Confused Scientist

Chapter 16- Southern Central Fame "Attention passengers, I regret to inform you we're being placed into a holding pattern while three high-priority aircraft land. If you have a connection we will try your best to reaccommodate you on a later-" All of the passengers on the old Junkers Georgia booed as a Klonkorde and two K-37s descended onto Juno Airfield and taxied over to a quiet area on the tarmac. A few workers milled about taking measurements for a new terminal- to be built at the request of Mortimer to accommodate the business boom that was about to arrive- and staircases were rolled up to each one. Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val stepped out of their trainers and climbed up to the presidential aircraft, which had been nicknamed the Holy Moly. Jeb suspected that the president was particularly proud of that one. "Thank you for, ah, coming to meet me here at this, er, airport. I would like to, eh, congratulate you, er, astronauts for the, er, ah, great achievements that you have, em, accomplished with the, ah-" Val and Bob looked at each other. "Er, rockets. Now, tell me: How does your, em, corporation make money?" Bill shrugged. "We've got some contracts for testing, and we get endorsements for setting records. But mostly we make money from developing new technologies like the Klonkorde." "Yes, an, er, terrific plane. But I would like to, eh, tell you something about, er, that." Jeb raised his eyebrows as the president kept talking. "The next big thing to, er, come from the, eh, KSP is ten years away. That's, ah, at the end of the decade." "How do you know so much about this?" Val asked. "I mean, you must be busy running the country." "Not, er, really. I spend most of my, ah, time on a yacht. But I, em, know all of this for, eh, literary convenience. Also your, ah, boy Mortimer told me." "So?" Bob shrugged. "We can wait to develop the next big thing." "No, you, er, can't. Take a look at these, ah, pictures." The president slid some photographs across his desk. "These were taken with, a, eh, spy plane. There's, er, launchpads. My boys did some, ah, digging and found out that, this is, er, a competing company space effort made by, em, the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company. They call it, er, Munstock." Jeb frowned. "Big-time companies? They may whip us in the short-term if they build a competitor for the Klonkorde, but we'll still win eventually." "Yes, but, er, I decided that, ah, the nation needs new, eh, spy satellites. It would be, ah, good if that was all under the same, er, umbrella. So I made a, em, competition: The first, er, space program to land an, ah, kerbal on the Mun before this, eh, decade is out will win enough, er, money to buy the other one. I'll make a, ah, great speech to save my, er, reputation and distract everybody from my, er, ah, secret tax evasion island." Guards came over to escort Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val from the Klonkorde. "Your actions will decide the, ah, future of this country. Don't, er, disapoint me."

SpaceX public relations are incredible. Weighing the small probability of extremely negative press that will result if the two tourists (read: "People who think Old Faithful erupts at the top of every hour") die against the good publicity of a circumlunar flight gets us that decision.

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Chapter 15- 45 Revolutions Per Orbit From all over Kerbin, they came. The Juno's Landing airport saw massive delays as kerbals from all over the world descended on the space coast with cameras, and Route 77 was clogged with cars of all shapes and sizes, from large and bulky to extremely large and bulky. They came down Central Avenue and pulled into motels and diners and casinos with buzzing neon signs; they lost money, sometimes even at the casinos. Sunny Kerman was the leader of the Space Coast on launch day, barking orders like "Put out cones at the front gate! Run more lines for the cameras! Put up more speakers in the parking lot! And you," she shouted, pointing at Valentina and the clouseout crew, "launch the rocket!" Then she ran off to meet another hundred reporters as they used their armored tanks-turned-news-vans to shove slow cars off of the highway in front of them. Jeb and Valentina nodded at each other and joined Wernher and Gene in the truck. Wernher turned on the radio as they drove, and they heard a reporter's voice: "With just over two hours to go before launch, there are thousands of kerbals eagerly awaiting Valentina Kerman's historic flight. In fact, I'm speaking with the flight director now!" With some dismay, Gene realized that the radio was turned to a classical music station and that the reporter they heard was somehow jogging alongside the van at seventy kilometers per hour, prompting him to roll the windows up, just before they pulled up at mission control, where Gene got out. Then Wernher revved the engine and sped towards the launchpad, where they met Bill and Bob who were, as usual, climbing up and down the scaffolding helping out the team of twelve engineers. Bob held a wrench in his mouth, but he dropped it when Valentina came in. "Hey, Val!" She grinned inside her helmet and raised her faceplate. "It's great to see you guys are having fun. Call the elevator for me, will you?" At the top of the launch gantry, the small kicker stage was clearly visible. After its choice of fuel, Bill had named this uprated rocket the Kerosene, and the capsule was still a Sparkler. Valentina pulled herself in and frowned. "It's a lot roomier in here than I thought without Jeb's ego crowding the cabin." "Hey!" "Face it- anyone who has your kind of piloting skills has got to have some huge ego." Bob stepped over. "Are you criticizing my flying?" Valentina sighed. "Fine. All of you have gigantic egos." "Nice!" Jeb smiled and turned to leave, but he paused. "Krakenspeed, Val." Bill and Bob sealed the hatch of the Sparkler V, which Gene had nicknamed "Mad Cow". With an hour to go until launch, a klaxon sounded, and all of the engineers climbed down from the gantry and found rides back to Mission Control. Bored, Valentina opened the window and was blinded. Surely Kerbol can't be that bright! Has it gone nova? No, the blinding light outside was the glow of a constant parade of flashbulbs going off. Valentina idly wondered where all of the film was going in an era before digital storage. If she had a window in the right direction, she would have gotten her answer as moving trucks full of film streamed in and out of the gates at the far end of the peninsula. The CAPCOM on this flight was Franxie Kerman, and as the moment of launch approached they stopped talking so Valentina could listen to the rocket start up below her. First the high-pitched whine of turbopumps and the roar of the launchpad sound suppression system flooding beneath the engines... then a howl as the Kerosene lit up and took flight. Out over the ocean she soared, melting back into the couch as fuel drained from the first stage. Bang! There it went, fading in the distance as the plucky upper stage took over. She had thought that a solid-fueled insertion stage would have been best, but Wernher worried about how reliable its thrust duration would be- and besides, they needed to get experience with high-altitude engine ignitions. "Passing the Karman line," Franxie called. "Seventy kilometers... mark. About five seconds left on the burn." The four small engines on the insertion stage shut down, but Valentina was not yet in orbit. By Wernher's estimate, Jeb's suggestion for the final insertion shaved fifty kilos off of the second stage. Valentina looked out the window, counting down the seconds- All at once, a flash of light and an intense acceleration, then a boom as the escape tower was jettisoned after giving the Mad Cow its final boost into orbit. "Franxie... I'm floating in my straps. I think this is space." There was a lot of cheering in mission control, and Valentina felt happy, too, at least until she heard a heart-sickening Bang! and a red light on her control panel came on. "Control?" she asked. "Control? Do you read? I have a status report." "Yes, Valentina go ahead." Valentina looked out the window and confirmed the signal light in her capsule. "I think we have a problem. The retrorocket package has been jettisoned and I can see it out my window." There was silence in Mission Control. Then Gene stood up and cursed for a few minutes. Jeb raised his eyebrows, concerned but not yet worried- about Valentina, that is. He was very scared of the reporters in the press box shouting at him, asking things like, "Is the retrorocket package supposed to detach before it has served its purpose?" Back in orbit, Valentina was talking to no one in particular. "The only rockets I have left are the RCS vents. I can't fire those at the same time, so they're useless for maneuvering. That leaves me with-" She stopped. She imagined approaching a space station in her capsule and yawing to the right. The nose of the capsule would rotate in that direction, but there would also be a very slight translation to the right... and if she waited until the nose of the Mad Cow was pointed away from the station, and cancelled out her yawing motion, she would be accelerating in the same direction. Then she could yaw to the left, and keep the cycle going. Valentina's eyes widened. "Hey, Franxie... I've got an idea." After five minutes of explaining the space station thought experiment to Mission Control (Valentina was quite proud of that analogy), Gene leaned back in his chair and brushed his hair back. "Well?" Bill asked him. "Well what?" Gene replied. "It's the only thing we've got." Valentina rolled so two of the RCS vents were facing in the direction of travel and then put her plan into effect. At first, Valentina tried a very rapid back-and-forth motion, yawing left for half a second and then cancelling out with the right, but the quick motion of the capsule was unsettling and she felt like she was wasting a lot of fuel. She switched to long burns and 180-degree rotations, flipping and spinning once or twice a minute; some back-of-the-napkin math told her she would complete this cycle between forty and fifty times each orbit. After three-quarters of the RCS tank was gone, Valentina stopped the thruster firing. "I'll need some landing estimates for my final descent on the next orbit." On the ground, nerds in white coats were already playing with slide rules to take the three-second, eighty meter per second burn and figure out how long it would take with the RCS vents. They worked together and compared their numbers, but when they chose the fastest of them to run the result back to mission control, he made a mistake. He moved the decimal point one digit to the left. When Gene heard the numbers, he didn't think they were wrong, and so he passed them to Franxie, who also agreed with them, and so she gave them to Valentina, who carried out a burn for the duration she was given, flipping end over end. Jeb chewed on his knuckles during the reentry, listening to Valentina's narration of the events. "Here we go... down below seventy kilometers, I think... Starting to get a little red around the window... A/C kicking in; I hear the fan... Entry interface! Passive stability now, but keeping RCS active anyway... Fifty-five K! I think we're... uh... coming up on the reentry blackout right ab-" The feed from the spacecraft cut into static, with worried shouts from the press box. "Is that normal?" "Yes!" Jeb yelled. "If something's not normal, you'll know!" For two minutes, there was just static in the control room. Then- "Re-acquired, Control! RCS off, passive stability... transonic now... here comes the drogue! It's still reefed... coming out all the way now... and here comes the main! Oh, it's big and white and orange!" Jeb turned to Gene and smiled. "I wouldn't mind doing that again." After all, it seemed like a simple problem to solve, and nobody realized that the only thing that had prevented disaster was that Gene accidentally gave Franxie the burn duration with the decimal point moved one digit to the right.

Chapter 14- The New Guys Sunny Kerman took the stage and cleared her throat. "Please, take your seats." Flashbulbs in the audience went off. Jeb, sitting in a chair behind the podium with the rest of the astronauts, held up a hand to shield his eyes. Valentina squinted. "I will count to three." None of the reporters looked at her. "One..." The general din of conversation echoed through the auditorium. "Two..." Somewhere off to the side, a Kerbal News Network reporter and a Coyote News cameraman were engaged in a shouting match with an incredible amount of profanity. "Two and a half..." The Kerbal News Network reporter and the Coyote News photographer both suddenly drew a revolver from their waistband and took aim at each other's heads. "Thr-" Before Sunny could finish, all of the kerbals were in their seats, and the auditorium was quiet. Even the gunfight had been quietly averted. "Thank you. I apologize that we did not have time to have a press conference after Sparkler III, so we're going to be here for a while. First, congratulations to both Jeb and Bob, who made the first two flights of the Sparkler program. The next flight will be an orbital flight, flown by Valentina Kerman. The difference between these flights is incredible; the rocket needs to be twice as powerful and the flight will last for an hour instead of fifteen minutes, enough time for the Sparkler V to make two complete orbits of Kerbin with an uprated Lithium rocket. I will now take questions about the Sparkler III, IV, or V missions." A flock of reporters jumped out of their chairs and began climbing on top of each other and waving their arms to be seen. Finally one wrestled the rest to the ground. "Eh, KBS news," she said. "How did the preflight physicals compare to the ones taken after splashdown on Sparkler III and Sparkler IV?" Sunny nodded. "Well, biological considerations have been a large focus of aerospace study in the last few years. For this reason, there were comprehensive exams before and after each flight. We observed no large, long-term changes as a result of the acceleration or microgravity forces exposed to Jebediah or Bob, who both agreed to have their physical data released to the public. You can request a copy of that in the lobby after the press conference." She took a breath and pointed at a new reporter. "Yes, you, KNN." "Thank you. What dangers do orbital flight provide that were not present in the flights that have already been launched?" "Well, the main ones are deorbiting and reentry. In orbital flight, there is nothing to slow the capsule down once the booster is detached. For this reason, the single critical piece of equipment is the retrorocket module, which houses three small solid motors. Any one of them is capable of deorbiting the capsule by itself. After this, an orbital reentry is much fiercer than a suborbital one, although the g-forces aren't quite as high." "What modifications were necessary to the Lithium rocket to place the Sparkler into orbit?" "There is a small upper stage beneath the Sparkler, and the escape tower has been reconfigured to pull the capsule off of the rocket for the final orbital insertion." Another crowd of reporters leapt up from their seats, but Sunny waved them off. "Jebediah Kerman has an announcement." The room quieted as Jeb stood up from his chair and walked towards the podium. "There are four more flights in the Sparkler program," he began. "At the moment, we have only two astronauts that have not yet flown, so they will fly Sparkler V and Sparkler VI. If we kept it going on like that, the training schedule would be unbearable. Instead," he said, "let me introduce to you, the new astronaut candidates of the Kontinental Startup Program!" They walked in from the wings. "All seven of them have been picked right out of the top of the Air Force," Jeb continued. "We have Ilda Kerman, Franxie Kerman, Alice Kerman, Mermon Kerman, Hansted Kerman, Boblock Kerman, and Hardbrett Kerman." "One of them will walk on the Mun."

Today I learned about (the semi-whimsical) "Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design". I have included a few that are relevant to SLS: 11: Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything out and start over. (I see NASA has interpreted this as "throw away the reusable SRBs and the limited-supply liquid fueled engines.") 17: The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the likelihood of its being correct. (Also applies to SpaceX Elon-time). 39: Any exploration program which "just happens" to include a new launch vehicle is, de facto, a launch vehicle program. 39 (Alternate formulation): The three keys to keeping a new human space program affordable and on schedule: 1) No new launch vehicles. 2) No new launch vehicles. 3) Whatever you do, don't develop any new launch vehicles.

Good question! I have chosen to gloss over this massive unaddressed plot hole by pointing out that a careful re-reading of the intermission on page two will suddenly show that all of those other mistakes were made much later.

Chapter 13- Jeb Sells his Soul for a Rocket The sun rose over the cape and the engineers gathered in an all-new, shiny control room with silver dials and gauges and microphones. This time, however, they were not part of a literary device and Jeb was buttoned up in the rocket, with two minutes left on the clock. He thought back to the morning. Valentina shook him awake three hours before sunrise and dragged him out of bed to the breakfast table. For the first time since arriving in the past, Jeb hadn't slept in Gene's cabin; instead, he reluctantly spent the night in the brand-new crew quarters so he would be ready to begin donning his spacesuit as soon as possible. He poked at some eggs with his fork before Gene came in. Jeb looked up. "Ready?" Gene shrugged. "I've been up for hours. The weather is go, and the news vans are here." "News vans?" Gene opened the shade. Jeb looked out across a sea of flashbulbs, microphones, and film canisters and felt fear for the first time he could remember. Even the sight Interplanetary Authority ships bearing down on a collision course with the Kraken's Spit hadn't been a sight to make his face pale, but dying wasn't as bad as messing up in front of all of the reporters. "I didn't know there would be so many." Jeb turned to see Sunny and Wernher walk in. "We've already made a fortune just from network deals to cover this launch," the reporter said. "This is the most interesting thing since the war. There's a lot of money-" "Did someone say money?" Mortimer asked as he entered the mess hall. "All of the profit from this goes right back into your R&D budget. That way the KSP- by the way, I think we should change it to Kerbal Space Program- gets to be recognized as a nonprofit with all of the tax benefits that go along with that." After a few more minutes of Mortimer fanatically listing profit margins for the new Juno-powered plane, which was being marketed as the Klonkorde, Jeb shoved his plate away. "I'll order one of those Bloated Burgers from the Route 77 Diner after I get back," he announced. "Valentina? I think it's time to begin the prebreathe." Valentina nodded as Gene started towards the door. "It's time for me to get back to the control room," he announced. "Jeb, best of luck." And he was gone. Wernher and Valentina accompanied Jeb to the suit room, with Sunny tagging along behind. Jeb sniffed pure oxygen for a few minutes, and then he gestured to Valentina. Then he nodded and went to help them retrieve his pressure suit from its cabinet. When they had first showed it to Valentina, she was shocked by how hot and stiff it was. She quickly improved it with some of her knowledge of EVA suits from the future and gave Jeb the new version. As usual, it was painted orange, and soon Jeb looked like a big Jack-O-lantern swaddled in rubber. Then he tied on his black boots, laced them up to the ankles, and put on his gloves. When he tried them on for the first time, he had thought they were a little slippery, so Bob went to the store to find some gecko-rubber, whose existence Bill doubted. With the new gloves and the new pressure suit on, Valentina helped Jeb to strap on his parachute, and then all that was left was the helmet. Wernher came up from behind and carefully lowered it onto its ring and snapped it shut. Then Sunny helped to connect some of the life support tubes, and Jeb was dressed like a true astronaut. "I have to admit," Valentina said, "a good deal of the modifications I made were suggestions by Sunny to make it look like a true spacesuit. The capsule probably won't lose pressure, so we wanted it to have a second purpose: eye candy." And so Jeb gave the suit its most important test by walking out into the sea of reporters. All at once flashbulbs went off and a thousand voices rose above the peninsula, but gradually they were silenced and the night was quiet except for the crickets and Jeb reached the truck for his ride to the pad. He stopped at the door with his air conditioning unit in his left hand and, turning, looked out at the cameras. Then, slowly, he grinned, and waved at the crowd. They screamed. The reporters surged forward, but the path to the truck had been blocked off by some thoughtful engineer the night before. Jeb hurriedly sat down in the truck, with Valentina running up behind him and Sunny getting in shotgun, with Wernher behind the wheel. The ride to the pad passed in silence, the first time that anybody could remember Jeb didn't have something to say. He was thinking, though. He realized that even though he had lived most of his life in space, he was about to fly the first-ever space mission. The awesome responsibility took its toll- if he messed anything up, everything in the future that he'd liked would disappear instantly: Station One, the Number Nine Shuttle, Munbase, and- worst of all- the Kraken's Spit. What if all of that went away? Then Jeb realized: They were already there in the future, so this mission was guaranteed to be a success. All of the rockets after this one might blow up, and Jeb and his friends could die tomorrow, but this first flight would be flawless. Knowing this, Jeb grinned, and he knew that he could enjoy his unique place in history: on top of a rocket. At this point the truck pulled up to the pad, and Wernher waved to Jeb. "I'm off to check the LOX inlet valve," he announced. "Good luck to our astronaut." Before Jeb could reply, Sunny was gone, too, chatting with some reporter by the fence around the pad. Then Jeb turned and he saw that Wernher was already halfway to the base of the Lithium. All that was left was Valentina, and Bill and Bob at the top of the launch gantry. They were the closeout crew. Jeb and Valentina climbed up on the narrow staircase, passing hissing fuel lines and humming cables until they reached the White Room. "Let's go!" Bob announced, with his back to Jeb. "The gantry leaves the rocket in thirty minutes!" Valentina tapped him on the shoulder. "They made me pad leader," Bob said. "I like my hardhat. It's got some red highlights." "Mine's just got yellow," Bill sighed. Together they walked to the hatch of the capsule. "Well," Jeb said, "I'll see you after splashdown." Then he took one last look at the faces of the three best friends he had ever known and pulled himself into the claustrophobic confines of the Sparkler III. Bill and Bob got to work swinging the hatch shut, but Valentina crouched down before they were done. "I realized that there's no way this flight can fail," she said. "You see, all of that stuff we had in the future-" "Yeah," Jeb said, eyes wide. "It's pretty cool." Valentina smiled. Her smile was not like Jeb's wild grin, but a more confident one, less reckless- much like the difference between Jeb and herself. "Happy landings," she said, and then stepped back as the hatch closed. Jeb closed his faceplate. From now on, he would only breathe canned oxygen and talk to the voices in his helmet. In the truest sense, his first flight had just started. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "About two minutes to go, Jeb," Bill called. "How's the ride so far?" "It's a lot less exciting than the simulations," Jeb replied. Bill laughed. "Escape tower armed," he added, almost as an afterthought. The last minute of the countdown passed uneventfully and then, on hundreds of thousands of television sets across Kerbin: "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, ignition!" Right away Jeb tried scanning the instruments with all of the vibration and found it quite easy. The close confines of the capsule and the rugged acceleration reminded Jeb of his ascent from Eve. About ten seconds in and two kilometers up, Jeb called mission control. "Everything good here," he said "...and waiting for burnout in about two minutes." "We copy, Sparkler, approaching Max-Q... Max-Q. The Lithium III is through the sound barrier." The ride settled down after that, with the noise of the engines a distant roar in Jeb's ears. The sky outside his window quickly lost its color and, as the rocket passed the maximum altitude of Jeb's K-37 ride, stars came out during the day. Jeb, being used to sights like this, was more focused on how different his craft was from the Kraken's Spit, which in itself was somewhat obsolete without very many digital displays and only a rudimentary autopilot. Still, it had more room and a computer, and that was what- The engine shut down all at once and Jeb was thrown forward against his straps. There was a loud bang as the escape tower came off and then a quiet hiss as the Sparkler was thrown free of the Lithium. "Control... I am in zero-g. Affirm landing in ten minutes?" "Roger. Try the joystick controls." Jeb slowly twisted the control column. "Yaw... okay. Pitch... okay. Roll... is a little sensitive." The capsule began to spin faster and faster as the stars began to blur outside. "I think we've got a stuck thruster!" It'll be okay, I'll survive this flight, I have to... A spontaneous burst from the pitch thruster started Jeb tumbling head over heels with the capsule falling over the ocean. As Jeb looked out the window he could see the edges start to glow with shock heating from the air in front of him. He had ten seconds, tops, before he was reduced to a puff of hypersonic smoke. His head was being whipped around- And then he heard Wernher's voice in his helmet. "Jeb. Listen to me. Don't talk. Just listen to me. Take your left and and turn the gauge, the control mode one, change it from 'Manual' to 'SAS'." "What's SAS?" Jeb yelled. "Sickness Avoidance System... more professionally known as the Stability Augmentation System. But you don't need your control movements augmented, do you? Anyway, just flip that switch." Jeb reached out, but the g-forces were really building. He missed on his first attempt and threw some circuit breakers- Probably nothing important- and then tried again. This time, he got a hold on it, but the spurious forces were about to throw his hand free. Jeb clamped down harder, digging in with the gecko-rubber, and depressed the switch. All at once the spinning stopped. The heat shield was facing down, and Jeb was pressed back into his couch. Keeping his eye on the altimeter, he rode the capsule down to five kilometers before overriding the parachute deployment to make the main chute come out early. Then, barely twelve minutes after leaving the cape, the Sparkler III splashed into the ocean like a ton of bricks and all of the reporters went home.

Chapter 12- Groundhog Day, But With Rockets The sun rose over the cape and the engineers gathered in an all-new, shiny control room with silver dials and gauges and microphones. The night before, they had put one of their rockets on a truck, drove it over to the pad, propped it up, and filled it with kerosene. "T-minus two minutes and counting." Jeb sat in his cockpit, calm and eager to get the launch started. With nothing better to do, he keyed his radio. "How's it going?" "Good," Bob replied. "The rocket still looks good and we've got about a minute and a half left on the clock... we're all waiting to see how this turns out. Good luck." Jeb nodded and resumed scanning his instruments, nodding to himself when everything seemed normal. Not normal, he reminded himself, nominal. I've gotten out of practice. Before he could keep thinking about how long it had been since he'd flown in space, the turbopumps on the Lithium I started up, sending a fine vibration through the rocket. Flame belched from the engine bell, and then all at once the black and white tube rose from the launchpad and began steering out over the ocean. Jeb was pushed back in his seat as he began a rapid ascent over the ocean. The sky turned to black outside. Inside mission control, Wernher studied the engine pressure gauges. "Looking good..." he murmured. "Wait... what's that?" All at once the needle spiked and the rocket disintegrated, spinning out of control for a brief moment before being torn apart in the slipstream. The escape tower, due to some flaw in its wiring, fired off the nose of the capsule without taking it along. The command pod did separate from the top of the Lithium but it was quickly struck by some debris, which tore through the hatch and pulverized the acceleration couch, reducing the pressure vessel to a twisted mess of metal which began a long, arcing fall into the sea with no hope of recovery. Gene shook his head. "I hoped it would have done better." The wreckage of the capsule slammed into the ocean without any parachutes trailing behind it. Wernher stood up and looked over his team. "I know this was a setback," he said, "but we can get past it. The escape tower issue seems simple enough, and the problem seems to be isolated with the engine. Valentina was flying chase for the rocket, but as soon as she lands she can help you all with the problem. It'll be all hands on deck-" "Hey," came a call from one of the chase planes. "If it's all hands on deck you'll want me, too." "...Oh, right. I forgot about you, Jeb." Jeb nodded and turned his K-37 jet back towards the space center. "I think the flaw was a surge of LOX sped up the turbopump too much... but we'll have to look at the data afterwords. I'll see you in the hangar twenty minutes from now." ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ After three days playing doctor with a rocket, the KSP engineer team brought out another Lithium to the pad. This one made it up to twenty-five kilometers before the engine mysteriously shut down, but the escape tower jerked the capsule free. It splashed down beneath nylon chutes, and Wernher led his team to make the final modifications to the liquid oxygen inlets. There were five Lithium boosters left, and Mortimer was eager to put them into widespread production after the kinks had been worked out. The capsule on the third rocket was also different- it had a small package of solid kicker motors under it; Gene called them firecrackers. Valentina, hearing that, decided to call the capsule Sparkler. Sparkler I lifted off with Bill and Bob flying chase with full afterburners for as long as they could keep up, until their engines stalled and they fell back into the troposphere and lined up for landing. Meanwhile, everybody in the control center watched tensely as the engines on the Lithium shut down and the capsule drifted free. A computer program, rudimentary by Valentina's futuristic standards, flipped the capsule a hundred and eighty degrees just as it passed seventy kilometers' altitude. Then the firecrackers went off and the Sparkler I began its fiery plunge into the ocean. The navy, who had offered to help out in exchange for three Lithiums courtesy of Kontinental Aerospace, had a small aircraft carrier there, and they hoisted the capsule aboard, scorched but intact. Everybody on the whole space coast cheered- with one exception. Jeb was too busy reading checklists for Sparkler II to even notice that the test flight had succeeded.

Chapter 11- Drawing Straws A few new buildings has sprouted up near the launchpad- a large hangar, a small shed with a radio, a more permanent mission control, and the very beginnings of a crew quarters. Gene was surprised when Mortimer had added the construction of the last building to the budget, asking why they couldn't use that money on more rockets. "Because," Mortimer explained, "if we're thinking long-term, the engineers will need a place to stay so they don't have to drive from Juno's Landing every day, and if we need more pilots they can stay there, too. At some point I also want a runway. As for the money, this research project seems surprisingly profitable and I expect that soon we can afford a state-of-the-art R&D department on-site." At this point Gene nodded, and speaking quietly, said, "Let's show him the hangar." Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val, Wernher, Gene, Sunny, and Mortimer walked inside Hangar 7 and were greeted by the small but enthusiastic team of engineers that had been supplied from the normal stock of Kontinental workers. "Hey, boss!" one of them shouted, and Jeb smiled. With the history of a century of spacefaring stored in his mind, he was confident that he didn't need a team of hundreds of engineers. Gene and Val and all of them preferred a small, close group of workers, but they knew that if they wanted to achieve their visions of spaceflight they would need lots of boosters and lots of manpower. Luckily, Mortimer had come to their rescue again. "The R&D team at the KSP can try new things," he explained, "like a new booster or a capsule, and then once they get good at it we can hand it over to the production lines at Kontinental Aerospace." Now the same R&D team was greeting him from inside Hangar 7, and around them were rockets. Sunny gasped. Mortimer grinned. "These seven Lithium rockets," Wernher explained, "are able to lift an improved Jumping Flea capsule to above seventy kilometers- the Karman line." Turning to face Sunny, he announced, "Within two months, kerbals will become an all new species, one that is capable of leaving the only planet it has ever known. The risks will be great, but not insurmountable. We have invited you here to witness the selection of the astronaut. Sunny? Are you ready?" Sunny nodded. "Have you got a camera? I want a picture with the article." Bob ran over to a shelf and returned with a camera and a spare flashbulb. Sunny snapped a few pictures of the rockets lying in the hangar and then turned back to the group. "Okay, ready." The engineers crowded around as Gene took a breath. "This drawing is for the pilot of the first astronaut. They will fly a ten-minute subortibal flight, up and straight back down. We have four pieces of paper. The one with the black dot represents the pilot. Then we take out one paper without the dot and the three other candidates draw; the winner of the second drawing is the backup. The backup pilot will fly the first orbital flight. Wernher?" Wernher brought over an army helmet with four folded scraps of paper. Jeb reached in, then Val, and then Bill and Bob. Jeb smiled, looked around at his crewmates, and then opened his paper. It was white through and through. All at once, everybody turned, and Valentina was holding her paper open, with a black dot marked in the center. She was grinning, Jeb was grinning, and everybody was smiling. Sunny took a picture, and Valentina spoke. "You know, all of this is really thanks to the engineers. They built the rockets, and I with we could take them with us into space." The head engineer spoke up. "We couldn't have done it without you, Val. I don't know how you did it, but whenever we had a problem you and Jeb and Bill and Bob would come right in and you just knew what to do, almost like you were from the future-" Jeb nearly passed out. "-and you already knew what we needed to do." Gene clapped and then cleared his throat. "We still need to choose the backup pilot. Jeb, Bill, Bob- ready?" They nodded and chose their papers. And it was there that Jeb opened his slip and saw a single black dot, marked with a heavy drafting pencil from Wernher's desk. Jeb smiled. "I do think that Valentina was the right choice for this flight... I know that she thinks an hour in the future, and I only think two minutes ahead. I solve problems as they come up, but she avoids them. And that is exactly why she is the right choice for the first-" "-orbital flight," Valentina interrupted. "Jeb is right. I am good at decision-making, but Jeb is good at solving problems. For a ten-minute flight, two minutes of foresight is just about right. There are lots of problems that might happen really fast, and I think Jeb is good at solving things like that. On the more leisurely pace of an orbital flight, decision-making is important, but for this first flight, problem-solving is what we need. For this reason, I would like to trade places with Jeb." Sunny took more pictures and ran off to the offices of the Juno Telegraph with her story. She painted a bright picture of a future full of exploration and told the story of the fearless pilots that would lead the expedition to the new horizon. Her word choice was exquisite, and she spent an entire paragraph describing a weightless astronaut peering out the window of their spacecraft at a Mun that was brighter and closer. Two days later, her story had been sold to every newspaper in the country, and the reporters swarmed on Juno's Landing. Jeb was on his way to the doctor's office for the first of many preflight physicals, but he had arrived in town early for lunch at the Route 77 Diner. He paid for his meal (he hated counting out money and dearly missed credit cards; maybe he would invent them in his spare time) and walked out the door, to be suddenly greeted by twenty reporters from all over the continent. They all had questions, but the one they asked most often was perhaps the dumbest one: "Are you Jeb Kerman? You're really him?"

I'd say that a good definition of a Kraken is an error that occurs when the game suddenly changes state- for example, after a quickload, savefile edit, or EVA, so by that definition I'd call this a Kraken.

This might be something else, as the "official" terminology of the Krakens is controlled by the Internet, so it's not very consistent. Compare to this great (read: scary) list of other krakens.

The kind of computers at my school can't handle that, so it goes in a spoiler.

Chapter 10- New Thriller Star Progress with the rocket testing was good, and it was measured in explosions. Bill tested out a new stretched version of the Trashcan, that Valentina called the Jumping Flea, and christened it the Hammer, because he "dropped a box of hammers on it by accident and it didn't break." All four members of the Kraken's Spit crew took a ride in it, and Mortimer realized that his startup program was even more profitable than he had thought. Even paying a team of twenty engineers to work on Wernher's newest project, just a few Hammer flights were enough to pay nearly a year's salary with prize money alone. "Where does it all come from?" Jeb muttered, surveying another briefcase full of cash. "Who pays for the Kerbin World-First Record-Keeping Society prize money?" "They sell the data to the Kuinness Book of World Records," Mortimer told him. "People go crazy for those books, even though it's pretty much the same every year. So they have some money to spare." However, the real money-maker for the KSP was a development of the Junkers Jello engine, which Mortimer had shown to the engineers at the Kontinental Motors division before yelling at them and giving them a deadline for the scaled-up version, which he called the Juno. This new engine had promise, so he quickly built an all-new, high-altitude, high-speed passenger jet, which he was eager to sell to Kontinental Airlines which, as the name implied, was also owned by Mortimer. When Kongress heard this, they were planning to, as they called it, "bust the trust." Even though no one knew what this meant, one of Mortimer's top executives ran a campaign and got elected, and vetoed the bill by sliding it underneath a desk, and just in time too, because the first airframe was ready for testing. "I don't like this suit," Jeb said. "Shut up," Valentina grunted. "I don't either, but this is what... ugh... commercial pilots wear." "Bill and Bob don't have to wear them." "They're flight engineers." "Hmm." Jeb looked around the cockpit. "Where's the stick?" "There isn't one, just a yoke." "What! Why did Mortimer put us in this thing?" Valentina shrugged. "You want to go to space, don't you? When Sunny gets to tell everybody that astronauts were flying the new jet, we'll be flooded with support." "Really?" Jeb's eyes widened and he started grinning. "Oh, no," Valentina said. "I know that grin." She keyed the intercom and said, "Jeb's grinning. Strap in." Bill and Bob looked at her from the jump seats in the back of the cockpit. "Why are you using that? We're right here." ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Jeb was still grinning as he brought down the gear for the final approach. Bob was more worried. "I think some people might think these new Junos are too fragile," he said. "What if they don't trust jet technology?" Valentina nodded. "They might think that this new plane isn't good enough- WHAT ARE YOU DOING, JEB?" "What does it look like I'm doing?" he asked. "I'm selling planes." "But you're selling them upside-down?" "Not just upside-down," Jeb replied. "The rudder is also extended all the way to the right." "So it's a barrel roll. Much better." Jeb came out of the roll and pulled up hard on the stick. "How's our glideslope?" "Perfect, somehow," Bill said. "Good. How's our intercept on ILS?" "Looks like the roll pushed us back on course... even though we were already on it beforehand." "Okay. Preflare... radar altimeter?" "Fifty," Valentina called, "forty, thirty, twenty, ten, five... touchdown." "Reverse thrust, spoilers out." "Main gear coming down... touchdown." "Full brakes... slowing down... and we're stopped." Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val were still used to all of the extensive postlanding checklists of a spacecraft, so they were pleased when a staircase was rolled up and the met Mortimer at the bottom in just a few minutes. He looked at Jeb. "Well, it worked," he said. "Trans-Pam Airlines put in forty orders after your stunt, and Kerbfleet United and Dispirit Airlines were trying to take each other's places in line. But I have one request, Jeb." "What?" "The next time you try something like that, tell me so I can have an ambulance waiting!"

They're harmless, they just smell like vinegar. Also, it's vinegaroon, with an "n".

†

No, those are what the websites call themselves. Every single one of them has had some error with Flash that was ultimately resolved by trying again in some other browser. That wasn't really so bad... in fact, our class pet the vinegaroon was pretty fun. Less so was the day when he showed us the dead bird that he kept in his freezer. The worst part was when we spent a month drawing a single Goliath beetle (we had to show the shading from the picture even though we were only allowed to work in ink), so we had to learn about Animalia in all of two weeks- I remember the lesson on fish being conducted during the second half of the Tuesday before school ended. We might have got a little more done if he hadn't chosen to spend one day before spring break singing a song that he'd written himself about getting sunburned the Mississippi River Valley.

My science teacher often takes us to ancient "interactive cyber-sites" from 2002 to supplement out lessons. Today the URL took us to a Discovery Channel volcano simulator that "required Adobe Flash Player." Okay... I don't see any prompt to enable Flash... maybe I can use the taskbar to figure this out? Two minutes later I'm on Microsoft Edge (ugh) trying again, because Flash is "bundled with Edge" which is, of course, bundled with Windows 10, which is irreverent, because I already have Flash installed. Microsoft Edge recommends using nonexistent symbols in the right-hand corners to enable Flash... and then I right-click there, scroll down, and see this button: "Open in Internet Explorer" I can't be that desperate, right? I didn't know that Explorer was even bundled in Windows 10. Thirty seconds later I open IE for the first time in four years, and Norton immediately opens my password manager twice. I move my mouse up to the (ugly, obsolete) search bar and enter the URL... and it works! I see a eleven-year old animation of a stratovolcano eruption. So, moral of the story: Any day after March 2014 that starts off with you opening Internet Explorer is not a good one. My science teacher from last year has a twenty year-old laptop with Windows 98 (I hope) that he keeps around just so he could keep a bird database on abandonware. The problem was, it would occasionally crash during the bird identification test... in which case the entire class would have to take it again the next day. I'm not sure the laptop could even operate without a power and internet cord attached, it was so old. In addition, the teacher (who once felt sorry for a yellow jacket because it died after stinging him next to the eye) would use his new laptop to sing along to Hall & Oates in class. He was bitten by several cottonmouths (but not the rattlesnakes that live around here) and once brought a skink to class which bit the snake that he had also brought in addition to biting his finger.

We're all out of flour tortillas; you'll have to eat corn.

Throwback Friday!

Chapter 9- I'm Fixing a Plot Hole in the Roof Where the Rain Gets In The old fishing trawler dashed across the ocean with surprising speed towards the Jumping Flea, bearing for the small orange signal flag that in retrospect was rather redundant for locating the capsule compared to the massive parachute lying deflated next to the capsule. Bob had cut it loose, but it still hadn't floated away. Gene grasped the tiller and pulled up alongside the capsule. "Jeb, Valentina," he ordered. "Deploy a raft and get the flotation collar around it." They nodded and went back to the crate full of their recovery supplies, including the store-bought raft and airbags for the capsule. Then they opened a different crate, put on wetsuits, and donned flippers before jumping backwards off the bow into the crystal ocean. It had been decades since Jeb or Val had been swimming, and for a few panicked seconds they found that they didn't remember how. Then they recalled some faint memories from their childhood and, graceful as any seal or dolphin, cut through the water. Jeb smiled for a minute as he thought how they were essentially surrounded by the combined ingredients of rocket fuel, and then he was upon the capsule, shepherding the flotation collar into place as Val came up from behind, towing the raft. She held it steady as Jeb got in and knocked on the capsule's hatch: Shave and a haircut- Three cents, came Bob's reply, drummed on the inside of the pressure vessel. Jeb turned and smiled at Valentina before returning his attention to the hatch. He grasped the handle firmly with two hands and pulled it out of its recess in the door. Flexing with all of his might, he turned the stubborn latch through its full clockwise rotation before remembering that he had to turn the other way to open it. With less resistance, it turned, and all at once swung open. Bob poked his head out, banging his helmet on the frame. He said something, paused, and then opened his faceplate before trying again. "I've never been more glad to see you," he said. Jeb grinned. "That's a little ungrateful, considering you didn't say that after I came back from being stranded on Eve." "What did I miss?" Valentina asked, swimming around to the side of the raft. "Hey, Bob. Want some water?" She passed him a bottle from the side of the raft. Bob twisted the top off and drank heartily. "It wasn't space, but I think we're all going to go back pretty soon." Jeb helped him into the raft, which Valentina towed back to the fishing boat, where Bob was congratulated heartily. Then Gene turned the ship, and Wernher put his fishing skills to good use to snag the Jumping Flea on the trawler's old hook for the fishing net. Everybody was sill in a jovial mood on the trip back to shore, except for Bill, who distracted himself with some maintenance on one of the boat's engines. Valentina suggested that the engines should be stopped before Bill worked on them, but he just insisted that he was doing purely cosmetic work even though Val could see a shuddering mass of gears gyrating just millimeters from Bill's hand. Then they all pulled into dock and met Mortimer and Sunny, who had stayed onshore (there was room in the boat for them both, but Mortimer was worried he'd be seasick and Sunny wanted to get a journalistic view from the beach as well as keep Mortimer company). "A toast," Wernher announced, "to our intrepid explorer!" Then he realized that there was nothing to toast with. "Come on, let's go into town and get something to eat." Half an hour later they were all sitting at a table at the Route 77 Diner and Cafe. "I'm starving," Bob said. "I could eat-" The waitress came up. "What can I get for you all?" she said. "Four fried chickens and a Coke," Bob finished, before realizing that the waitress might think that was his order. "Sorry... I mean, dry white bread, toasted- no, I mean, uh, the scrambled egg of a dodo. No, that's not it either... I'll just have, uh..." "I'll have the Bloated Burger," Valentina said. "Rare." "Yeah, uh, me too," Bob said. It was only after everybody had ordered Bloated Burgers all around that Bob thought to ask the obvious question. "Say, what's on the Bloated Burger?" Jeb shrugged. "The menu said green chile, bacon, Canadian bacon, an extra patty, barbecue sauce, red chile, an extra patty, cheddar cheese, lettuce, pickle, an extra patty, swiss cheese, avocado, an extra patty, a fried egg, mustard and an extra patty." "What..." Jeb was grinning. "It comes with a large fries!" "He's just kidding," Valentina said. "There is only one extra patty." "That's good," Bob replied. "Wait, that means it really has all that other stuff?" Jeb nodded. "Whatever," Bob said. "But wait... how much does all that cost?" "It's not to worry," Mortimer said. "I'm paying, remember?" "Oh," Bob said. "Yeah."

272 (b): Nonchalantly changing "Multiplayer in Version 1.4?" to "Multiplayer in Version 1.5?" after another version drops without multiplayer.

That font... that size... that color... That is why this thread will be "locked" soon.

New York, New York

271: Praising/Criticizing SLS/BFR 272: Hey, I have a solution to multiplayer! 273: No, seriously! I stole someone else's idea and ignored all of the problems that were pointed out by the yelling people in that thread! 274: Posting this in Challenges & Mission Ideas: "so i have this mun rocket and its crashing into the moon every time going really fast sideways can anyone land this please halp" 275: Using this font size: I think the white on the new textures is a little off, what about you?