whatever Gene says as fact. Sure, he's informed on future plans and such, but only a military personnel would have access to that knowledge....." She trailed off. Jeb wished he didn't wear his ornamental army badge at this instance. "You were military, Gene was military. Both of you served in the Army. You obey Gene like he's your, captain." Stable stared at Jeb in a new light. Jeb hung his head, not having the heart to deny this fact. There was silence, and then Jeb spoke, "Yes, Gene was my captain. He always beat me at kards when we played together. I accumulated a large amount of debt to him. He said he would cancel that debt if I joined the kerbonaut corps, so me and Val joined up." He bit the inside of his lip, slightly embarrassed. "I have been in his debt for cancelling that debt ever since." Stable's face tried to express a variety of emotions at once, not withstanding discomfort, disappointment, disbelief, as well as amusement. The only emotion which appeared coherently was the amusement. "Jeb." she said, "You can put me in extreme doubt that you have a brain up there." "It makes perfect sense though..." then Jeb saw the lack of reason behind his previous statement. "Oops." "Come on, Silly." Stable teased. Jeb was in the act of embracing Stable, a chuckle in his throat, when a voice coughed from below him. Two startled cats could have not separated sooner. It was the Kid. "Um, Jeb?" "Yes?" Jeb asked, fighting down the blush which threatened to emerge. "Ivan wants to talk to you in private. That was what Hardid Kerman said to tell you." "Alright, I'll come." With one last look at Stable, who was pretending to study the plants, he pushed himself through the zero-gravity down to the other greenhouse. The two makeshift guards waited until Jeb was out of the hatch, then they scrambled unceremoniously up. Ivan floated in the middle of the room, unbound. "Alright, Jebediah. Let us end the charades." Ivan announced. "What charades?" Jeb asked. He tried to conceal that he was biting his lip. He did a poor job of it. "You know what charades. You know perfectly well I did not put that malware on your computer." Ivan accused. "I know perfectly well that you were spying on the designs for the nuclear aerospike, and everything connected to it." Jeb countered. "Yes. I admit that. One has to obey one's mentor." "Yes, indeed." Jeb replied crisply. "You know perfectly well, Jeb, who put the malware in the computer." Ivan leered an all-knowing leer. "Do you think I will tell you that?" Jeb attempted to wound Ivan, "Because you won't get a word from me." "Oh, I never expected that. After all, who would accuse oneself of putting the malware into the computer?" Jeb flinched. Ivan laughed, "You did do it, didn't you. Working for you mentor, did you have a debt to settle, just like myself? Or did you do it for the pure joy of deceit." "I hated every moment of it." Jeb flashed back. He grimaced, "Seeing as you understand my predicament, do you mind keeping quiet?" Ivan thought, and when his mouth opened to say something, he rethought. Jeb waited agonizingly for a minute, and for another minute, and for the next minute after that. Finally after five minutes, Ivan said, "I'll keep quiet for now. When it suits my purpose to call you out, I will. So can I be released?" "Sure, follow me." Again Jeb gathered the crew into the main command module. Ivan floated on his left hand now, Stable on his right. "I gather you here, kerbals because of a new development." Jeb announced. Mixed mutterings sounded from the crowd. Jeb ignored them and continued, "Ivan here has given me some important evidence. Instead of putting the malware onto my computer, he gave me proof that he was attempting to remove it. He didn't want to be blamed for something he didn't do, which unfortunately backfired on him." "The culprit is still not to be found yet. I would hesitate accusing one another for doing it though. We must work together in order to survive the harshness of space. Dismissed!" The crowd dispersed. Stable went back to coaching a group of kerbals on orbital mechanics, the Kid being one of those attending. Ivan leaned over and whispered in Jeb ear, "Hypocrite." Jeb flinched. Ivan chuckled as he floated away, leaving Jeb to stew in his troubles. Happy Explosions!

Just as a public announcement, I will be taking a break from the forums for a little while. I'll hopefully be back by the end of the month, but that means I won't be able to hand out the medals for the next two challenges. For those two challenges, would the author of their challenge be so kind as to take care of the medals as well? Happy Explosions!

I must say.....tweak-scale was involved? That's fine, but I feel sorry for your computer. If you put through horrors of that size too often, it'll probably go 'poof'. I speak from experience.

Oh, sorry about that, @Elon Kerman Jr. Here is your tier I medal

Sorry for being late with the medals. Here they are! @4x4cheesecake, here is your Tier III medal for traveling 29 kms! @hoioh, here is your Tier III medal for traveling 30 kilometers! @Scarecrow, here is your tier II medal for going 20 kilometers! @Lucast0909, here is your Tier III medal for going 15 kilometers! @rSSSfeed, here is your Tier I medal for going 7 kilometers! @kerbalstar, here is your tier I medal for going 10.5 kilometers! @doggonemess, here is your tier III medal for going 70 kilometers! @SpacePanda, here is your tier one medal for going 20 kilometers! @Ho Lam Kerman, here is your tier I medal for going 8.9 kilometers! @TheFlyingKerman, here is your tier III medal for going 4.5 kilometers! @Zeiss Ikon, here is your tier I medal for going 6 kilometers! @SiriusRocketry, here is your tier III medal for going 11 kilometers! The judges awards will be handed out soon, sent to those who it concerns by message. Again, if there is anything wrong with the medals, please contact me and correct me. This is rather hurried, so I'm sorry if I left anyone out. Happy Explosions!

Could you show us what picture you have of it? @Elon Kerman Jr.

I'm sorry, but I moving slowly to other things. I will finish the story though. I have all the screenshots necessary, so don't worry.

Chapter 9: Fate of the Munar-5 / Part 3 - Landing and Sabotage They arrived at Gol a day later. "We have arrived at Gol." Jeb announced. General applause followed. After a couple hours the Tutor braked into a low Gol orbit. "Where are we going to land the base?" asked Orbee Kerman. "Near the crater will be an adequate place." "Ehh." Jeb said. His personal opinion, on the opposite side of Gol, he never mentioned. "Alright, lets land near the crater." Stable said. The lander/base detached from the Tutor and fired its RCS, moving away from the Tutor. A group of kerbals huddled around Stable's console, watching her adeptly plot the maneuver node and make the descent burn. "How much delta-v does the lander-base have?" asked the 'kid'. "Two thousand meters a second empty. Less when full." "Why didn't the engineers design the Tutor to land and do all of this stuff?" "They couldn't invent a design which could be launched in one piece, carry all the necessary life-support, and carry all the mining equipment." Stable answered the question with ease. Jeb floated behind the crowd, watching as Stable piloted the mining base down to the surface while answering the barrage of questions. Finally, the base landed easily roughly 50 kilometers away from the massive crater. "Closer." murmured Stable. Complete silence reigned around the console. "Nearly there." Stable's eyes stayed locked on the screen. "Landed!" The crew broke out in an assortment of noises one could technically call cheers. There were brays, barks, and even a solitary quack. Jeb himself snorted in glee through the nostrils "It will take a couple of days for the ore to be fully mined. So, everyone, go to your lessons." Stable shooed the cadets away, until everyone retreated to their respective corners. Jeb floated up to Stable, "You did wonderful! How you stayed calm underneath all of that pressure, I can't say." Stable flushed a little, "My mother named me Stable for a reason. I guess after those seven years, I can put up with whatever other kerbals can throw at me, just to be around kerbals once more. Flesh and blood." "Could you, give me some tips?" Jeb asked. She shrugged, "Well, just remember you were once in their position. How would you feel to be overlooked by your mentor?" She then left the command-module. Jeb thought about her advice for a second. Suddenly someone tapped him on the shoulder. "Hey there, Jeb." It was the kid again. Jeb decided that fate must be testing him. "Yes?" Jeb answered. "I was wondering if you could show me the captain's chair. I might sit in one of those one day." Jeb made an attempt to not role his eyes. Only through the most intense effort, he did not. He told the kid to follow him. He then floated up to the his seat to find someone sitting in his chair. It was Ivan. "Why are you in my chair?" "Something spilled next to me and its floating everywhere. The person responsible should clean it up. I sat here because it was the closest seat none effected." Jeb rolled his eyes this time. "Now would you please find the person who did it, so that he could pick it up!" Ivan grumbled, but he left the chair. Jeb sat in the seat, forgetting the kid, pulled up his computer screen. There was a new message from Gaia. He opened it up. Suddenly a pop-up appeared with Error in large red letters. "What in the world." he swore. He quickly tried tabbing out. That failed. He tried a hard shut-down. The message stayed on the screen. "Stable!" Jeb yelled out. "We have a problem!" A few minutes later the eleven cadets lined up against a wall, while Jeb and Val floated in front of them. "Some uploaded malware onto my computer. I don't know who did it, but some one here did. Ivan was sitting at my desk when it occurred. He claims that a spilled drink forced him there. When I looked into the matter, the drink had been cleaned up for twenty minutes when Ivan sat at my desk. What do you have to say for yourself?" Ivan looked like a solid piece of stone as he stared defiantly at me, "I will not have you accuse me! I am a Kosmonaut, I know the harshness of space better than any of you. I would never harm the spacecraft which kept me alive." "I would like to see your record." Jeb said, almost spitting. Ivan held out an Ipad. Jeb took it and then tapped it absently. When he looked at it, he saw the words, "Error" in red covering the screen. "Damn and Blast!" Ivan swore when he saw the red letters. "Surely you won't press your charges when you see that my proof of innocence is destroyed." "No." The kid said, "Its in all the novels, you just pretended to destroy the 'evidence'. Malwarer!" "Ivan, the evidence points towards you. Kid, you watch him close. Don't let him touch a computer. If he does, we might have to resort to stronger methods. Understood, Ivan?" Jeb pointed this last statement at Ivan. "There will be an outrage! I insist I did not do this!" Ivan protested. "Sorry, Ivan. I don't want to see you for a long while. Scam." Ivan glared a hate-filled glare at Jeb, and then pushed himself off to the lower deck. "Can anyone here mix malware?" Jeb addressed the rest of the kerbals. "I can try." Orbee said. "Good, see if you can fix Ivan's Ipad and my computer." "On it, Jeb." A little while later Jeb went back to his computer which Orbee studiously was attempting to fix. "What's damaged?" "Life-support systems are slowly venting out into space, communications to Gaia are cut off, and our gryos are out of alignment and I can't do anything to fix them." "How much longer do we have until we must return back to Gaia because of lack of supplies?" "20 days, if we're lucky." Happy Explosions!

I'm sorry to say that I'm afraid Voyages Extraordinaire will join the legions of my works which I have left by the wayside. I am focusing now on the BDArmory side of things, and am thinking of joining up some sort of competition on that subject. Hopefully I will close out this story in the near future, but I don't see a future beyond that point for VE. Also, I have seriously enjoyed GPP, which is one of the est planetary packs I have played.

Will there be mods involved?

Will I be able to submit craft for a single nation? And also, I'll like to join in on the writing of this thingy.

Sorry for the lack of updates. The problem is that we( the thread authors) are running through the future rules of this thread. The challenge will stay open until Thursday, or possibly later. I will say that RL has been hampering me slightly, but soon I will help tackle the problem.

Honestly, the rules were a bit too complicated. Every entry which has reached over 4.3 kilometers qualifies. Tomorrow, I will post up the medals.

@The Minmus Derp, the current challenge is to launch a glider to 4.3 kilometers at least. If you do that, then you get a Newbie Medal. The challenge will be changing soon though.

Well, any landing you can walk away from is a success, so you take a Newbie medal! Also, @TheFlyingKerman, you get a medal as well!

Was this designed to separate into multiple pieces, @Ho Lam Kerman? Or was this a rapidly unplanned disassembly?

Unless there is a Rama-like alien spacecraft demanding a large group of randomly assorted kerbals, I wouldn't think that any sane government would send prisoners up there. Why not imprison them at the bottom of the oceans, especially if they already have the tech.

Chapter 8: Fate of the Munar - 5 - Part 2 - Departure Once Jeb reached the command pod, he saw what mission control saddled him up with. A file appeared on his computer. He quickly played it. It appeared to be a slide-show of the launch. "What is the payload?" Jeb asked. Orbee, peering over his shoulder, answered his question, "That's a Autonomous Miner Outpost, or an AMO as they're call now-a-days. Its completely reusable unless you're a bad pilot." "I control it!" Jeb replied shocked. "Yes, they don't have an A.I, so you're the only one who could fly it, other than Stable." "Why wasn't I warned!" Jeb looked around bewildered. Something refused to click in his mind. Maybe the gears were spinning too fast. "Why wasn't I trained for this?" "Maybe they needed to test you. Pilots have to prove they're worth something." Glasses broke into Jeb's already derailed train of thoughts. The slide-show still played. Jeb glanced back at it, trying unsuccessfully to ascertain the situation. "That's an aggressive rendezvous." commented Glasses again. "The second stage is running out of propellant. I assume your heartless engineers have forgotten to make it reusable." "What is your name again?" Jeb asked, trying to guess where Glasses came from. "Ivan T. Kermankoff." "Kursia?" "Yes. Where I live, everything is reused. Even glasses, for mine used to belong to the Chief of the Kursian Space Program." "Okay, okay, okay." Jeb held Ivan off while he watched the rest of the footage. "Humm.... boy the Tutor looks ugly." commented another random kerbal. Jeb glared at the kid. Whenever a pilot comes into a ship, they act like a mother and pretend that it is the most beautifulship in the world. Especially when it isn't. Jeb took a glance back at the picture. Then he noticed a pair of debris which looked like it passed within meters of the Tutor. "What?!" Jeb objected to being seemingly targeted by debris. "That's not the latest image." Ivan stated. Jeb stared aghast at the monstrosity of an AMO which was presented to him. "What is that...machine." "Its an AMO. I already told you." Orbee rectified his feigned ignorance. Jeb then glanced out of the window to be confronted with the AMO staring at him. Its pair of terriers threatened to fry the entire mission. "I know that, thank you very much!" Jeb snapped back at Orbee. "Who is controlling it?" "I'm now." Stable said, "Mission Control gave me special training to fly the AMO. They didn't know exactly what they would be sending up, that's why you were trained to fly a lander." "Alright." Jeb sighed, glad that his sorrows in reality stood on another's shoulders. Stable carefully guided the AMO in to dock with the Tutor with a joystick on her console. Jeb kept the Tutor aligned correctly until the point of docking. "Whew. That's that." Jeb said, "I still don't understand how the engineers down on the ground made it so ugly." "Ugly, my ancient aunt! Its beautiful, Jeb!" Stable exclaimed. "Okay, okay, okay. Sorry, it just is soooo.....modular." Jeb conceded. "That's what makes it beautiful. I don't want to hear you arguing with me." Jeb kept his mouth shut, and let Bob say the obvious. "How can that piddly thing refuel us?" Stable glared at him, "Can't you see that it has a docking port on the top of it! Its designed so that we can have multiple of these bases. This way, we can colonize the system along with exploring it." Jeb weighed the revelation. As long as no strange anomaly was found, then the mission would end all curiosity with the Gaia System. "Alright, let's go to Gol!" It didn't take very long to plot a maneuver node. Then the Tutor fired its main drive and departed LGO. It was now the sleeping cycle on-board the Tutor. The crew unfolded sleeping bags and attached them to the walls using vast amount of duct tape. Jeb did not open his sleeping bag. He floated in front of a window, staring backwards at the planet he so loved. "I wonder how long it will be before I go back there." He wondered wistfully. "I hope not too long." He reflected how Val would encourage him at this point. Val always encouraged him when he was down, and she always pulled him up. If Val hadn't been so busy...... well he could do nothing now. He glanced over at Stable, who was setting up her sleeping bag with Velcro, instead of duct tape. This drew many admiring glances, for the custom was to use duct tape since the early days. That might have been because Velcro didn't exist in the early days, but no one thought of that. She thrived in space. She lived 7 years in space before Jeb even went suborbital. How she did it, he didn't know. Jeb drifted over to Stable, and then asked, "Stable, how did you live in space for 8 years and thrive?" Stable consider for a moment, and then answered, "I always focused on the present. I always focused on my current problem, and fixing it. Once I fixed one problem, another problem took its place and I focused on that. I never thought of the end result, just the current result." Stable smiled, "Jeb, I still don't understand how thoughtful you can become, and yet be thickheaded at best sometimes. Do you know why?" Jeb shrugged, "I don't deal with stress very well. I actually hate it. For some reason, the thought of Gaia's beauty has always served as a stress reliever. Now when I'm in space and under stress, I long for Gaia and that only increases my stress." His cheeks grew a little flushed, "My friends and Val have noticed that when I'm stressed out, I get detached and out-of-wack with everything. They said that stress removes the brain from my skull. And they're right." "Oh, dear." Stable nodded a little, expressing her concern. Jeb gestured around him. "Well, its only going to be a short trip around the Gaia system. What could go wrong?" Happy Explosions!

I'm.... interested. I'll watch this thread with considerable interest.

Umm.... You might want to insert periods. Anyway, to upload photos go to imgur.com, and then click on the green button in the upper right corner. Click the new photo button, then drag your screenshots from the screenshot folder in your KSP folder from there to the grey box which came up. Tada! You will have uploaded your first photos, @Elon Kerman Jr.

@doggonemess, I’m not supportive of military themed challenges because they require BD Armory, and not all of us know how to use mods and how to download them. Also, as all of the readers and participants are not using the latest version of KSP (I’m still using 1.3.1), modding will be more difficult. Maybe a stock military challenge, but I would like to think that Stock KPS should be devoid of military aspects. Of course, if 3 or more of the co-authors disagree, that’s fine but @VelocityPolaris has been working hard on making this challenge and I would dislike it if he had to trash his work on it. Happy Explosions!

Sure! Change it up all you want. Its your medal now . Happy Explosions!

@Lo Var Lachland, only the co-authors, namely myself, @kerbalstar, @VelocityPolaris, @obney kerman, and our new addition to the crew, @Lucast0909 can post challenges. If you want, you can apply for joining the co-authors and then post your challenge but @VelocityPolaris is the next one posting a challenge. After him then @Lucast0909 will post his challenge. If you join by then, then after @Lucast0909 you can post your challenge. Sorry for the miscommunication. EDIT: Well, seeing as you swore for my sake (my real name's pete), I've given you a way to re-post that challenge. Happy Explosions!

Great! I will hint that the next challenge will be gearing towards the airborne side of KSP. Happy Explosions!