[Writing] [Artwork] Shoot For The Mun

[HOC]

Shoot For The Mun

An entirely fictitious tale of events that befell Commander Jebediah Kerman, Munar Module Pilot Bill Kerman, and Command Module Pilot Bob Kerman.

Chapter One- Pre Launch

Shoot For The Mun sat there on the launch pad. A well-designed rocket, if there ever was one. Shoot For The Mun had been through several iterations: we\'d had previous contractors contact us with news \'bout how marvellous our design would look, should we just add their new, top of the range RCS thruster to it; or try out their innovative winglet on each of the nine gleaming liquid fuel stacks that made up its launch stage. Would we be interested in maybe some re-texturing, to further improve the ship\'s brutish charm? Or, hell, our entire crew could easily be replaced by this cheap, low drag AI unit that could pilot the whole goddam ship for us!

No, Shoot For The Mun was a marvel- a vanilla ship of pure power and ingenuity that we had designed and put together from scratch. Desecrating its body with such invaders would destroy the entire philosophy behind it, what it stood for. And, believe me, it didn\'t half stand proud. Shame I couldn\'t admire it from where I was sat.

'Jeb, we\'re ready on your mark' a voice to my left, Bill, informed me.

'Okay then, mark.'

'... no countdown? T minus ten, nine, eight...? No?' Bob\'s voice floated through the comms.

'Well, she\'s waited long enough hasn\'t she? Let\'s go.'

'Um... commander?' Bill said, sounding worried as per usual. The silence that followed resonated throughout the cramped command module, \'till I realised my elbow had nudged the communications mute button I\'d installed by hand that was perched on the edge of my chair\'s armrest. Damn stupid place for it to be, I thought, before nudging it once more and tuning back into Bill\'s droning.

'- and SAS isn\'t even on.'

'So, we\'re not actually ready then? Initiate the goddam SAS, do whatever it was you just said that I definitely heard, and I\'ll commence the countdown.'

'Bob?' Bill sighed, 'The SAS button is just to your left.' Bob pressed the button.

'Ladies and gentlemen, Shoot For The Mun is go for launch in T minus twenty seconds' I said.

'Your other left'

'I only have one left Bill, don\'t I? Don\'t I?'

'T minus fifteen seconds, folks.' It was my turn to sigh. I leaned forwards as far as possible (which was far further than it should have been, due to my decision to rip out the seat belts Bill had added to my chair- the damn things would only have spoiled my fun) and viciously kicked Bob\'s shin.

'AH!' His left leg panicked and lashed out in retaliation, hitting the SAS toggle dead on. The whir of fans I\'d installed to let us know whether it was actually active or not, seeing as the thing seemed to be dead silent either way, told us we were ready.

'T minus ten...' I grinned; this was gonna be fun.

'T minus five seconds, four, three...' Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Bob\'s hand unconsciously moving towards his stash of sick bags. The grin widened.

'...two, one, and we have lift off!'

Chapter Two- Lift Off

We were off the ground- a rather surprising circumstance to be in, considering we\'d never even tested the ship before. Even Bob stopped wailing in anguish for a few seconds to peer out of the smudged command module windows.

'Hey Bill! What\'s our altitude?' I whooped, elated at the truly incredible moment.

'We\'re climbing past four thousand metres now.' Came the reply. Bob went back to wailing.

Now, what was it we were supposed to do next? We\'d discussed our plan for the mission in detail; plotting trajectories and calculating thrust-to-weight ratios... well, I say we when I suppose I really mean Bill and Bob had- my usual part at times like such was to insist it \'looked cooler\' or to sit back admiring how sleek I\'d made it. I\'ve been told that acting like that is in no way beneficial to the success of the mission, to which I say 'design plays a major factor in ship control, little missy. Go away and make a ship filled to the brim with health and safety precautions, then come back and tell me it\'ll fly straight damn it!'. To this, Bill would generally sigh and walk off whilst Bob would wonder why I had called him a little girl... again.

Speaking of looks, it sure was a nice view from up there. A bit lopsided, not really how it should\'ve looked for some reason, but nonetheless a great place to relax and think, without the disturbance of other crew members. Other crew members? Wait a second... oh, goddammit.

'- for God\'s sake Jebediah! JEB!'

'Uh huh?'

'WE\'RE NOT FLYING STRAIGHT!'

'Oh. We aren\'t? Well, \'course we aren\'t Bill! To get into orbit we have to tilt over towards ninety degrees.' I smiled and sank back into my chair, feeling happy with myself for remembering this crucial part of the flight plan.

'Well then' Bill shrieked, his voice shaking somewhat, 'we definitely aren\'t going to make it into orbit any time soon.' Having paid a little more attention to what he was actually saying this time round, I focused on the navball and realised that for some strange reason we actually weren\'t heading towards ninety. Instead, Shoot For The Mun was having a hell of a time spinning crazily, firing rapidly expanding hydrogen gas in all directions (rather like I do in the office on Tuesday mornings) as it sailed up past our thirty five thousand metre apoapsis and began to fall back down towards Kerbin. I remembered my training.

'Don\'t worry guys'

'Don\'t worry!?' Bill screamed down the comms.

'Okay, Bill: you worry. Bob?'

'Yes Jeb?' For a kerbal with Bob\'s panic issues, he was dealing with the situation surprisingly well. Made me a little proud of him, if I\'m honest.

'Don\'t worry, or look at the navball.'

'The navball...?' Bob murmured, and promptly passed out.

'JEBEDIAH WE\'RE GONNA DIE YOU PIECE OF-' My elbow nudged the chair\'s armrest.

'Oops' I muttered. Looking around the command module, I eyeballed my current options and then the altimeter. Thirty thousand metres. By this point the colourful pens I\'d brought along with me in my spacesuit chest pocket for zero-gee entertainment in transit to the Mun had wormed their way out of the shoddy velcro seal and now were floating around the command module. Bill began to thrash in his chair.

'Thank God he gave himself a seatbelt as well...'

Okay, decision time. I punched the large rectangular button directly ahead of me in order to separate us from the launch stage. Ker-chunk. Twenty seven and-a-half thousand metres and now gaining speed. Okay... how about this one? Bob got another kick, which woke him up whilst de-activating the SAS: allowing me some actual damn control. A second punch to the rectangle (Why not? It worked the first time) initiated the orbital stage, consisting of three liquid engines with nine tanks between them. The orbital stage was much smaller than the launch stage, which yielded unto me the control I needed to wrestle us upright. Despite being intended for high-atmosphere/ space, it also had sufficient thrust to pull us out of the dive and back on course with the mission. Pens rained from the roof of the command module under the return of positive Gee forces and I turned the comms back on, feeling pretty pleased with myself. Silence. I nudged the button again... silence.

'Damn thing...' A round-house punch that rocked the chair right to left, and still no one was screaming. I checked the video feed- Bill had fainted and Bob was nervously nibbling on one of the pens.

Chapter Three- Orbital Burns

It was far more peaceful from then on, for a while. Not how I usually prefer things to be, but not on awful lot was going on, seeing as Bill was sulking and Bob was content enough to bounce pens around the command module with me. Zero Gravity is a wonderful thing, if you didn\'t already know. I adore the feeling of weightlessness, \'specially on such a great mission. Little did I know then that we\'d be weightless a whole lot longer than was planned.

'Moonrise.' Bill muttered.

'Speak up lad.'

'It\'s moonrise Jeb! Time to burn.'

'Oh, right.' Since we\'d ejected the launch stage far earlier than was planned for, our orbital stage was running lower on fuel than I personally would\'ve liked. Guess I do kinda have to thank Bill that we had enough fuel to carry on with the mission in the first place, he was the one who\'d stuck laterally mounted fuel tanks onto the orbiter so we had just enough to get to the Mun before we\'d resort to the lander engine. Then again, all credit to my sweet brain for wanting to continue in the first place- Bob and Bill were both screaming at me to abort in light of what\'d happened with the launch stage, but we can\'t stop no matter what! We\'re flying for much more than the Space Centre\'s research projects, my reputation is on the line!

'Okayyy, RCS engaged- let\'s swing her round boys.' The RCS thrusters spluttered into life, readjusting the ship to point towards the Mun so we could begin our transit burn. I thought that it was pretty strange we weren\'t still pointing in the same direction we had been when we ended our orbital manoeuvres, seemed to me that the damned SAS unit wasn\'t working properly.

'It\'s working great Jeb' Bill had said, when I\'d tossed it off of the VAB for the third time, and for the third time it pointed in the same direction the entire way down. 'Stop mucking around.'

'It works great on the ground, but in orbit it sure don\'t.'

'It does! It\'s just... not pointing relative to Kerbin.'

'Yeah, and what\'s it pointing relative to then?'

'Um.' He blinked, actually floundering for an answer for once. 'Space, the ether, background radiation.'

'Huh. Sure.' I\'d replied, heading towards the fire escape in order to retrieve it once more.

'Throttling up' I murmured, as the engines roared back into life after their three hour hiatus. All the pens in the air once more flung themselves at us- several bounced off my helmet and embedded themselves in the battered headrest that supported it.

'Urgh, Jeb! Why on Kerbin did you bring the pens?'

'Lay off him Bill, he needs to concentrate.' Bob motioned towards the lever that he\'d set up as our throttle control. 'That thing gets stuck sometimes.'

'Yeah, thanks Bob.' He was probably just saying that, from now on Bob was indebted to me for the pens- they\'d served as his outlet of fear for the entire flight. Nibbled nibs floated around the Command Module.

'But they don\'t even have lids!' Bill wailed 'There\'ll be scribbles all over my equipment!' I shifted in my seat at this, trying to cover up the doodle of him I\'d done on the chair\'s armrest. It could help me imagine what he might be saying every time I muted the comms.

'Grow up damn it!' I growled. 'We\'re going to the Mun, and your worried about your precious equipment being written on!' He sighed.

'Yeah well- wait a second. Those thrusters have been on too long Jeb, cut it!' Bill reached forward and just managed to press the \'X\' button that was supposed to cut our thrust immediately. It didn\'t. Minutes before the others took up their seats in the cockpit, I\'d ripped out all the wires behind the \'dashboard\' that looked vaguely attached to it. Who wanted less thrust? Seriously.

'What?' He pressed it again. 'Jeb, what did you-' he lunged for the lever, but only succeeded in brushing his fingertips on its surface. Rolling my eyes a little, I reached out and gave it a brisk tug. No response, it didn\'t move an inch.

'Huh Bob, you sure weren\'t kidding.' By this point Bob\'s eyes had widened so far it seemed they\'d pop out any minute and join all the pens. We were gaining quite a lot of speed now, I noticed. Three thousand metres per second, three thousand five hundred, four thousand... the numbers rolled past at shorter and shorter intervals.

'Jeb!' Bob cried 'You need to wiggle it a bit to-' He stopped suddenly, because we had all just heard the unmistakeable sound of the engines cutting out. Silence.

'So Bill, that emergency cut-off working again?'

'No... I never touched it.'

'Oh. Crap.' The engines had run out of fuel, and we were travelling far too fast.

Chapter Four- Further than the Mun

The Mun. It seemed so... old, to my eager eyes. I sat there, wonderfully unrestrained by my chair, peering out of the command module windows with shining eyes just to see, to try and examine its historic surface. The Mun was fascinating to me, I\'d sit up on the VAB at night gazing towards the stars when the Mun was at its brightest and imagine what it would be like to actually stand at the base of one of those craters, those deep black spots that covered its ancient hide. It really did look beautiful, as we floated teasingly close above it- never to touch down upon it. Never to fulfil my wish, never to be the first to say 'well, it ain\'t made of cheese'. Never... well, not this mission at least.

Oh no, the mission wasn\'t over baby. Under the command of Jebediah Kerman, there isn\'t such a thing as an unsuccessful mission. A ship blows up on the launch pad- successfully tested the minimum safe distance to be away from an untested rocket on launch day. Three rookies get trapped in orbit- successfully testing the command module\'s ability to sustain a crew of kerbals... indefinitely. A mission to the Mun overshoots its target- successfully tested the adaptability of a mission profile. Jebediah wasn\'t landing on the Mun any more, Jebediah was going much further out than that.

'Oh no. Oh. No.' Bill had gibbered, shaking nervously in his seat. On the video feed a pixel of sweat ran down his neck. 'Our velocity is far too high, we\'re going to slingshot around the Mun and go even faster, oh god. We\'re going to reach escape- esca- escape velocity. We\'re... we\'re never going home.'

'Sure we are, we just need to retroburn with the lander, right?'

'We don\'t have enough fuel to slow down enough. Oh god no, please no.'

'Pull yourself together damn it! We aren\'t done yet. A tank of fuel and an engine is enough to do anything, when you\'ve got me.' I said, trying to sound confident.

'Oh yeah? And what are you going to do Jeb? We\'re going too fast!'

'Options. I need options. Bob, what are our options?'

'Um. Panic?'

'Technically an option, but not a particularly useful one. Bill, hit me.' A scream of rage and a ferocious pen launch later, my helmet acquired another scratch for its collection. Clearly my meaning had been slightly mistaken.

'Fine, sulk all you like. At least I\'m trying to be constructive here.' He sighed, a common sound to hear emanating from Bill\'s side of the module.

'Okay, fine. We can\'t do much though, we\'re-'

'-going to fast, I know- heard you the first time. Can we at least change our direction?'

'Yes... to a degree.'

'So, we have options. What\'s our current course?' Bob leaned out of his window to look back at Kerbin, trying to judge what direction we were pointing in. Not the most accurate way to do things, but it worked. Most of the time.

'I\'d say we\'re heading towards the Mun...'

'Yes Bob, obviously.' Bill snapped, impatient as ever. 'Our burn achieved that much.'

'Hey, don\'t get at him. So, can we get into orbit around the Mun?' I asked, an idea beginning to form in my mind.

'Barely, but if we try to we\'ll almost definitely run out of fuel.'

'Okay, so we can\'t do anything that close.'

'That close...?'

'We\'re travelling too fast, you\'ve said it enough times. The only way to slow down without using precious fuel is to reach our apoapsis, surely.'

'But by then we\'d be orbiting the sun Jeb! We\'ll never get back once that happens!'

'Come on, can\'t we change our direction enough to stay in Kerbin orbit at least?'

'Well... yes.' Bill muttered, scepticism resounding in his words. 'But we\'d still be in the middle of nowhere.' A grin formed on my face, the same grin that always took that particular position during launch- front row seat.

'Oh no Jeb. You aren\'t...' Bob had caught on.

'What? What is it?' Bill demanded, 'what are you plotting now Jeb?'

'The middle of nowhere, you say.'

'Yes. We\'d be out there, stranded'

'Think what else is out in the middle of nowhere.'

'I- Oh God. No, you\'re crazy. You can\'t!'

'The Mun isn\'t the only barren rock in town.'

'Minmus.' Bob whispered.

New chapters coming extremely soon and extremely often. Let me know whether you guys are enjoying them, I\'d really appreciate it.

Forum Topic about Shoot For The Mun! :

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=13890.0

[Vostok]

Initial thoughts, it sounds very good! Interesting to hear one concerning Jebediah in the first person.

[HOC]

And now I realise why people reserve message slots on their threads. Ah well. Chapter Five:

Chapter Five- The other Barren Rock

'Huh. It really is a lump of rock, isn\'t it?' That\'s not to say Minmus didn\'t look interesting. In fact, Minmus\' textured surface brought back that grin to my face as soon as the first pixel of its existence hit my retina. I can tell \'ya, the anticipation I had begun to really feel when looking up at Shoot For The Mun on the launch pad, two long days ago, was reaching its peak and beginning to tear me apart. The way I expressed this in-containable excitement to my fellow pilots was overly nonchalant as a result of trying to seem calm, for Bob\'s sake. To be honest, I\'d always had a soft spot for Bob over Bill. This was mainly due to Bill\'s inner fear of my incredible potential, which had begun to form during our childhood. Yeah, I know, it\'s hard to believe we grew up under the same roof- largely because we only had a roof for five short years, when that very same potentially had grasped a vague understanding of air-pressure... anyway, that\'s a different story. Safe to say Bill wasn\'t best pleased when I pleasantly demanded we landed on Minmus.

'What is wrong with you, Jeb!?'

'People have offered differing opinions...'

'First we dropped all our launch fuel barely twenty thousand metres off the ground, then-'

'...which was the decision that saved your life, lest you forget.' I muttered.

'-then you put us all in danger by refusing to abort. After-'

'Hey! I have a reputation for never backing out of a flight! Would you put that on the line if you were wearing my helmet?'

'-after that you burnt out all of the orbiter fuel by over-shooting our target, and now you say we should land on this clump of rock, way out from Kerbin using the very fuel you just released into space by adjusting our course to orbit the damn thing-'

'the second time I saved your arse...' I was beginning to get angry at this point.

'-instead of simply swinging round it to get us home!'

'Okay, so I put you in danger again. That levels out to no harm done, right? No, listen to me. I am your commander, and with that responsibility comes the power to decide our fate, for the good of the mission!'

'The mission?' Bob motioned, frowning slightly. He had been near-silent for the long wait to get to this point. Or, then again, maybe he hadn\'t. I\'d only just turned the comms back on to discuss a Min landing with the pair of them.

'Yes Bob, don\'t you see?' My eyes, I\'m told, shone brightly in the dark command module (which had gone into standby mode somehow- I knew my idea to run the ship\'s critical systems off of a windows vista OS was a bit... iffy. We had no idea how to turn the damned thing back on).

'Do you not feel the same? The mission is our purpose right now, our life! How can we think of self-preservation when that would only end the mission and cut away our reason to exist?' Bill began to say something, probably another stupid remark. No, this was my time to speak. 'We press on, dammit! Onwards, for the mission!' I reached up and viscously kicked out at the throttle lever. As the single landing engine kicked back in retaliation, the gee forces compressing us back into our worn and battered chairs to the screeching of their hinges, my arm smacked down on the RCS activation and Bill, realising he had no choice, fluttered his hands over the lander\'s controls in order to point us retrograde. The reassuring feeling of weight relaxed in my gut and, despite not being able to see its icy surface, Minmus\' image glowed in my eyes.

Chapter Six- Contact Light

No picture yet...

'It\'s been a long time, Minmus.' I muttered, staring down at the methane lake that hung tantalisingly close beneath us. 'A long time' We were close... so close! The grin seemed stuck on my face now. Despite the fact that those ecstatic moments of joy, of sheer thrill, when I\'d began our descent were long gone, my face didn\'t seem to comprehend the sadness I felt now; our time was nearly here.

Bob seemed to watch me anxiously. I\'d shrunk, receded into myself- only slightly responsive to their conversation.

'We are over the lake, right?'

'I think so Bill, should I make sure?'

'Might as well, I can\'t look that far out of the window with my seatbelt.' I grunted to myself, part of my consciousness finding humour at Bill\'s obsession over safety potentially reducing his mission capabilities. The rest of my thoughts kept themselves occupied on the matter at hand: we\'d never get out there.

We\'d never get out THERE. THERE, on the lake, on the surface of Minmus, on the face of a celestial body never before touched by Kerbalkind. Our efforts had brought us this far, we\'d overcome so many limitations of the mission, yet we would never stand on the icy surface for ourselves. The trace left by our landing feet digging into the ice, nine hundred metres, would be the only thing capable of proving that all my training hadn\'t been in vain, eight hundred metres, despite my very presence there, seven hundred, not three metres from the ground.

'How low Bob?'

'Maybe six hundred metres?'

'Okay, we\'ve got this.' Bill sounded remarkably confident, but not excited. No, not excited. Too professional to be excited. Ha, professional. What did they know about being professional?

The countdown continued in my head, five hundred metres away from our destination. There was no way I could know it so accurately, but it continued regardless. Four hundred, three hundred, two, one-

'Jeb?'

'We did it Jeb! Come on, look at the screens! Jeb?'

'What the hell is wrong with him?' Aha, mild obscenities from Bill. How unusual of him.

'Come on Jeb... this is the moment we\'ve waited for.' No, no it isn\'t, I thought. I\'ve been waiting for more than this. I\'ve been waiting... so long... to get out THERE.

'Forget it, Bob. He\'s just jealous I got Munar Pilot spot.'

'Oh yeah, I guess. Hey, why am I command module pilot anyway? Jeb does that stuff.' Bob sounded genuinely confused.

'The engineers haven\'t installed our docking capabilities yet-' Damn those engineers to hell, my mind cried out at the mention of them. It\'s their fault! '- we need them in order to leave our larger engines in orbit around a planet whilst the lander goes down with two of us in it.'

'Which two?'

'That\'s the point, Bob! Jeb and I would go down, whilst you stay up there and pilot the command module.'

'Oh, I get it now, but that would mean I couldn\'t get down here and see the surface.' See the surface... we can\'t see the surface anyway Bob, we\'re stuck in this ridiculous tin can the engineers haven\'t yet 'installed' another capability to yet. Damn them...

'Oh, well we\'d take turns I suppose.'

'Yeah, we should be fair.'

'I guess. Anyway, we\'re here now. Time to go?' No, no! No, we can\'t go. I\'m not there yet, I\'m not out there! Minmus, Minmus, I\'m not there on the surface- bathing my face in the wonderful light reflected off of Kerbin toward this barren rock. I can\'t see the mountains surrounding me, enclosing me on that beautiful lake of solid methane. I\'m not THERE.

'Okay. What do we do?'

'I\'ll re-engage SAS in a second and then we\'ll be off. Where\'s that button again?'

'Oh, down here I think. Jeb kicked me to turn it on.' Bob said gingerly, the memory of pain obvious in his voice. A kick, the whir of fans caused the lander to vibrate slightly, then begin to hum gently. We were about to leave.

'Okay then, let\'s go.' The grin vanished.

New chapters coming extremely soon and extremely often. Let me know whether you guys are enjoying them, I\'d really appreciate it.

Forum Topic about Shoot For The Mun! :

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=13890.0

[Vostok]

That\'s very much what I\'m also attempting in my \'A Shade of Darkness\' - I\'m portraying Jeb as a character more dark and uncaring than fun-loving, the thrillseeking being a by-product of this.

[Commander Zoom]

Looking good so far!

(The rocket, too - any chance of posting a .craft file?)

[HOC]

The rocket, too - any chance of posting a .craft file?

I\'m going to make a topic for Shoot For The Mun on the SpaceCraft Exchange thread, complete with a .CRAFT upload. Be sure to hang around here, as I\'ll post about it when I do!

Also, thanks a lot for the feedback- I really appreciate it.

[HOC]

Thread is up: http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=13890.0

Also, about to write chapter 3 now

[HOC]

Chapter 3!

[HOC]

Chapter four is out, but I guess people have lost interest in the story by now. Ah well.

[qwertyx2y]

Keep going I\'m hooked with the story

[Rocketscience101]

I don\'t think Jeb is a thrillmaster, I think he is just the only one who payed attention during training and knows what\'s going on. While Bob and Bill, either fell asleep, or doodled during class, and have absolutly no idea what is happening and relying on Jeb to get them were they need to get going. Which would explain why they are screaming until the engines are off, or you are about to land.

[Commander Zoom]

Still following, still intrigued by where this is going.

[sss]

Chapter four is out, but I guess people have lost interest in the story by now. Ah well.

NOOOOOOO!!!

continue it!!!!

its very good. they probably are just waiting.

[HOC]

Thanks guys

A little explanation: Bill and Bob are fundamentally terrified of Jeb, due to their terrible childhood. Remember, these guys are brothers and grew up together. Can YOU imagine growing up with Jebediah Kerman? Safe to say, after their first house was destroyed and they took up living at the Space Centre, Bill began to seriously resent Jeb and everything he does.

Therefore, when they\'re falling through the sky with a crazed launch stage spinning them wildly about, there isn\'t one second where Bill believes the mission is recoverable.

Bob just has panic issues, and doesn\'t dislike Jeb as much as Bill because Jeb tends to have a soft spot for the guy. Can\'t blame him, he\'s so huggable... *cough* Uh, yeah. Anyway...

I intend to see this story through to its epic conclusion, so stay \'tuned\'!

[HOC]

Chapter five is out, and I had to replace my first reply to Vostok in order to keep it near the top if the page.

Bad news: I forgot the 20,000 word limit.

Good news: We just passed 20,000 words! Woohoo!

[HOC]

I\'m leaving for a 3 day trip to CERN, in Switzerland in a few hours. Here\'s Chapter 6, I won\'t be writing more until I get back. (ED: Obviously...)

See ya guys.

[qwertyx2y]

Are you going to continue or is this dead?