Eastern Standard Time, reporting in! Space, huh? What about it? The incredible beauty? The terrible dangers? The fact that it can be both of these at the same time? I originally got interested in space when I saw models of the Saturn V and Space Shuttle, and with the amazing pictures telescopes saw in the night sky. I was obsessed with black holes, too, and bought any and every space book I came across with any mention of them, hoping to find out just a little bit more. Silly me didn't realize that there wasn't much more to them that we knew about. Then I saw a Space Shuttle launch. It was many years ago, now. I think it was Discovery, maybe Atlantis. That was so, so cool. Space was one of the biggest interests in my life. I saw at least one more, a night launch. Brilliant clouds of bright smoke fading to black as they got farther from the pad, the terrain across the bay lighting up like a miniature sun was rising... the utter silence. It stretched for many seconds before the sound reached me, a great rumbling, roaring, crackling sound, like a wildfire. I'd learned as much as I could, I realized, around the seventh or sixth grade. I lost a lot of my interest in space then, instead focusing on aviation. Microsoft Flight Simulator X was just about as obsessive as KSP is now. In my freshman year at high school, my friend decided to show me KSP. I made an ill-fitted aircraft, which almost flew, before the class had ended. I was hooked. Soon after, I downloaded the demo, (demo version 0.18.1 or so) and spent a month or so trying to get to the Mun. Then more time trying to land, and yet more getting back. I wanted to try rendezvous next, and got two ships within 2,000 meters of each other. No docking ports, though. I bought the full game. And then space changed for good. I knew what Delta-V was. I found Hohmann transfers, and ballistic trajectories, and phase angles. Isp, TWR, gravity turns, aerobraking, slingshots, free return trajectories... it was amazing. And that is my space story.