CatastrophicFailure

Chapter 39: Der Kommissar Boris Kermanskiovitch Kommissar Shoulders still heaving, Valentina stared at the stenciled writing on the drab metal door. It looked not unlike many other doors in the VAB, except that this one was at the top of a long, steep staircase that came up from the third sub basement. No one seemed to know if there was an elevator, even Igor. She was already regretting changing into her heavy winter uniform, but this sounded official. She stared at the door a moment longer, letting her breathing settle, then tucked her hat under her arm and knocked. It made a tinny, thin sound. Nothing. She frowned. Maybe no one was there and she could go back? No, no getting away that easy. Valentina sighed, and rapped again. Still nothing. The knob, perhaps? She tried it, and found that it turned, but the door opened only a fraction of a centimeter, then stuck. Could... something be wrong? An accident? Feeling anxiety rise in her throat, Valentina gave the door a shove. It didn't move. She tried a little harder. Solid. Bumped her shoulder against it. No good. Bumped a little harder, and the door budged perhaps a millimeter. She bumped it just a bit harder... ...the door flew open, Valentina went with it and nearly went sprawling onto the floor. She stumbled three or four loud, clopping steps into the room, blinded by the glare of the buzzing fluorescent lights overhead. She hung there for a moment, arms waving, legs apart, just trying to keep her balance, and noting she must look completely ridiculous. After a moment, her eyes began to adjust and balance gradually returned. She was in a long, concrete block room, the walls painted industrial gray, the floor bare concrete. Large portraits of the Imperium hung from the otherwise featureless walls. At the far end was a Kerbal seated at a metal desk, slowly pecking away at a typewriter with a single finger. Behind... him? Her? ...was another door. Gathering herself, Valentina took three confident strides, her heels echoing loudly in the enclosed space, then stopped dead. Color rose in her cheeks. She turned, clopped to the far corner where her hat had landed, sheepishly bent over to pick it up, and tucked it under her arm. Now feeling very out of sorts, she strode up to the desk and saluted. "Maj--" A single finger shot up, at the end of a long arm. The other one kept picking away at the typewriter, their owner not looking up. Or otherwise moving at all. With a twist and a flourish, the finger pointed to a chair against the wall, the arm held unmoving in space. Letting out just a bit of a huff, Valentina clopped to the chair and sat. She shifted. No, that was-- She shifted the other way. Ugh, that was even-- She shifted again. PЦTIЙ! It... it had looked like just an ordinary, institutional, hard plastic chair but... no matter how she... lumps in the seat homed in on her bones, pressure points bit at her nerves making her squirm back and forth seeking relief. Stuffy in here too. The chair was just slightly too short. She couldn't tuck her feet under it, a metal bar was in the way. She shifted again. Lounging with her feet sticking out in front, well, that just was not a dignified way for an officer to sit! Huffing, Valentina tried leaning back. Augh! The seatback was, well it was just bizarre! The angle pushed her forward, the top edge catching her right across the shoulder blades. She had to stifle a yelp as a nerve was pinched between bone and chair. The Kerbal at the desk didn't seem to notice, just kept clacking away with that it irritating arhythmic typing. So stuffy in here. And those buzzing lights! She squeezed her eyes shut, a tear mingling with a drop of sweat making its way down from her temple. Shifting. Shifting and blinking. A clock on the wall loudly ticked away the time with a steady, slow percussion. Had... had it been there a minute ago? Valentina looked around the room, trying to distract herself from this awful shifting and blinking and ticking seat. The paintings on the walls, they looked so real... and she had the distinct impression they were staring at her. Were... were the eyes looking this way when she came in? Shifting and blinking and ticking and staring. ЬЯЗZHЙЭVS SHФЗ it was stuffy in here! Valentina ran a finger around her collar, thought of loosening her tie. Were there even any air vents? She looked up at the ceiling and felt a wave of vertigo wash over her. Those lights... the glare... that incessant buzzing. It was starting to blend with the ticking clock and clacking typewriter. She could feel a storm of headache building behind her eyes. Her left foot had gone numb, too. Buzzing and clacking and sweating and glaring. I should stand up, Valentina thought, that would be better. Anything would be better than this! But no sooner had the thought formed than the finger shot up and pointed emphatically to the seat. She pursed her lips and felt a split open up. Mouth so dry. She could feel a knot growing in her lower back. If she moved just so it would burst into a cramp. Shifting and blinking and ticking and staring. Buzzing and clacking and sweating and glaring. A drop of sweat rolled into her left eye, burning like fire. She squirmed, and bone and chair found nerve again, electric tendrils of pain shooting down her right leg until it, too, went numb. Shifting and blinking and ticking and staring. Buzzing and clacking and sweating and glaring. Valentina gasped for air, her lungs filled but felt like all the oxium was gone. The knot in her back became a thrumming proto-spasm. The clock ticked, the typewriter clacked, the lights buzzed. Shifting and blinking and ticking and staring and buzzing and clacking and sweating and glaring and stinging and squirming and shooting and aching and gasping and squinting and pinching and breaking and knotting and thrumming and hurting and brawling and stabbing and falling and punching and crawling! Then, at the moment, and the very moment Valentina was certain she was about to scream and go mad, the finger shot up. It pointed at her, then twisted around at an eye-watering angle towards the door. She flew from the curséd seat, cried out, and nearly went sprawling again. Her legs felt like they didn't exist, it was only every muscle in her body cramping at once that kept her from collapsing. She stumbled stiffly to the wall by the door, fell hard against it. The knot in her back exploded into a wrenching, vibrating flurry of spasms. Sensation returned to her legs, only to be supplanted by thousands of red-hot needles jabbing to her nerve endings. She forced her way to the door by sheer will, and glanced back toward the fool at the desk. The sweat coating her instantly turned cold as she saw the paper in the noisy machine. It was completely blank. Fighting against her rebelling body, she found the door knob, turned it, and disappeared into darkness. Again she staggered to a halt, arms and legs outstretched, just trying to remain upright. And probably looking ridiculous. After the brightness of the other room, it was dark as midnight in here, but mercifully cool. There was no sense trying to bumble about blind, she sensed she was not alone, nothing to do for it but stand here and let her eyes adjust. This room could not be more different than the other. She felt thick carpet under her feet, smelled the acrid stink of rattail smoke. Slowly, details began to resolve themselves. Walls appeared, covered in warm wood paneling. It was old and weathered, obviously much older than the building its self. There was a single shelf on one wall, it held a glass display case. Inside was a rather common-looking knife that seemed to be missing its point. A pair of brass floor lamps gave off a pleasing glow, placed beside a massive wooden desk in the middle of the room. Comfortable-looking chairs faced it from either side. Ledgers and folders covered the scarred desktop, all meticulously placed and aligned just so. A wide-brimmed hat sat atop one stack, also carefully placed, the emblem of a Kommissar gleaming in the muted lamplight. An ashtray sat near it, a still-smoldering rattail set in the notch. It had burned down, unsmoked, to nearly a nub, leaving a trail of ash and tiny blackened bones. Along the far wall above a large tinted picture window were the expected portraits of the Imperium, and below those... He was enormous. Valentina thought he must be bigger than Igor, even. A dense mat of deep black hair covered his head above his uniform collar. He stood, unmoving, hands folded behind him, staring out the window, blocking the morning light. Valentina gathered herself once more, and strode smartly up to the desk. She snapped to attention and saluted, "maj--!" "I know who you are." Though soft, the Kommissar's voice cut through her own like a knife. She could only stand there, holding her salute. Time dragged out for a moment, then he turned and... His eyes. Valentina staggered back a step in spite of herself. His eyes. They bored into her like drills, she could feel them digging, searching, dissecting her. In an instant, Valentina felt like every fiber of her being had been deconstructed, cataloged, and filed, and then again and again. Those eyes... the Imperium had been cold but this... this was like looking into some distant edge of the universe where warmth had never reached at all. She thought, they made him a Kommissar for a reason. His arms remained folded behind him, "sit." Valentina swiftly obeyed, the breach of protocol dissipating like breath in the wind. With one hand, the Kommissar opened the ledger in the center of the desk and followed the lines with a finger, never looking down. "Valentina Kermanova, offspring of Vladimir Kerman, Captain, Imperial Army, penal registration number 24601; and Elena Kerman, professor, Kermangrad Imperial University, penal registration number 24897, both sentenced for counterrevolutionary activities and other crimes against the State, records since... expunged." Her breath caught. If she hadn't already been sitting she surely would have collapsed. "Remanded to care of Pyotr Kerman, no profession recorded. Residence transfer to Kerberia Oblast. Found living in squalor by truancy inspector some time after Pyotr Kerman's death." Squalor. Valentina was still so deep in shock the lie didn't register. "Remanded to care of the State, transferred between half a dozen different State homes due to... behavioral difficulties. Upon reaching working age, tested into Crimson Air Force, then tested... impressively... into officer candidate school and flight school. Volunteered for test pilot corps where you enjoyed a career of... some note." Still those warmthless eyes dug into her. She held their gaze, shock working to dull her fear. Sense slowly began to return, too. The Kommissar spoke Ussari with a heavy accent, his diction perfect but with an odd cadence, his mouth hidden behind a large mustache as thick and dark as his hair. "Chosen for preliminary Kerbonaut selection. Due to your inherited... political situation, assigned nablyudatel Igor, no last name recorded, registry number 451-101. Chosen for primary Kerbonaut selection. Chosen for final Kerbonaut selection. Chosen for First Kebonaut Corps where you have also enjoyed a career of... some note." He placed his other hand on the desk and leaned on them, looming over Valentina like a mountain. "Yes, Major Kermanova. I know, who you are." Despite herself, she swallowed hard. The Kommissar sat slowly, retrieved a half-finished pack of rattails from a desk drawer, and offered it. "Smoke." "Uh, no, uh, thank you. Sir. I do not smoke. Sir." "Good," he thundered, taking one from the pack and lighting it from the burning one, "it is a filthy habit, gives you an abnormal brain." He blew a cloud of oily black smoke towards the ceiling. He sat back, rested his elbows on the chair's arms, and stared into her over steepled fingers, the foul thing still dangling from his mouth, "tell me, what do you think of our recent... openness, with the Foreigners?" Valentina blinked. That was an odd question. She opened her mouth to speak. "I warn you," the intensity in the Kommissar's frigid eyes flared higher, "it is a rare thing that I ask... for someone's opinion. Do choose your words... carefully." She closed her mouth. His accent, it sounded almost like... no, but that was impossible, not a Kommissar, certainly. She thought for a moment, then pulled her own eyes away. "When I saw Sir Kerman rocket into space, I thought, how dare they. How dare they outshine our Star," Valentina paused for a breath, "and then I saw Edmund Kerman fall out of the sky. I thought, perhaps... they are not so different from us, then. We are all so focused on being the first, when perhaps, we should be focused on being the best. "If we must always be first, then..." she stared very hard at nothing on his desk, "sooner or later, mistakes will be made. And they will be all the more bitter, because they were made in haste. "I think... they are very strange people. I do not know if we can really work together. I have no understanding of such politics, but... perhaps, some sort of..." Valentina's distant eyes searched the desktop for an answer, and finding none, returned to the Kommissar's with difficulty, "...understanding... with this KSA might be beneficial." Those eyes delved into her even deeper, measuring, seeking. Probably had not been a wise thing to say, but she thought lying to this Kerb was probably impossible. And dangerous. At length, he spoke, "I am pleased to hear you say that, because you are going there." "I-- WHAT?" Valentina nearly screamed, then clapped a hand to her mouth. The Kommissar's stony face never changed. "If you had spouted some overly patriotic УДКPЦTIЙ about duty and honor I might have had you shot. I have no tolerance for such nonsense. The Grand Imperium has decreed that the Kerbonaut Exchange Program is to be reinstated. Your application has been approved. Congratulations." "But, I did not--" His face didn't change, but the room suddenly grew colder. Valentina held her tongue. "You will fly to the Kerbal Space Center in Kleptogart, and remain there for not less than one month, as ambassador and observer. You are particularly to observe anything that involves details of a new KSA spacecraft." Valentina felt her skin tighten, "you want me to... spy on them." The Kommissar leaned forward and seemed to swell in size. Valentina thought for a moment she could see her own breath. There must be frost on her eyelashes by now. She tried to disappear into her chair. "You are to be a gracious and respectful guest, and you will do absolutely nothing that might compromise the integrity of the Ussari Union. But you will see. And you will hear. And you will remember what it is you have seen and heard. You will keep no written record," he sat back, and steepled his fingers again, "then you will report back here to me... and only me... at the conclusion of your stay. When this has been done satisfactorily, you will be returned to the active flight roster and given priority on the next available mission." Valentina's mouth fell open. Her body was still screaming at her, and now her head was, too. The Kommissar took one last long drag on his rattail, then crushed it out in the ashtray, a thin tendril of vaguely organic-smelling smoke rising and contorting. "Due to your continued political... situation, your nablyudatel will accompany you on your flight, but no further. Our laws have no meaning in that place." The room began to shift and wobble. Valentina gripped the arms of the chair with weak fingers, afraid she might fall out. The Kommissar leaned in, continuing to twist the snubbed rattail with an awful crunching sound, "but do not think for a moment that he is no longer watching." Valentina tried desperately to rally and gather her thoughts. So, so many questions. Why...? How...? Still those eyes pierced into her, like they were reading her soul. "You have questions?" He crushed the butt in his fingers until it disintegrated into powder and bones falling into the ashtray. "I... Well..." "Do not think on such things too hard. You may not like what it is you find." The Kommissar rose, and again loomed over her, "am I understood?" "Yes...sir..." Valentina squeaked, still reeling. "Good," he thundered, then slowly turned back towards the window, blocking the light again and folding his hands. "I suggest you begin brushing up on your Kerblish," he turned his head slightly back, "it is a silly language." He turned away, "you are dismissed."

Well I'm doing something wrong, I keep getting like 2400 days, that can't be right. Alt*pi/speed/60/60/24 to get days?

@insert_name is right, @wumpus. From what it sounds, the ice formed while the rocket was sitting on the pad in visible moisture (fog) while full of cryogenic liquids a couple hundred degrees below freezing. If you'll think back to the recovered F9 last month, much of the rocket was not covered by soot probably because of ice still clinging to it. We're not talking a full-on, ionized plasma reentry here, either. Once the rocket gets a few km up there's very little heat transfer in the short time before landing to melt any ice build up. The fog at the launch site just exacerbated an expected condition into a real problem, one that's been faced in the air travel industry for decades but no one had ever thought to apply to rockets, since this is all so new. If the landing gear is anything like an aircraft landing gear, there's a latch it has to snap into on deployment to lock it into position. Ice can be quite strong under compression so depending on the design, either it might not take that much ice to foul the mechanism, or there was simply that much ice.

Eeeeeeexcellent. This will be unexpectedly... useful.

I'm having a rather embarrassing bout of cranial flatulence at the moment, where is it displayed again? That's exactly where it happened the first time. I'm sending a mission to Eve shortly, to see if it is indeed from the extra configs or something native to 64k.

So I've been wondering... where DO you come up with all of these wonderful names? They all sound so very Kerbal, did you just endlessly click thru the Hires list at the Kerbonaut center? Did we even have one back then?

Taking a huge guess here, but i don't think they can. It's moving so fast even a few seconds before I think the deployed legs would mess with the aerodynamics.

See, now this does not sound like any sort of inherent design flaw or mechanical defect, just operating outside of designed conditions. Rocket launches in fog are pretty rare. Landing a rocket that was launched in the fog, this would be the first. Modifying weather constrains and/or adding a deicing system should be fairly simple.

Second this. That "unusual orientation" could be quite useful at times.

@EatVacuum yup I've got terrain cranked up to the max. I did notice that in the map view, anything landed there does appear way above the surface too. The probe was indeed on legs, but the two mini-probes are not, and they're just fine. Single parts sitting on the surface. One probe I landed on the Mün is also still fine (I think), while another got eaten.

According to the original tweet, they're suspecting ice buildup from the fog ATM. To me, it's sounding like perhaps a case of an unforeseen combination of conditions leading to an otherwise "dumb" failure. Landing a rocket is still so new, maybe no one ever considered the effects of sitting in fog full of cryogenic oxygen.

Glad to hear it! Have a virtual Guinea pig.

...he says to the guy who failed basic algebra twice and remedial algebra once more.

Has anyone else noticed a bit of... bias in the General media over this? Literally every article I've seen/read thus far is painting this as some big fail for SpaceX.

I'm here, what did I win? lets try... @magico13

CRS-8 on February 7 I think. Tentative, of course.

Dumb question I'm not finding anywhere.... How long is one Kerbin year with this, assuming 24 hour days?

OK, so once I fire the pods off, I don't need to actually *do* anything with them? It's all handled by the hammer?

That's A lot of extra complication. The simple, long term reliable solution, like the fellow said, is just get a bigger barge.

Camera signal loss is a bit ominous I think.

Welcome to the dark side here, have a cookie.

Nope but I'll throw in @073198681 because my iPad is convinced he's a phone number I need to call.

Love the new Hammer & sensor pods. Sent a mission to Minmus and brought them along, then it occurred to me.... ...the pods are actually probes. So to actually work in my RemoteTech-enabled game, they probably need antennas of some sort, right? ETA: and yes, I concur with others... the built-in decouplers on those lil guys are just a tad um... energetic.

No, this happens right away. Launch a new rocket, land, go to tracking station, lander gets deleted.