jimmymcgoochie

If you’re talking about Jedediah in that last chapter, that’s deliberate. Jebediah is currently hurtling towards Duna aboard the Trailblazer.

At last, I've hammered this chapter into something resembling a finished state. Hopefully the next few will happen with a slightly shorter delay! Chapter 14 – On a knife-edge Ominous dark thunderclouds towered menacingly in the sky to the east of Yeager Space Complex, their tops painted red with the last rays of the setting sun. The Kestrel bumped and juddered through thermals and turbulence as it made its approach from the west before landing and taxiing to the main hangar building on the base. As they disembarked from the plane, all eyes were drawn towards a cluster of floodlights surrounding a large low-loader truck with the prototype shuttle strapped to the back, covered by tarpaulins. Two Kerbals were waiting at the edge of the aircraft apron: Joeny, the YSC’s head of operations, and Jedediah, the base’s lead engineer. “Director Gene,” Jedediah spoke first, “you’ll be glad to hear we’ve recovered the flight data recorders from the shuttle and-“ “Jed, no offence, but right now I couldn’t care less.” Gene cut him off mid-sentence. “Joeny, get us transport to wherever they’ve taken Val and Tina and get me in touch with whoever is in charge of their care.” “Gene, I really need to show you-“ Jedediah tried again, holding out a piece of paper with a graph printed on it, but once again Gene cut him off. “Not now, Jed. Joeny, have you heard anything about the debris coming down from orbit?” “We’ve had reports of something coming down out to sea, about a hundred klicks east of us, but nobody’s going looking for it in that storm. We also have a confirmed location for the Firebird’s engines- they’re on an uninhabited island off the west coast and a scout team confirmed no radiation leaks before securing them in place and clearing out before the weather closed in.” “Gene-” “Not now, Jed!” “But-” “I’ll deal with this,” Wernher intervened before Jed talked his way into a punch in the face. Joeny started making some phone calls, leaving the rest of them to stand around until something happened. Gene made a quick call of his own to Walt, just to let him know that they’d arrived. Instead he was put on speakerphone with Walt, Bobak and Jayson who were all clamouring for answers. “What should we tell Trailblazer?” Bobak asked. “They know something’s going on but as far as we know, they don’t know what yet.” Gene thought for a moment, then looked at Natalia, then said: “Tell them everything we know, leave no details out, but lock out the flight controls before you do it; they’re still close enough that they could turn around and come back and I’m pretty sure at least three of them would be willing to try it.” “I can’t think of anyone on that ship who wouldn’t be willing to try it,” replied Jayson. “What about everyone down here, though? How much should we tell them?” “As little as possible. We can’t afford any leaks at a time like this, there’s too much at stake.” Joeny was looking at him as if she had something to say, so he ended the call. “We can take you over there by road, but things are getting dicey out there- there are protesters outside the gates and more gathering outside the hospital, plus you’ll be heading right into rush hour traffic.” Joeny said. “Can’t we fly over there instead?” Gene asked. “I called the hospital but they said we can’t use their helipad, it’s for medical emergencies only, and there’s nowhere else to land within ten kilometres of the hospital so you wouldn’t be any better off. It’ll probably be an hour’s drive to the hospital-” “It can’t be!” Wernher interrupted their conversation. “No, really, the traffic is going to be really bad-“ “What? I was talking to Jed. There’s just no way that this data is right.” “The shuttle’s onboard telemetry, the biometrics in both suits and the tracking data all concur.” Jed replied, slightly defensively; that tends to happen when one of the world’s top scientists questions your data. “Peak deceleration during re-entry was negative four point six three gravities.” “Four and a half negative gees!? That’s impossible!” Exclaimed Natalia in horror. “Is that bad?” Martin asked. “Negative gees are extremely dangerous- all the blood gets pushed to your head and you can burst blood vessels in your brain.” Gene replied. “The last person who pulled more than -3g was Eugen van der Kerman over forty years ago,” Jed chipped in. “And what happened to him?” Jeanette asked. “Um, well, he sort of, um, died…” “Those spacesuits are designed to help you resist G-forces though, right?” Martin asked as Jed tried to sidestep behind Joeny, fleeing from the multiple death glares being aimed in his direction. “Positive gees, yes; negative gees, not so much: there’s only so much you can do to restrict the blood flow to someone’s brain without that becoming a problem of its own. The best they can do is about a 20-25% reduction, which would take them down from 4.6 to 3.6- which is still bad, but any reduction is a good thing.” Two cars with Space Program livery pulled up at the edge of the aircraft apron and Joeny ushered everyone towards them, except for Wernher. “I’ll stay here and go over the shuttle and its telemetry with Jed; if I find anything that seems important for the doctors to know, I’ll give you a call.” Gene nodded to him as he climbed into the first car with Natalia, while Jeanette, Martin and Sasha took the second. The trip from YSC to the nearby city of Tenbridge (which actually had eleven bridges) took just under an hour, the pair of cars battling through a crowd at the gates of the YSC, heavy traffic on the roads to and in the city itself and an even larger crowd outside Northill Hospital (which was neither in the north of the city nor on a hill) comprised of camera crews from every news outlet imaginable, a great variety of protesters with a bewildering array of signs and placards, and plenty of confused commuters caught up in the chaos. The crowd pushed closer to the little convoy as they tried to reach the entrance, but two lines of police and hastily set up metal fences at the sides of the road kept them from surrounding the cars. Flashes from cameras and smartphones alike went off all around like a pyrotechnic display and one overenthusiastic photographer tried to lean over the fence to press his lens against one car’s window, hoping to get pictures through the tinted glass, but instead ended up dropping his camera under the car’s wheels where it was promptly reduced to a small pile of splintered plastic and shattered electronics. Armed police checked their credentials before letting them in the main entrance. Once inside they had to go through metal detectors and their bags were searched, even going as far as taking Sasha out her carry chair- she immediately woke up and started wailing her displeasure- to check nothing was concealed underneath her. They were met by a flustered looking doctor who introduced himself as Dr Philbo Kerman IV and hurried them to a waiting elevator, where a second doctor was waiting. “Who of you are here for Valentina and who for Martina? They’re both on different floors right now so if you’re here for Valentina then get off at floor 4 and my colleague Davlos here will give you all the information we have.” When they reached level 4, Gene and Natalia followed Dr Davlos down a corridor that was signposted “OR 1-6” while Tina’s parents stayed with Dr Philbo and headed up to the ICU on level 7. “Before you see her, I have to warn you that what you’re going to see will come as a shock to you.” Not words that either of them wanted to hear. “Tina’s condition currently stable, but very serious: we’ve had to put her in an induced coma; she almost drowned in sea water and we’ve put her on an ECMO machine to oxygenate her blood while we try to clear her lungs before inflammation or infection takes hold; she has second and some third degree burns on her head and the backs of her hands and forearms; there is substantial damage to her left eye and some damage to her right eye; we’ve already stopped seven aneurysms in her brain and are constantly monitoring in case any more blood vessels burst. It will be a few days before we start thinking about waking her up, and it could be munths or even years before the full extent of any neurological damage becomes fully apparent.” Martin and Jeanette stood silently, trying to process what they had just been told. “If you’re ready, I can take you to her now.” They approached the room with some trepidation but weren’t allowed in- they had to look in through a window, which was completely opaque when they arrived but turned transparent at the flick of a switch, and then they saw her. Surrounded by machines and monitors that provided a continuous background of hums and whirs, beeps and hisses; covered by tubes and pipes, wires and cables; her entire head covered in bandages with wires sprouting out across her scalp and converging like a technicolour ponytail at the back. Surrounded by all that, she just looked so… small. It was a shocking sight, one which Jeanette couldn’t bear to look at for more than a second before turning away and bumping Sasha’s carry seat, which woke her up again and provided a welcome distraction. “Are you Tina’s parents?” They turned to find a second doctor with a medical chart in her hands. “I’m Dr Wenlan, the neurologist assigned to Tina’s case. We’ve just received the full results of her MRI scans and there’s something I need to discuss with you.” They followed her into a small consultation room at the end of the corridor. “One of the neurosurgeons here has been pioneering a new stem cell treatment for neurological damage caused by strokes and brain haemorrhages and after looking over Tina’s case he thinks he may be able to help. By taking existing neural stem cells from here-“ she pointed at a small smudge on the MRI scan- “and injecting them into the sites where the damage is greatest, we believe that Tina’s prognosis can be greatly improved. However, I do have to stress that this doesn’t guarantee that she will recover and the procedure itself carries significant risks-“ “Do it.” Jeanette interrupted her. “Don’t you think we should talk about this first?” Martin asked. “Did you ever meet my aunt Sally?” “I don’t think so?” “She was amazing: never stayed still, always doing three or four things at once, had a laugh that could rattle the windows and a smile so big it was like her whole head was splitting in half. She never let anything slow her down- not breaking her hip, not lung cancer, not even when uncle Jim died- until she had a massive stroke and ended up paralysed on the left side of her body. It affected her mind too, but not nearly as much as suddenly being completely dependent on other people to do the most trivial of things like washing or dressing herself. She used to make the most incredible traybakes, but she was left having to eat liquidised food because she couldn’t chew or swallow properly. To see someone so strong and independent so utterly broken like that was heart-breaking. There were times when we saw little glimmers of the old Aunt Sally, but that just made the bad times seem worse. Both my brothers couldn’t bear to see her like that and they stopped visiting her. She survived for nearly two years before she had the second stroke; when the paramedics arrived all she kept saying was ‘Let me die’, and the next day she did. If there’s any chance, no matter how small or how dangerous, that we can spare Tina that same fate, I’ll take it. Without hesitation.” The room was silent for several seconds before Dr Wenlan cleared her throat loudly. “I’ll go over and tell them to start preparing.” She said a bit too quickly, then almost ran out of the room. “You scare me sometimes, Jean.” Martin said quietly. “It was just seeing her like that, it reminded me of the day she was born. She was so small and so weak that they didn’t think she’d last the night, but she pulled through then and she’ll do it again now.” Sasha’s stomach rumbled loudly and she began whimpering. Martin swooped in and picked up the carry seat before Jeanette could. “I’ll deal with her and try to chase up some food for us too. Cup of tea and a biscuit?” “Yes please.” He headed off down the corridor and disappeared around a corner. Jeanette walked slowly in the other direction, back towards Tina’s room. She stood outside the window for some time before pressing the button to make it see-through, then willed herself to look through it. Silence stretched out for what felt like hours before she pressed the intercom button and spoke quietly. “I don’t know if you can hear me, Tina, but if you can, just know that I will never give up on you. I’ve been fighting for you since before you were born, through every triumph and every tragedy, and I’m not about to stop now. You’ve been through so much already and maybe you feel like giving up; well don’t you dare give up now, Martina Dorothy Kerman- you’re stronger than you think and I know you can get through this too. Stay strong, my little miracle.” She didn’t notice it, but one of the numbers on the EEG nudged ever so slightly higher. *** There was more bad news in store downstairs as Davlos explained Val’s condition to Gene and Natalia. “In a way, it’s a good thing that her oxygen ran out; because of that her metabolism was already slowing down before she ended up in the water, so she didn’t breathe in much water. Unfortunately, that’s the only good news I have: almost every internal organ was damaged by what looks like severe crushing injuries, the most significant of those being her liver, kidneys, spleen and pancreas; she’s continuing to bleed internally despite our best efforts to find and stop them; we’ve replaced her blood volume twice and are continuing to give her an artificial blood substitute because the blood bank is running out; her pelvis is shattered and three vertebrae are broken in her spine, most likely with significant damage to her spinal cord.” All three of them knew that last point was the death knell of Val’s career in space- and with it her lifelong dream of walking on Duna. “We won’t know the full extent of the damage until she wakes up, but the neurologist assigned to her case says it’s unlikely that Val will ever be able to stand again, much less walk.” Gene pulled out his huge brick of a phone and began dialling a number, but was stopped by a horrified Davlos. “You can’t use that thing here! It’ll wreak havoc with all the equipment and monitors!” Gene gave him a withering glare. “If it’s that bad, why does the entire hospital have a wi-fi network?” Davlos had no answer to that. He continued dialling and called Joeny back at the YSC. “Joeny? It’s Gene. Get anyone who’s blood type O-negative to Northill Hospital as soon as possible, we need more blood.” “I’ve already got a list together, so we’ll be leaving imminently.” “How many people do you have on that list?” “Right now, forty, but we can call in over twice that number if we have to; we’ve also got some blood reserves in storage in the medical centre here that we can send to you by air if we can access the hospital’s helipad.” “Nice work. Gene out.” He ended the call. “Doctor, can you arrange clearance for a private aircraft to access the helipad? I’ve got some fresh blood and a lot of willing donors to top up your blood bank ready to fly in if they can use it.” “I certainly can! But how big is this helicopter? The pad is rated for 12 tons.” “Hmm, I didn’t think of that.” He redialled Joeny’s number and she picked up after the first ring. “What kind of aircraft are you planning to send here? The pad is rated for 12 tons.” “Shouldn’t be a problem, we’ve got two Gyrfalcon-class rotorcraft which are nine tons each with a capacity of six each. I’ll send the blood in the Blue Jay, it’s a lot faster, then everyone else will travel in by road. Assuming they can get through the angry mob outside the gates, that is.” Gene relayed the information to Davlos, who in turn passed it on to the team in charge of the helipad. Just as he finished, his pager went off with an update from the OR. “I can take you through to see Valentina now; she’s still in surgery and you won’t be allowed into the OR, but you can watch from the observation room.” They headed to the observation room and both Gene and Dr Davlos went in, but Natalia stayed back, waiting to gauge Gene’s reaction before going in herself. After a long silence, he turned to her. “I don’t think you want to see her like this; it would be better for you to remember her as she was.” “I have to know. Maybe I’ll hate myself for doing it, but I have to know.” She ventured forwards to the window and the first thing she noticed was a metal bowl with a kidney in it; or at least, something that had once been, and was still vaguely recognisable as, a kidney. Her face went incredibly pale and Davlos just managed to catch her as she fainted. “Keep her legs elevated, I’ll find a bed for her.” Davlos headed out, returning within a minute with a wheeled hospital bed and an orderly who lifted Nat up onto the bed without any apparent effort. Something pinged on the floor and Davlos spotted something shiny rolling across the floor- and immediately stepped on it to stop it rolling under a chair. Davlos’ eyes widened in horror when he held up the now square-shaped ring. “I am so, so sorry about that.” “It was already like that,” Gene reassured him. “It’s not the first time that’s happened today.” Davlos made an attempt to fix the ring’s shape, but his attention quickly changed when he saw the words engraved on the inside surface. He looked towards the door as Nat was wheeled out, then down towards Val in the OR below, then handed the ring to Gene. “Might want to keep that quiet, otherwise things could get all kinds of ugly around here.” “What’s that supposed to mean?” Gene immediately challenged him. “Politics.” “Politics?” Davlos smiled wanly. “It’s election season here in Estovus- has been for nearly a year now- and it’s the most bitter and acrimonious contest in decades: the left have moved further left, the right have gone further right and they’re both fanning the flames to make their supporters hate each other; misinformation is everywhere and nobody wants to deal with it for fear of being accused of bias; so far there have been six political rallies cancelled by bomb threats, two campaign buses set on fire and one political campaigner is in this very ward right now under continuous armed guard after being run over by a car in a politically motivated hit and run. It won’t stop after the votes are tallied either- the incumbent, Governor Dilgas, has already started filing legal challenges before the polls have even opened and his predecessor and challenger, former Governor Romana, has spent the last week making accusations that Dilgas is trying to rig the election in his favour by changing the voting system mere days before the votes are supposed to be cast. Unfortunately you’re stuck between the two- Romana’s lot hate the Space Program as a hideous waste of time and money that could be better used solving problems on the ground, but Dilgas’ lot hate the Unification and everything associated with it- including the Space Program and equal rights legislation- and he’s promised that if he wins, he’ll pull Estovus out of the Union entirely.” Gene paled slightly at that last revelation. The Unification was the landmark event of the last century, bringing the entire world back from the brink of an almost inevitable nuclear war that could have ended civilisation. To even consider going back to that world was unthinkable, but support for the Unification had been waning for years as memories of the pre-Unity chaos faded and a worldwide surge in nationalist views had made the unthinkable not only thinkable, but popular. If Dilgas really did repeal the Unification Treaty and send Estovus off on its own path, other Regions would inevitably follow and the whole system would come crashing down- closely followed by the Space Program itself as its funding evaporated. “Dilgas has spent his entire tenure so far railing against anything related to the Unification, but the Equal Rights Act is his biggest target; his supporters are the biggest bunch of sexist, homophobic, xenophobic bigots you’ll ever come across so they cheer him on every time he does it. If they found out Valentina Kerman- probably the biggest symbol of the Unification and everything it stands for- had the audacity to pledge her affections to another woman… They’d tear the whole hospital apart trying to find her, and when they did, they’d tear her apart, and Natalia, and young Tina upstairs, and you, and anyone else they didn’t like the look of or tried to stop them. Estovus is this close-” he held his fingers a mere centimetre apart- “to a full-blown civil war and this could well set the whole thing off.” A minor commotion drew their attention as Natalia emerged from a room further down the hallway, ignoring the protests of a junior doctor. “I’m fine,” she snapped at him without looking back, “I don’t need some teenager with a stethoscope telling me what I should do.” She made a beeline for Davlos, who took a half step backwards as she approached and fixed him with a slightly less severe scowl. “What’s our next move?” “For now, we wait.” “Bah, I knew you’d say that.” Nat started pacing back and forth across the corridor. “I can’t stand this standing around waiting, I need to do something. You said you need more blood? Take mine, we’re the same type.” “Nat, we can’t do that,” Gene said softly. “Why not?” She challenged him. “My blood is as good as anyone else’s.” “You know why…” Nat looked like she was going to argue the point further, then remembered what he meant, let out a frustrated sigh and returned to pacing. “There must be something we can do for her.” “Anything that can be done is already being done. She’s in the care of the best trauma surgeons in Estovus.” She continued pacing, growing more and more agitated with each passing second until, for the third time that minute: “I have to do something! I have to do something, I can’t, just…” She suddenly turned and unleashed deafening cry half way between a shout and a scream, accompanied by a powerful kick to the nearest chair, lifting it almost a metre in the air and cracking the plastic seat base almost completely in half. She snatched the chair out of the air and hurled it down the corridor where the now terrified junior doctor was forced to scurry out of its path, then just stood, hands tightly clenched into fists, her whole body trembling with tension. Davlos just stood, mouth hanging open in shock, but Gene approached, put his arm around her shoulder and gently guided her back to her room, then just waited. He had had more than his share of dealing with distraught relatives both in his time as Director of Operations and as a mission controller during the old pre-Unification Space Race: he had watched two friends strap into the Horizon Chaser and the Sunrise Seeker only to vanish in enormous fireballs when they became the second and sixth failed orbit attempts during the Space Race, then had to deal with the grieving families who had just watched their loved ones incinerated in full view of the entire world; he had walked among the smouldering wreckage of Woomerang after the catastrophic fuel fire that had ravaged the complex for two whole days, impervious even to thousands of tons of fire-retardant foam dropped by air, where dozens had perished in the inferno, then stood at the memorial services and funerals repeating the same useless ‘sorry for your loss’ to the victims’ husbands and wives, children and parents; had dealt with the relatives of every victim of every incident in his tenure as Director, from plane crashes to industrial accidents to an employee walking off the VAB roof after losing their job minutes earlier. Now all he had to do was sit in silence as Nat sat or lay on the bed, only her ragged breathing indicating anything was wrong, as her emotions boiled over. There was no wailing or screaming, no pounding the walls or disassembling the furniture, just a deep silence as the tension slowly seeped out of her body over the course of several hours. That gave him time to try and process his own emotions, which were bubbling just under the surface. He could still remember the first time he saw the young Valentina, just stepped off the bus with nothing but the change from the bus fare, the clothes she was wearing and a dream of one day flying in space. He had immediately taken a liking to the timid but talented girl and had watched with almost fatherly pride as she outperformed cocky young Jeb, wiping his usual smug smirk off his face in the process, then overcome her inherent shyness to start tutoring the other Cadets when they were struggling. And then there was that infamous day, when the rivalry (if such a thing can be so obviously one-sided) between Jeb and Val had come to a head: trying to rattle his usually calm rival, Jeb had flown recklessly close only to be caught by a rogue gust of wind and the two planes collided, with both suffering critical damage- Jeb’s jet lost half its right wing while Val lost her tail and one elevator. To everyone’s disbelief, most of all Jeb’s, Valentina had wrestled her wounded plane back into proximity with Jeb’s and managed to crash the two planes together again in such a way that they were able to stay airborne and limp back to the runway, but only by working as a team and co-ordinating their movements. Nobody could understand how Val had done it: the simulators said neither plane was airworthy after the first crash, that the second collision would be impossible to predict, much less plan and execute, much less plan and execute with a crippled plane and almost no control- but all she could say was that she had seen the whole thing clearly in her mind as soon as the collision happened. It was only after the planes had landed that Jeb noticed the edge of his front canard, torn and jagged from the first collision, had been pressing directly against Val’s neck after she joined their planes together and was mere millimetres away from severing her karotid artery. That experience had a profound effect on Jeb- although his behaviour barely changed in public, behind closed doors he became the ultimate team player, an exceptional commander who could get the best from any mission crew, which in turn led to him being chosen to both command the mission to, and be the first to set foot on, the Mun. For nearly seventeen years Val had been a public face of the Space Program, simultaneously tackling the accusations of sexism in the Kerbonaut Corps (which had stubbornly stayed male-dominated despite several initiatives to the contrary) and the suggestions that space travel should wholly and solely be the domain of men. Seventeen years of flying more missions, longer missions, more challenging missions; piloting the orbiters on two Mun landings before leading the final landing herself, then commanding the first landing on Minmus and a further two orbiters after that; flying on every Dynawing ever made- Dynamic, Daring, Discovery and, yes, Dauntless- a record that nobody else had could ever claim since Dynamic crashed twelve years earlier and- It hit him like a freight train. Great, choking sobs wracked his whole body, his attempts to contain them only making them louder as they burst forth, each one like a thunderclap in the enclosed space. Three more names etched into the memorial pod outside the VAB: Gerzer, Miltrey, Billy-Bobrim. All under thirty years old, all with families and friends left behind to somehow try and carry on. And Valentina. Deep down, Gene knew. Knew that there was no hope, that no matter how good the doctors were or how advanced their treatments and techniques, they couldn’t save her. Knew that his last conversation with her before the mission, where she told him this flight would be her last, had become horrifyingly prophetic. Knew that the plans for her to become the permanent head of the Astronaut Corps, overseeing training and recruitment, as well as leading the outreach programme, were now worthless. Knew that young Tina, whose life now balanced on a knife-edge, whose first flight into space would now certainly be her last, would never recover. Knew that she would never stop blaming herself for failing to save her lifelong hero, when the mission was doomed from the moment it was conceived and she was completely unprepared and untrained to do it- but had very nearly succeeded nonetheless. Knew that her life, too, was effectively over- he hadn’t heard all the details, but the damage to her eyes alone would be more than enough to prevent her ever flying to space again, and having a lifelong dream shattered like that would probably break her. If the negative G-forces hadn’t done that already. And most of all, he knew that it was all his fault. He chose Val for that mission, a chance for three relatively inexperienced Kerbonauts to learn from the expert, to give Val one last orbital flight almost as a consolation prize for not going to Duna as planned, to recycle the old KST with a new mission and balance up the Kopernicus expedition after one probe was damaged by- of all things- a micrometeor strike. Now the miraculous life growing in Natalia’s belly would never meet its true mother; now young Sasha would grow up without her big sister and would soon forget she ever had one. All. His. Fault. NO. The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. You are not to blame for this, Eugene Kerman, but someone is. Find them. Leave no stone unturned, pursue every lead. FIND THEM. He sat upright with a startled yelp, but Natalia barely stirred from her slumber. When did she fall asleep? She was still awake the last time he looked and that was only a few minutes- The clock on the wall read quarter to three. Quarter to three!? He’d been asleep for nearly four hours! Already the strange dream (was it even a dream?) was fading, but the dull ache in his chest had changed to a cold, hard fury. Not his fault. He hadn’t fired that rocket at the Dauntless, but someone, somewhere, had. Someone had murdered three of his Kerbonauts and one former instructor turned corporate test pilot and left a close friend and a young Cadet fighting for their lives. Someone was to blame for this, and Gene was going to find out who it was. Even if it killed him. Or them. Or both. He stood up, the broken, haunted look gone from his face and an expression of steely determination in its place, squared his shoulders and moved to open the door- Which opened a split second before he reached it, jarring his knuckles and sending strange sensations shooting up his arm. Dr Davlos was on the other side of the door and apologised profusely when he realised what had happened. “I have good news and bad news.” He noticed Gene’s alarmed expression and quickly continued: “The good news is Valentina is out of surgery, the surgeons believe they’ve stopped the bleeding and identified most of the damage so they can come up with a plan for moving forward; for now she’s been moved to intensive care so we can monitor her condition round the clock.” Gene moved to the bed to try and wake Natalia. He put one hand on her shoulder and gently shook her. “Nat, wake up.” Nat half-opened one eye, looked at him for a second, closed the eye again- then both eyes snapped open and she nearly catapulted herself right off the bed. “ВЯЕZНЙЕVS ТФЕИДILS don’t scare me like that!” Gene wasn’t sure what a ВЯЕZНЙЕV was, or even if it was a noun or a verb, and he didn’t particularly want to know either. Davlos just stood, mouth agape, before recovering and repeating his news. “And the bad news?” Gene asked. “Governor Dilgas just arrived outside the main entrance and is about to head up to the ICU,” said Davlos, and was immediately bounced against the door twice as first Natalia then Gene charged out the room and towards the stairs. “Wait!” He wheezed at their rapidly receding backs. “I wasn’t…” He headed towards the stairs too, occasionally coughing or wheezing as he tried to get air back into his lungs after taking two successive elbows in his midriff. Nat and Gene flew up the stairs two or even three at a time, burst through the doors on level 7 straight into the first rays of the rising sun, charged down the corridor while trying to blink the floating spots out of their eyes and hurtled through the main reception of the ICU, only to skid to a screeching halt- literally, the floor had just been cleaned and was still damp- in front of two absolutely enormous armed security guards who blocked the doorway towards the ICU rooms. “You’re not allowed in,” said Guard 1. “Nobody is allowed in,” said Guard 2. “Governor’s orders.” An obnoxiously loud BING-BONG announced the arrival of an elevator full of six Governor’s Guard Service agents in matching black suits and dark sunglasses, followed by Governor Dilgas himself flanked by another two GGS agents. The two guards stood up straighter when he appeared, producing two soft cracks as they put matching dents in the ceiling tiles. “Governor Dilgas, sir.” Said Guard 1. “We have secured the area as requested, sir.” Said Guard 2. “Excellent work. I’ll make sure your supervisor hears of this. That will be all.” The two guards attempted to salute but only succeeded at smacking each other in the face. They stood for a moment, blinking, then walked unsteadily towards the open elevator doors and disappeared as they closed. Dr Davlos finally caught up with them, thoroughly winded. Dilgas immediately turned his attention on him. “You are the doctor in charge of Valentina’s care?” “Yes,” Davlos wheezed. “I’ll be taking full control over Valentina’s care. Any decisions that need to be made, will be made by me and only me.” He aimed a contemptuous look at Gene and Nat. “You have neither the right nor the authority to do so,” Gene retorted. “Oh, but I do.” Dilgas snapped his fingers and a GSS agent produced a brown envelope from inside his suit jacket, handing it to Davlos who opened it and read the piece of paper inside it. “By order of Justice Arnold Kerman, Estovus Supreme Court, and in accordance with the relevant laws, Governor Dilgas Leslie Kerman-“ someone sniggered in the background- “is granted full and overriding power to determine any and all medical decisions for the treatment and care of one Valentina Anastasia Kerman, on the grounds that he is-“ Davlos choked, eyes bulging at the words on the page, then continued with a strain in his voice: “-her lawfully wedded husband.” Chapter 15

What's the point in using an engine failure mod, if any time an engine fails in a mission-critical way you just revert the flight and start again? No more of that nonsense! Which is why Orange Saucer 2 was an unmitigated failure: Losing that booster was annoying, but not catastrophic, until: Engine go boom. Second stage engine fail to ignite. Probe not go to Venus. A few easy contract sats later and another Orange-series mission launched, this time to the Moon, and again an H-1 booster failed: See how five boosters are pointing inwards, but one is pointing outwards? Guess which one failed... A few days (and another contract sat launch) later and the relay network was in place around the Moon: You may have noticed that there are only three relays in this launch, but four in the network- that's because the second stage that did the TLI and capture burns is also equipped with the same relay dish to double as a relay once its main job (getting everything else to the Moon) was done. The orbits are synchronised very closely, within half a second of each other, so they'll stay in position for some time and will remain useful for years; the three relay probes are also equipped with orbital perturbation experiments which will produce a steady trickle of science for a few years too, hence the slightly odd 60-ish degree inclination of the orbits. Next up was a particularly profitable contract satellite launch, fulfilling two contracts in one flight! And this time it was on purpose! 100k funds from the reward money alone, from a rocket that probably cost less than 5k in build, integration and rollout costs, plus the advances on top of that. I'll look out for mutually compatible contracts like this in future. Next up, Orange Mug 1- my first RSS rover. The contract wanted a landing on the far side of the Moon, hence the need for the relay network. A slight misjudgement of the size of the target crater and less than perfect accuracy for the landing meant that while I was in the right crater, it was almost 70km from the waypoints. Hmm, this calls for MOAR SPEED! Yes, that really is 55m/s across the Moon in a rover, with the control point facing up instead of forwards... The wheels are a bit weird, set the gear ratio below 1 for more speed and they just keep accelerating long after I let go of the 'accelerate' key. I... may have used the anti-crash cheats at this point, but it was that or trundle along for literally hours and I don't have time for that nonsense. The crater I landed in was Major Craters, which I've already landed in, but the target points were in the Highlands biome and I haven't been there yet so more science was gathered too. With some science to spend, I chucked some more nodes on the queue to sort out later. Including this absolutely HUGE solid rocket: 850 tons, 16 MEGANEWTONS at sea level and a burn time of 2 minutes. And that's the "short" version- the longer version has more segments, and more segments on an SRB means MOAR- I mean, more thrust. And now for the main event. It's the one the entire Astronaut Corps have been waiting for- the first Gemini launch. Just a trip to LEO this time, but there are several long-duration crew experiments to do and a contract for a 7-day flight in orbit so they'll be staying up there for a while and giving the life support systems etc. a proper shakedown. They don't look particularly excited about going to space... But flying up high enough to graze the inner radiation belt every orbit for six days? Yeah, they're loving that... EVA time! Diana (red) and Terri (blue) perform the first and second EVAs in space, followed by the first "wait, who's flying the pod!?!?" moment in space. All I can say is, the avionics still work even if nobody is on board and they didn't drift too far, but for some reason there's no EVA report experiment when doing EVAs from a Gemini pod; that option was available for the earlier crewed flights with the Mk1 (Mercury) pod even though technically it shouldn't have been as it's supposed to require a level 2 astronaut complex, so I'm rather confused as to why this isn't working. After over 7 days in space it was time to come back down. Contracts completed (except the EVA contract which actually requires an EVA report to be done, but that was missing so I couldn't do that) and science gathered, all in all a very successful mission. Until the pod bounced off the ocean and nearly smashed itself to pieces... As first missions go, flying into orbit and doing an EVA is a pretty good one, so no wonder newbie Terri Powell is sticking around for over a thousand days. Even my most experienced astronaut Diana Zonova is happy to stay for almost 500 days longer, so she might still be around for the Moon landings. But more importantly, just look at all that sweet, sweet SCIENCE! After adding pretty much every tech tree node with useful parts (or in one case, no parts but a prerequisite for the Apollo pods) I still have a bit of science left over and a generous helping of funds with which to launch the remaining 3 Yellow Biscuit crewed flights to LEO and the first Lunar flyby after that. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/gVC9EbT Coming up next time: What will my other astronauts, new and old alike, make of their Gemini flights? And will they all be trained in time? What else will I be up to with almost 1.3 million funds to spend?

Suffered a mission loss after multiple engine failures during launch. One booster engine failed late in its burn, which was manageable, but then the core sustainer engine blew up too leaving an awkward dilemma: the second stage has only one engine ignition and the craft is still very much sub-orbital, so do I burn to orbit then try to salvage the Venus transfer (very unlikely due to where the transfer burn needs to be done) or just burn prograde and see where it goes, most likely into interplanetary space forever? In the end, I went with c) waste the ignition because MechJeb PVG is still trying to get into orbit and blipped the engine for half a second. Solid motors intended to brake into Venus orbit caused uncontrollable spinning and the probe ended up limping to a low Earth orbit with no fuel left and no purpose. I could have done what I often do and just reverted the flight, but really, what’s the point in using an engine reliability/failure mod if I just revert every time it makes an engine fail? An earlier launch of an identical probe/lander combo went well and is on its way, and the transfer window will stay open long enough to launch a replacement if I feel like it.

Not while flying that probe. Time warping in RSS usually causes a little bit of orbital shifting due to the difference in scale but that’s “changing the apoapsis by 10-1000km” shifting, not “changing the inclination by over 25 degrees while leaving the shape of the orbit unchanged” shifting...

That magic teleporting probe is still annoying me... To try and distract myself I did something else, in the shape of another Moon landing. No contract for this one, just a lot of science from another new biome (Mare something-or-other, I forgot to check). A few more simulations of the next generation crewed spacecraft followed, first up was an abort test: Later, with proper crew on board (they don't look too happy about it either!), I tried a simulated Lunar flyby mission: My re-entry periapsis was far too high, causing the pod to skip off the atmosphere and go around again. During that time the batteries ran out and the pod's scrubbers shut down, so when it skipped off the atmosphere again I pulled the plug on the sim. Smashing into the lower atmosphere at over 11km/s it is then... In between simulations I also launched Orange Bowl 5 to fly to Mercury, again. Maybe this one will actually go where it's told? A number of engine failures occurred during this launch- first the core engine, then a booster engine failed to ignite on the launchpad and during the ascent another booster engine failed near the end of its burn time; despite these issues the launch was a success and the probe set a course for Mercury. This trajectory was slightly complicated by the Moon getting in the way and adding a bit of a slingshot, so I'll keep tracking it until it leaves Earth's SOI to make sure it remains on course. Now I find myself in a bit of a financial pickle, because tooling up the new rocket to launch that crewed flyby is going to be rather expensive: Most of the cost is in that single massive first stage fuel tank, but I'll be using this for a few different missions including, potentially, a crewed Lunar orbit, plus a 25 ton capacity to LEO still puts it 5 tons below the pad limit with these engines (RD-109s, which have vernier thrusters that act as RCS; the X-405-H engines I used before had serious control issues when I put the Gemini stuff on top). Fortunately, I have the steady cash flow of communications and weather satellite contracts to pay for this sort of stuff. One contract later and the new rocket was all tooled up and ready to go. Of course, this means I have almost no money left, but more satellite contracts are imminent to pay for the next few missions and eventually the unlock costs for the Gemini components. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/oYkZuWE Coming up next time: another Venus orbiter/lander combo, a relay network for the Moon and maybe even a rover on the Moon too. Oh, and some crew training for the next tranche of crewed flights, as soon as the pods are unlocked so I can actually do mission training.

While 1200 tons might be mathematically feasible, the practicalities of actually landing a vessel on a celestial body like Gilly would require greater acceleration to avoid crashing into the lumpy bits as you oh so slowly shave off orbital velocity without adding too much vertical speed. Burn times would get impractically long and fuel requirements impractically high so realistically one or two hundred tons on one NERV would be the limit while maintaining a semblance of control and getting it done in a sensible amount of time.

Check the scatterer settings and turn down the water settings, and if that doesn’t help turn down/off the reflection settings in the KSP main menu settings. Accurate reflections are very computationally expensive and turning them down/off can noticeably improve the game’s performance.

Gilly has puny gravity. Weight is a function of mass times gravity, so even though the mass of your lander is high (resulting in a low TWR around Kerbin which has 1g gravity) the weight around Gilly is extremely low because of the meagre gravity and a NERV could probably land a few hundred tons on Gilly with no real difficulty. Landing on Gilly is best done using RCS thrusters or tiny engines like the Ant/Spider, which will probably still have a high TWR but a very low overall acceleration rate. Don’t go for a similar TWR as for landing on, say, the Mun or Duna as this will result in painfully slow acceleration and a very long landing, and don’t turn the springs up too high or you’ll bounce back off the surface and have to wait even longer for it to settle to the surface.

@Oraldo revak another top quality cinematic with an unexpected twist at the end. An hour of my life well spent as far as I’m concerned! Alas, I can only “like” it once...

As @Caerfinonsaid, you can restrict download times and speeds (I didn't know that!), and/or change the settings on a per-game basis to only update when you launch the game through Steam, meaning it will only download updates when you tell it to.

Remember how I fired a probe at Mercury and it was going to flyby really close? Well today I went to check on its progress, a mere 10 hours before it's due to arrive at Mercury, and I found this: WhathowwhyhowHOW!?!? It's in more or less the right spot viewed from the top down but is millions of kilometres away vertically, almost 30 degrees off Mercury's plane, and I have literally no idea how it happened. It didn't go anywhere near Venus to get a gravity assist, and even if it did I doubt Venus could throw it that far off the ecliptic. I could hackily cheat it into a hyperbolic trajectory over Mercury, or I could launch another probe at the next transfer window and have a little cry...

Sorry, did you just say 84 kilotons!? I seem to have taken the stock mantra of “Moar Boosters!” and applied it to RP-1, and amazingly it actually works- going from two first stage boosters to six on the same rocket increased the payload capacity enough that I could go from barely putting probes in geostationary orbit of the Earth or a very elliptical orbit of the Moon to actually landing an essentially identical probe on the Moon (which needed about 2km/s more delta-V in total) and doing interplanetary flyby missions from Mercury to Jupiter and everything in between. Launching first ~4.5 tons (with two boosters) and then 10 tons (with six) to LEO with the first stage core burning from the pad right into orbit is probably not the way you’re meant to do it, but when every engine has a maximum burn duration before the failure chance skyrockets and the upper stage engines available can only be started once you have to adopt some unconventional techniques to make the most of every engine and every stage. My next design, which I’ve been working on over the last couple of days, is a bit more conventional with two stages and can put 25 tons in LEO in testing, enough to attempt a crewed Lunar flyby in one launch or an orbital mission with two I reckon.

Now, if you’re defining the delta-V as what the editor shows for vacuum delta-V, I can think of a few ways to game the system using jets and the staging order (e.g. put them after a NERV but turn them on without staging them), but if you’re talking about delta-V as shown on the launchpad/runway then just use an ion thruster and watch that number skyrocket as you reach space. Breaking Ground propellers would be another way to get ‘free’ delta-V since electricity doesn’t add delta-V.

Have you tried the Near Future Propulsion mod? It has no fewer than five different types of electric propulsion- improved variants of the stock ion thruster, Hall effect thrusters (more thrust but lower ISP), lithium-powered magnetoplasmodynamic thrusters which provide a lot of thrust with good ISP, pulsed inductive thrusters with variable power input and ISP (more power = higher efficiency) and VASIMR thrusters with variable thrust and ISP (more thrust = lower efficiency). PITs and VASIMR can both be switched to use either xenon or argon as fuel and both they and the MPDT engines have 0.625m, 1.25m and 2.5m variants along with fuel tanks in those sizes. They do all require A LOT of power to operate though, so much in fact that you’ll probably need nuclear reactors to power them (these can be provided by NF Electrical) and the quantities of xenon required to run a 2.5m electric thruster, never mind a cluster of them, are massively expensive. The good thing about mods is that you can easily delete the parts you don’t want and just leave those you do- if you only want the smaller ion-type thrusters or just the 2.5m parts you can do that.

I attempted to make a sample return mission to the Moon using a 350 ton launch rocket. Getting to the Moon was no issue, unsurprisingly, but getting back... The simulated descent ended in a massive crash because I can't do quicksaves to practice the timing, but there was more than enough delta-V to make a landing possible even with gravity losses factored in. The next simulation I tried started with the lander on the Moon's surface, minus all of the descent stage's fuel. Flying back to LMO takes more delta-V than I had anticipated, so I need to find an extra 1200m/s or so to get back to Earth with a reasonable margin. This will probably require a 700 ton launch rocket. Like, for example, this: 8x H-1 engines on the core and 4x LR87 boosters, then 5x X-405-H engines on the second stage- not an engine I've used before but it has a good combination of thrust and efficiency plus it can be restarted a couple of times. This design was tested up to 23 tons to LEO: After reviewing the flight profile for the rocket I realised that I could skip the boosters and just stick 10 LR87 engines on one huge core stage. This design will be a real headache to tool and pushes the 700 ton limit to the, er, limit, but the result is a rocket that can put 25 tons into LEO- but only just! And the final simulation for this report- a Moon rover: It's incredibly stable and even speeding up using RCS then using four wheel steering at maximum speed plus RCS to rotate it with the steering didn't cause it to flip over. The maximum speed is only 8m/s using this gear ratio, faster speeds may be possible but the wheels have a hard speed limit and will break above it. It can operate on the Moon's surface well enough, now the trick is getting it to the specific location on the Moon's far side that the contract is asking for; this would be a lot easier with Bon Voyage, but that only works with the RoveMate probe core and might not work well with RP-1 at all. MechJeb's rover autopilot and potentially many hours of driving it is then... Full album: https://imgur.com/a/O7vFe9u Coming up next time: A probe arrives at Mercury, plus the deployment of a relay network around the Moon. Gemini proficiency training is nearly done for the first few astronauts so they'll be going onto mission training as I wait for the required nodes to be unlocked before the first Gemini-era crewed missions can begin.

v0.2.4 is causing tremendous frame rate drops at higher time warps in KSP 1.8.1 when the FPS counter is active- it goes from 25FPS to 2 when the timewarp is turned up to 1000x. Nothing appears in the in-game console or the logs but the frame rates completely tank when the time warp goes above 10x. 0.2.3 doesn't have this issue and time warps without affecting the frame rate. I'm running a heavily modded RP-1 game but this single mod is causing the issue and rolling back to the previous version completely solves it.

Terrain detail changes the shape of the terrain, not the textures- that’s a totally different setting. Higher terrain detail means the terrain has more polygons in it, higher terrain textures makes the terrain look pretty regardless of the polygons that form the underlying shape. Parallax adds textures on top of the terrain but does nothing to the underlying polygons.

Some planet packs are built to add to the stock system- OPM is a good example, however it also moves Eeloo to be a moon of the new planet Sarnus so be careful if you have any missions on/at/going to Eeloo. Others like XPC, MPE, Corelian (makes Dres a moon), Valor are also available but might not work well when they’re all combined; as far as I know XPC has a patch to work with OPM but you’d have to check the others yourself. Planet packs which replace the stock system also exist- Galileo’s planet pack, Beyond Home and JNSQ are some examples. Don’t install those and open a save using the stock system, bad things will happen to your active crafts. GOP and BH are very different to the stock system and both have a second star (Grannus for GPP, white dwarf Kerbol for BH), but JNSQ is a redesigned and expanded stock system with a 2.7x rescale to make the game considerably harder due to the increased delta-V; if you want to try the real solar system, JNSQ is a good stepping stone to get used to the higher speeds and greater distances. There are planet packs that add new solar systems as well- Grannus can be added as a standalone secondary system, for example. Some system replaced planet packs e.g. GPP also have patches to make them secondary systems instead of replacing the stock system and these can be combined, some by design- GPP and Grannus are designed to work together with either of them as the primary star or with Ciro orbiting the stock system and Grannus orbiting Ciro, and there’s a patch to upscale the Grannus system as a secondary star for JNSQ. For any planet pack, you’ll need to install Kopernicus for it to work. Kopernicus is version-locked to a specific version of KSP and won’t work in other versions so make sure you get the right one. If you just want to add some planets to the stock system, OPM is a good choice and MPE can add more to the stock-scale Sol system feel with various analogs to real objects in the Solar system. If you’re prepared to start a new save (copy the whole of KSP first!) a system replacement can be good fun and bring new challenges; a rescaled system is more difficult but also more rewarding when you succeed at the same tasks that are easier in the stock system. Unless you’ve been playing KSP for a while and really know what you’re doing, I advise against jumping into RSS and realism overhaul etc., there’s a huge difference between stock KSP and RSS/RO/RP-1; that being said, the greater challenges can also be much more rewarding- I’m playing an RP-1 career game right now and it’s good fun to land probes on the Moon a whole year before the real Sputnik 1 ever flew.

Try opening up the zoom map from SCANsat, it should show you exactly where the waypoint is so you can drive right on top of it, even if you haven’t done any scans of the Mun yet. These waypoints tend to have a radius around them which counts as ‘on’ the waypoint so maybe you”re not quite close enough? It’s also possible that because of your terrain detail settings the waypoint is underground, not much you can do about that as changing this setting mid-game is a good way to have landed vessels end up under the ground and being destroyed. If you’re sitting on top of the location and the contract won’t complete it’s entirely fair to cheat complete the contract- open the cheats menu with Alt-F12 (or the pause menu > show version information), go to the contracts tab and click complete on the contract.

Having just built a 350 ton launch rocket with a payload capacity of 10 tons to LEO, I tried a few ideas for a 700 ton rocket which ended up putting 25 tons (of really dense ballast) into a low orbit with a mere 5m/s to spare; when the engines have 0.2s of burn time left you know the margins are razor-thin. 25 tons should be enough to make a crewed Lunar flyby possible in one launch and a crewed orbit of the Moon with two,

I spent a few hours working on a sample return mission to the Moon. After painstakingly designing each stage to maximise the available delta-V I tried it in the simulator and concluded that landing it on the Moon was feasible. Then I rebooted the simulator but with it landed on the Moon and attempted to fly it back... Turns out it needs about another 1km/s from somewhere, which is beyond the abilities of my current launch rockets. On the bright side, at least I found this out before I spent the money to do it 'for real'.

Not a lot to report today, but that doesn't mean I haven't spent a lot of time in the game. Planning out crewed Lunar flights is more difficult than it looks! This is what I came up with for a potential Lunar flyby craft. The pod and propulsion sections are about 10 tons each and would need to be launched separately then connected together; unfortunately the delta-V still isn't quite there yet so I'm thinking of doing a 700 ton launcher instead which will give me a much bigger payload capacity. Next, some testing for a Venus orbiter and lander combo: (By complete coincidence, that little speck in the sky is Venus) Everything checks out with this design so I've put two on the build queue. I considered using an RTG to power the lander but it only needs 30 days of power so batteries and solar panels (which barely make any power on the surface of Venus) will have to do. A few changes to the design could be enough to make it work for Mars too, but the transfer window for Mars is a lot further away whereas the Venus window is in about 80 days. Some new satellite contracts have unlocked with considerably better rewards than before, but, um... Two thousand units of payload!? Yet another test run, this time to deploy three newly created Pink Peanut relays into orbit of the Moon using the appropriately named Orange Dish. Three relays are great and all, but the transfer stage is also going to end up in the same orbit- so I stuck a relay dish and some solar panels on there too and now I can get four relays instead! Testing showed that I can get a nice orbit at 3000km then deploy the relays into a series of resonant orbits at 3/4, 5/4 and 6/4 ratios to spread them out evenly. A little bit of orbital period finessing and they'll stay in position for quite some time; solar panel degradation shouldn't be an issue for a few years at least and by the time that's a problem I'll have much better technology to replace them with. I did consider using RTGs to power them but they're really expensive and I have no idea how long this relay constellation will last. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/btV01K8 Coming up next time: I'm not too sure right now- it might be some more simulations, it might be the launch of another Lunar lander or the Orange Saucer missions to Venus, it will probably include more routine satellite contracts.

Absolutely not. Even a cursory look through the KSP2 section of the forum would find many threads on this and similar topics which all reach the same conclusion, I’m playing with RO (and RP-1) because I want to, not because I have to; when I first tried it after only a couple of months in KSP the sheer complexity of the whole thing immediately put me off. Besides which, KSP2 is a radically different game to the original with a much greater focus on interstellar travel and colonisation. Orion drives, fusion reactors and metallic hydrogen torchships don’t really fit with “realism”, do they? And while I bought both DLCs for KSP I would be reluctant to buy one for KSP2 considering the initial cost of KSP2- those DLCs better bring something truly exceptional rather than just some snazzy paint options or locking tech behind paywalls.

Sorry, posted on this thread as that’s what’s on CKAN. Good to hear it’s getting fixed already.