Making a Dollar or Two- BOOK THREE

[Kernel Kraken]

On 3/6/2018 at 3:43 PM, Confused Scientist said:

It was not a coincidence. I, for one, welcome our new idiotic overlords.

I fixed your post for ya!

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 5- Jack and the Beatnik

Jeb was right. He remembered nothing. He just knew that incredible forces had turned his life around in an imperceptible manner.

He stepped out of the jet as Wernher applauded. "Of course, I should have anticipated that the combustion chamber would be flooded when pulling negative Gs. A simple valve should solve the problem."

Gene slapped Jeb on the back. "That's the fanciest flying I've seen since the war. You did good, flyboy. It's almost like you've done that before."

Valentina glanced knowingly at Bob. Both of them nodded.

"This calls for a celebration," Gene continued. "I see the sun is getting low on the horizon. Let's take the truck into town and toast this success at the Bungalow Bar."

Wernher nodded. "I'll bring the truck around." He walked back to the shack on the beach and drove the truck to the landing strip. Gene took shotgun and Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val climbed into the cargo bed. "Hold on tight," Valentina said.

Gene guided the truck up a dirt road away from the peninsula and through some small hills away from the coast. They drove for half an hour until they came to a fork in the road; they turned right onto the path marked with the sign "Transkerbican Route 77." After that there was a mile marker and a highway sign that read "Juno's Landing: 13 Kilometers."

From the back, Bill spoke up. "So, you get all of your machine parts and your fuel from Juno's Landing?"

Gene nodded. "The army took us out here after the war to survey for drilling fields. We didn't find a single drop of oil, so they demoted us and didn't pay for a flight away from here. We quit and got a job loading ships heading out of Port Juno, and then later we would refuel planes flying out of Juno Airfield. We saved all of our money and bought an old Junkers Jello PC-3 plane to convert into the jet you just flew."

The road became paved as the lights of Juno's landing lit up on the horizon. Route 77 took them straight down the center of town where motels and diners had their neon signs buzzing. A train station sat near the edge of town, and Bill noticed an old pair of trolley tracks as they passed it. A few high-rises dotted the west side of town near the mountains, but before Wernher's truck reached them they turned onto a side street and parked in front of the Bungalow Bar. Gene put some coins into a parking meter as Jeb pushed open the door to the bar.

He waved aside a waft of cigarette smoke as the rest of the kerbals followed him to a table. Wernher brought back six drinks and handed them out. "A toast," he said, "to the success of the Junkers Jello MP-3 jet plane!"

A small spotlight came on as Valentina drank, illuminating a stage in the corner. Three kerbals walked up, all of whom were smoking. They were dressed in black berets and black turtleneck sweaters. They took the stage, where a double bass and a pair of bongos were set up next to a microphone. One kerbal sat crisscrossed next to the bongos and the others stood at their proper places. The kerbal at the microphone cleared his throat and began to speak very quietly in a high voice.

I walked down Main street,
To the pharmacy drugstore,
Oh yeah.

Everybody else in the bar, who Bill noticed were all dressed exactly like the kerbals onstage, clapped for several minutes. One called out, "Groovy!" another shouted, "Hip!" and a third yelled "That's deep, Daddy-O!"

Jeb shrugged. "It's a fine opening act, I guess," he muttered under his breath.

Three more kerbals took the stage. Again, they played the bass and bongos while the third read his poem in the same voice as before.

The world turned around
And looked at me,
Oh yeah.

Everybody else in the bar except for Jeb's contingent clapped for several minutes. One called out, "Groovy!" another shouted, "Hip!" and a third yelled "That's deep, Daddy-O!"

A new trio went onstage. Another performance began as the cigarette smoke thickened.

Pablo Picasso painted my face
In front of a lily pond,
Oh yeah.

Everybody else in the bar except for Jeb's contingent clapped for several minutes. One called out, "Groovy!" another shouted, "Hip!" and a third yelled "That's deep, Daddy-O!"

Valentina stood up as the performers walked by her table. "Excuse me, who are you exactly?"

The first one looked at her. "My name is Moonstar," she said.

"I'm Riverstream," said the vocalist who stood next to her.

"And I'm Poison Rose," the bassist said. "How can we help you?"

"Well... what was all that, exactly?"

Riverstream smiled. "That was progress, Daddy-O. We use our new art forms to enlighten kerbalkind. But it's not just poetry. For example, cool cat, I have some of my fine arts displayed on that wall."

Valentina looked past Riverstream to the wall he pointed at and frowned. "But there's nothing... whatever. Does anyone else ever perform here?"

Poison Rose shook his head. "We're all that ever plays here, but it's great. One guy plays some drums that are too small, another plays a bass that’s too quiet, and the third whispers bad poetry in a voice that’s too high, and all of them wear black hats and sunglasses. What’s not to like about it, Daddy-O?"

Valentina did not think any of what Riverstream had just said was sarcastic in any way.

"Besides, groovy-O, the only other music there is in this country is big orchestras playing but only the guy who sings gets famous. The start of those songs alone takes three minutes, and they all sound exactly the same."

Valentina shrugged and walked back to her table. "Listen up," she said as she looked at her crewmates from the Kraken's Spit. "There's a music emergency in this town, and I need to fix it. Follow me." And they walked outside before Gene or Wernher could figure out what was going on. They crossed the street and entered Jay's Music Exchange.

Bill walked up to the counter. "We need to rent amps, fenders, a keyboard, a drum set, and a saxophone for about an hour and some dollies to get them into that bar."

Jay looked at them from behind the desk. "And what do ya got to pay fer all of that?"

Bill smiled. "We want to get rid of those post-modernists across the street once and for all."

Five minutes later, Jay was smiling as he helped to wheel the piano across the street. "You know, boys, I got into jazz years ago. I'm surprised those beatniks in the bar didn't get into that more. Eh, what we got is what we have, and what we have is you. That's a good thing."

As they entered the bar with their instruments, a group of poets was finishing up at the stage. Valentina shoved the trio aside and plugged in their speakers, and leaned over into the microphone. "This ain't rock and roll," she yelled, "this is... this is... HIT IT!"

There was a little country boy
In a railroad shack
And he always knew
He would never get back
But he had a fender that was beyond compare
And when he would jam his notes would float
Through the air.
So from the south and to the north
And east and west,
Everybody knew who was the best.

Go, go! Go, Kerb, go!
Go! Go, Kerb, go!
Go! Go, Kerb, go!
Go! Go, Kerb, go!
Go! Kerburry played good.

Edited June 7, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[KSK]

So let's see here. We've got a jet plane with some problems that need ironing out. We also got some fine tunes courtesy of a (soon to be) popular beat combo.

Well I do declare that this fine story is about....*sunglasses*...

Jets, bugs and rock-and-roll.

Yeaaaaahhh.

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 6- First Flight

Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val, Gene, and Wernher got up early in the morning a few days after Jeb’s flight and sat at the breakfast table drinking coffee. The Junkers Jello had been checked out the night before, and it was ready for its second flight at the hands of Valentina.

Wernher cleared his throat. “We have to tell someone about this plane eventually. There’s a lot of money we could make, if we do things right.”

Gene nodded. “After all, rockets don’t come ch-” He stopped as Wernher glared daggers at him. “I mean… rock and roll doesn’t, uh…”

Valentina thought for a minute. “Wernher, is there a radio station in Juno’s Landing?”

“Yes. They have a big antenna that they use to broadcast to the whole peninsula.”

“Perfect. I know a way to get their attention.” She leaned in and told them her plan. Gene’s eyes widened and he smiled.

Jeb was more doubtful. “Does the Jello have that kind of range?”

Wernher nodded. “We don’t have to return to our base. Juno’s Landing has a modern airport. Valentina can get clearance there.”

“But that means we need to split into three groups- one at the airstrip here, one at the radio station, and one at the airport.”

Gene shrugged. “That’s what we’ll do, then. Wernher, you and Bill go to the Juno’s Landing airport. I’ll stay here, and that leaves Jeb and Bob to wait at the radio station.”

Valentina stood up. “It sounds like a plan, then. Let’s wheel the plane out so Wernher and everybody else can get a head start for the city.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

Four hours later, Wernher and Bill waited outside the terminal at the Juno’s Landing airport and Jeb and Bob waited outside KWZZ, the Juno’s Landing radio station. Both groups had radios, which were hooked up to the main circuit back at the airstrip, where Valentina was taxiing the plane out to the center of the field. A brief roar came through the speaker, and then a faint voice: “She’s in the air and already turning towards Juno’s Landing! You can expect her overhead in about fifteen minutes!”

Wernher read a newspaper as he waited and Bob played a harmonica he’d picked up from Jay’s Music Exchange. Finally, they heard the whine of a plane overhead and Jeb looked up as it descended, coming closer to the rooftops, and rattling the windows as it passed the KWZZ transmitter and banked hard to the west before coming around for another pass.

Jeb and Bob nodded before throwing open the doors to the radio station and running up to the front desk, where they found an old kerbal chewing on a cigar.

“Kraken’s crackers, boys! Do you reckon you know what that was?”

Jeb stepped forward. “We sure do, sir. That was our experimental aircraft on its second test flight. It has no propeller and uses a jet engine to-”

The kerbal held up a single finger. “And you want me to report on it.”

“Well… yes.”

“Son, I don’t deal with scientists and their fancy ideas. I deal with news, and the news is made of people, so scram! I don’t want your airplane coming around-”

“Excuse me, sir.” A young kerbal walked up from out of the hallway. “I’ve been listening to these engineers and their plane sounds quite exciting. I’ll report on them.”

“No! I forbid it.”

The other kerbal just smiled and walked up to his desk. “You forget,” she said, “that I don’t work for you. I work for the newspaper, and the newspaper pays you good money for airtime on your station. Good money,” she said, frowning, “that you need to keep broadcasting.”

The older kerbal frowned, then sighed. “Fine. What you report on is not my concern. Take them back to your office if that’s what you want, Sunny.”

The three of them hustled out the door. “Sunny,” Bob said, “I’m Bob and this is my associate, Jebediah Kerman. He made the first test flight of our jet plane.”

“You can call me Jeb,” Jeb said.

“Nice to meet you, Bob and Jeb. I work for the Juno Telegraph, and I’ve been looking for a fun story to do. Yours seems like quite the type. I’m surprised I didn’t hear about it earlier.”

“Well, Sunny,” Jeb began, “we’re a small operation. It’s just me and Bob, and Valentina- she’s the one flying the plane- along with Gene, who’s out in a cabin on the shore right now, and Gene and Wernher. They’re at the airport right now, waiting for Valentina to land. Let’s hurry over there and see how it goes.”

They met up with Bill and Wernher five minutes later just as Valentina made a perfect three-point landing. “Wernher, this is Sunny,” Bob said. “She’s a reporter who’s going to tell everybody about our planes.”

“Nice to meet you, Wernher,” Sunny said. “This story is going to be gold, I tell you. I’m eager to see what you make next. Would you mind telling me, for the paper?”

Wernher thought for a minute. “Well,” he said, “I don’t think we’re going to be building very many more airplanes. I think we’ll sell the patent for this one and expand our operation out on the coast. We’ll build some new hangars, some new workshops, and from there- well, from there…”

“From there the sky’s the limit?” Sunny suggested.

“From there,” Wernher shouted, “the stars are the limit!”

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[KSK]

Ahhh - that's a good way to end the night. Catching up on two* of my favourite KSP stories.  

Thanks!

*Making a Dollar or Two, natch, plus Life at the Top.

[Confused Scientist]

2 hours ago, KSK said:

Ahhh - that's a good way to end the night. Catching up on two* of my favourite KSP stories.  

Thanks!

I already wrote the next one so I wouldn't have to during spring break, and I think it's going to be killer (somehow, probably). If that word choice at the end of that sentence looks weird to you... search for some acronyms () and stay tuned for when it goes up next Tuesday!

[KSK]

Looking forward to it - but I'll try to keep some perspective.

 

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 7- The Kontinental Startup Program

A black sedan paused at the fork in the road on Route 77 outside Juno’s Landing as if it was hesitant to leave the paved route, but then it slowly eased onto the dirt road and covered the last few kilometers to the shore. As it drew closer from the south a wooden shack appeared, and a few kerbals milled around a large shed. The car stopped, and from there the passenger could see what he had come for.

He stepped out and walked around to the shed. “Knock, knock,” he said.

Nobody heard him. “I think we could replace this pump,” Valentina murmured. Wernher looked over her shoulder and nodded. Jeb was busy welding some pipe in the corner of the garage, and Bill and Bob were testing a spare tire for the landing gear. Only Gene was absent, having gone to the cabin for some lunch.

Just as the visitor was about to invite himself into the cabin Gene came up behind him. “Mortimer!” he exclaimed. This time everybody heard him, and they turned to face him. “Everybody, this is Mortimer Kerman, CEO of the Kontinental Plane Company. I managed to invite him here to take a look at our jet engine. Mortimer, it’s right this way… be careful, now, don’t bump into that can of paint.”

Mortimer stood at the rear of the plane and took a look into the engine, with the panel cover removed for a better view of the inner workings courtesy of Bob. The CEO murmured to himself for a few minutes before looking up and saying, “Impressive. Can I take a look at the intakes?”

He walked around to the side and peered down into the turbines. “Incredible design,” he noted. "Can I see a test flight?”

Gene shrugged. “Sure. Give us ten minutes.”

_____________________________________________________________________________

As it turned out, Wenher and Bill helped to wheel the Junkers Jello out onto the grass strip just eight minutes later. “I feel like I’m on the pit crew for the Daykona 500,” he admitted.

Wernher grinned. “I tell you, I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”

They wheeled up a staircase and Jeb looked at Gene. “Who should fly?” he asked.

Gene shrugged. “Well, I used to be a pilot, so I guess if I had to say-”

“You used to be a pilot?” Jeb exclaimed. “Bill, Bob, Val- Gene used to be a pilot!” He gestured to the airplane. “You should fly it this time.”

Gene looks a bit nervous, Valentina thought. “Well, I only flew prop planes…”

He broke into a grin. “And I think it’s time I changed that! Mortimer, I’m taking the plane up!”

Mortimer murmured a reply and looked down at his watch.

As Jeb and Val ran back to the shed to get a ladder for Gene, Jeb asked, “How did we get the CEO of Kontinental Planes to come out to Juno’s Landing?”

“After Sunny published her account of us buzzing the KWZZ tower one of the larger papers took it,” Valentina replied. “Mortimer decided that it was worth his time to personally oversee-”

Jeb gasped. “Sunny! We forgot to tell her about Kontinental Planes picking up her contract.”

They ran into the shed, where Bob was standing. “Bob! Get on the phone and tell Sunny that Mortimer Kerman is here and he wants to buy our patent!”

He nodded and wordlessly ran off to the cabin, where a single phone line ran back to town. Jeb and Val returned to the Junkers Jello with a stepladder just as Bob was dialing.

Gene went around the shore on a short flight and, at Jeb’s request, briefly rode the thermals over the ocean. “It’s really made more for high-Mach numbers,” he noted. “There’s just enough wing to get it off the ground and not much else.”

Mortimer applauded as the Junkers Jello came in for a landing. As Gene stepped out of the cockpit he ran over and shouted, “Incredible! I never thought I’d see anything like this- as revolutionary as the airplane itself!”

“So,” Wernher bluntly enquired, “you’ll buy our patent.”

Mortimer thought it over for a moment. “No,” he said.

Jeb nearly fainted.

“No,” Mortimer repeated, “I won’t. You see, I don’t want the patent for the jet engine. I want you and me to work together on jet engines and whatever else you can think of. I want you to be the all-new experimental division of Kontinental Planes!”

Bill ran to tell Bob, who would tell Sunny that the small costal operation would be bought by Mortimer Kerman to work for the Kontinental Plane Company. She would write about it the next day, and in a stunning bit of foresight, note that an economic boom was about to come to Juno’s Landing. The boom never could have come, she argued, if Wernher and Gene had been contracted by the government to push the envelope. If that had happened, they would be contracted for a few years for public-relations stunts and short-lived defense programs before funding was cut to nearly zero. Instead, Sunny argued, Kontinental Planes would push money into Juno’s Landing and get just as much out- and before long the sky would be filled with jets. She even suggested, as an afterthought, that a high-performance vehicle could break the sound barrier. The one thing she didn’t include in her report, however, was a thought that she kept to herself, because she knew how fantastical and idiotic it was. Specifically, she thought that kerbals could walk on the Mun- but she dismissed it quickly, and sent her manuscript to the press.

Meanwhile, out on the peninsula, Mortimer and his new hires were still jubilant. “Just think of what you’ll think of next!” the CEO exclaimed.

Gene and Wernher glanced at each other. “Actually, Mortimer,” Wernher began, “I used to work on a top secret program during the war.”

“If it’s top secret then why are you telling me?”

Wernher shrugged. “No one cares anymore. But what we were doing was playing around with high-performance fuels and some experimental engines that used no atmosphere for their combustion. Sort of like fireworks, but with liquid fuels. I don’t want to say too much now, but I can assure you that greater things are in store.”

“And we can do more than assure you,” Gene said. “Come over here.”

The kerbals followed him around to the back of the shed, where a tarp lay on the sand with a bulge in the middle. “This is the K-2 missile Wernher was working on,” Gene said, and then pulled the tarp aside to reveal a skinny black and white tube only about twice as tall as Jeb. “Only, this one’s souped up a little… we think it could go to space.”

“But all that’s secret, of course,” Wernher hastily added. “But still- we hope it gives you confidence in your purchase of- what should we call our operation?”

Everybody thought for a minute. Finally, Valentina spoke up. “How about the Kontinental Startup Program? It’s a bit of a mouthful, but we could abbreviate it KSP.”

Mortimer nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I think that would do quite nicely.”

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 8- Begin the Begin

A month later, Mortimer was eager to see what the Kontinental Startup Program had achieved in the time he was away. He came tearing down Route 77 without a chauffer this time, and pulled up in front of the garage.

Bob ran out to greet him. “You’re just in time. Get back in the car, we’re going a few kilometers north from here.”

“Wait!” Mortimer snagged Bob before he could run off. “Why do we need to drive somewhere else just to see your prototype?”

“Because,” Bob replied, “it’s not just a prototype. It’s flight-ready. Come on, I’ll ride with you; I may as well since Sunny got the last spot in the truck.”

Bob buckled up as Mortimer turned the key. “Just follow the truck,” Bob explained, “and we’ll be there in a few minutes.”

As Mortimer pulled up behind the truck he noticed something covered with a tarp sitting in the bed. He could see lump a few meters long, and assumed it was a new kind of jet engine. He already had the rest of Kontinental working on a larger jet engine, but he still wanted to see what Gene and Wernher and the rest of the kerbals could do.

A few minutes passed and the two cars pulled up to a metal platform a few hundred meters from the coast, far enough that it was still surrounded by grass. As Mortimer surveyed the scene he could see a squat metal bunker to the east and a flag flapping listlessly in the breeze.

The truck doors opened. “Bob!” Gene called. “Good to see you were right behind us. We’ll need you to help us lift the trash can out of the truck.”

“I told you,” Valentina muttered, “It’s the Jumping Flea.”

Sunny shook her head. “You should have listened to me. Kermes would have made a good name for the papers. After all, I’m practically your public relations manager now.”

Then they put their squabbling aside and lifted the tarp off of the truck.

Mortimer looked at the truck’s payload. “That’s a strange jet engine,” he remarked.

Jeb grinned. “That’s because it’s not a jet engine.”

“Then what-”

“Don’t worry,” Sunny said. “We’ll explain after.”

“After wha-” Mortimer began, but he was interrupted by Bill.

“On three,” he said. “One, two, three!”

Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val, Gene, and Sunny strained together to move the Jumping Flea out of the trunk. As soon as they could they lowered it to the sand and rested. Then Bob went back to the truck and grabbed a dolly. He loaded the Flea on and wheeled it over to the launchpad, after which the team of six helped to lift it vertical. Finally, Wernher approached with a set of stairs.

“It’s ready,” he announced. “Shall we draw straws?”

Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val approached him and in a moment Bob yelled. “I’m going up!” he shouted. “I’ll see you after the flight!”

Although he was excited, he secretly wished that they hadn’t agreed that the winner would be the kerbal who drew the shortest straw. That’s just bad luck, he thought.

Gene ran back to the truck and came back with an orange suit that made Mortimer gawk. “What’s that for?”

“It’s a pressure suit,” Jeb explained. “If we lose pressure-”

“I know what a pressure suit does,” Mortimer said. “Why is it orange, and why is it so substantial?”

“It’s orange so the pilot can bee seen easily,” Valentina said, “and it’s heavier than normal because this flight will go up to twenty-one kilometers.”

“Twenty-one kilometers?”

Valentina nodded. “It took us four days to modify the pressure suit from a standard Air Force one. The rocket only took us two days because it’s Army surplus, the parachute took us another three, and the capsule took us three weeks.”

“You made an airtight compartment with full life support, controls, and acceleration couch from scratch in three weeks?”

“It’s not like we had anything else to do,” Gene said. “Besides, you’re picking up the tab, so we didn’t worry about saving money.”

Mortimer winced as Gene inhaled to name the price of the Jumping Flea.

“Over the month it took us to build, the Jumping Flea cost us eleven thousand dollars.”

Mortimer nearly fainted before recovering. “Eleven thousand? Eleven thousand?”

“Well… yes.”

“Eleven thousand dollars. That’s unbelievable. If you’d have given this project to me, it would have cost at least five times that much. Great job.”

“By the way, Jeb had an idea on how to save more money in the future.”

Mortimer turned to him. “Go ahead.”

“Well, I noticed there’s a big scrapyard down the road from here. Who knows what’s thrown away in there? If I bought it we could salvage anything useful, dump anything we don’t need there for future use, and charge other people to dump there before we picked up their waste and turned it into rockets. I can see it now- the sign would have a checkered background and there would be big red letters, saying ‘Jebediah Kerman’s Junkyard and Spacecraft-’”

Valentina walked over. “That’s enough for now, Jeb. Let’s go wish Bob good luck.”

They walked over to him dressed in the orange pressure suit. “Good luck, Bob,” they said. “We’ll be partying at the Bungalow Bar tonight,” Jeb said.

Valentina nodded. “We’ll do our best to pick you up with the boat soon after your landing- Wait. We do have a boat, right?”

“Yeah,” Gene called. “It’s docked back at the cabin.”

“How come I never saw it?”

“It’s behind a sand dune. Last night I moved it to the dock up here.”

Valentina looked over at it. “So you did.” Then she turned back to Bob, quelling the thought that she might not ever see him again. “I wish I was in that suit right now,” she said, “but I think we picked the best kerbal for the job.”

Bob nodded and then closed his faceplate. Jeb helped him into the capsule and then bolted the door shut. He pulled the steps away from the door- and then he paused.

Something wasn’t right. He didn’t know what, but he knew that if the Flea launched the way it was configured now Bob would die. Letting his subconscious take over, he opened up a small hatch in the side of the capsule and used a flashlight to illuminate the compartment. What he saw made his heart speed up.

“Gene, Wernher,” he yelled, “Come look at this.”

They ran out of the bunker and left Sunny to finish setting up her portable typewriter. Gene arrived first and looked over Jeb’s shoulder. “That would be bad,” he said. “I’m glad you found that.”

From inside the capsule, Bob keyed the mike. “I hear some kerbals messing around outside. What’s going on?”

Valentina sat inside the bunker with a radio, which she had painted the word “CAPCOM” onto. When asked, she said it stood for CAPsule COMmunicator. “Don’t worry about it, Bob,” she replied. “We’re still on track for this launch.”

Jeb uncrossed the two wires that had scared him so, sealed the compartment, and ran back to the bunker with Gene and Wernher.

“What happened?” asked Sunny.

“Two wires were crossed,” Jeb explained. “The way it was before, the parachute would have deployed at the same moment as engine ignition.”

“But you fixed that, right?”

Jeb nodded.

“Good.” Sunny typed for a minute and then looked up. “Well? Aren’t you going to do it?”

Jeb opened his mouth but nothing came out.

“Yes,” Valentina said. “Yes we are.”

She stood up and addressed the whole bunker. “Attention! We are currently at t-minus two minutes and counting to the launch of the Jumping Flea Mk1. Can we have a systems check?”

“Communications are go,” Valentina continued, looking at her radio. “Timekeeper?”

“Go,” Gene said without looking up from his stopwatch.

“Pilot?”

“Go,” Bob called.

“Okay, then. We are go for launch. Timekeeper, proceed from t-minus ten seconds when ready.”

Gene started the watch. “T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, ignition!”

Inside the capsule, Bob pulled the ignition cord and an igniter assembly scorched the inside of the solid rocket booster beneath him, propelling him into the sky at nearly seven Gs.

“Ooooof…”

He arced out over the ocean and raced up into the blue.

“About five seconds left on the booster, Bob,” Valentina called.

Wernher tracked his flight through a pair of binoculars. “See, Gene, the fins are holding. I told you we could make them out of cardboard.”

“Booster cutoff in three, two, one-”

All at once nine Gs turned to zero, and he was back in the null gravity that he had known for so much of his life aboard Station One and the Kraken’s Spit, both of which were now relics to him, forgotten memories of a past life.

“I think-” he said, and then stopped, swallowed. “I think I’ll separate the capsule now.”

“He’s good if he wants to,” Jeb said.

“You’re good if you want to,” Valentina called.

“Okay, then.” Bob took a deep breath. “Three, two, one-”

He pulled a lever and the booster fell away beneath him. Almost at once the capsule swung around, and then kept twisting, gyrating, forcing Bob to take his eyes away from the window.

Wernher was terrified. “Ask him to report!” he yelled at Valentina.

“Bob, come in.”

“Well,” Bob began, “the forces on the capsule now are maybe .25, .3 Gs, but I’m swinging around a good deal… out of curiosity, what was my maximum velocity during ascent?”

“Four hundred and thirty-seven meters per second,” Valentina said. Then she paused. “Say, doesn’t that make you the first supersonic pilot?”

“Yeah,” Bob said. “To think we were so caught up in everything else we forgot about speed. Speaking of which, forget about speed- I seem to be reaching my apoapsis… yep, my maximum altitude above sea level was ten kilometers and one hundred and seventeen meters. Almost certain that’s a record.”

And now Bob was falling back to the sea. “The spinning has almost stopped… from this perspective I can examine the underwater topography,” he reported.

“Roger, Bob. Remember that once you get down to three kilometers you need to deploy the parachute and then we’ll come and get you.”

Bob nodded. “The G-forces are picking up now… they’re topping off at about five... and here I come through the clouds!”

He kept his eye on the altimeter and his hand on the parachute lever. “Okay, three and a half kilometers… three kilometers. Parachute deployment.”

His hand came down on the lever and everybody waited impatiently for the silk to unfold as Bob fell towards the ocean at over two hundred meters per second. Just a few seconds later, although it felt like years to the observers on the ground, the parachute deployed into a reefed position at twenty-five hundred meters.

“About two minutes to go, Bob. You can expect the parachute to deploy completely at five hundred meters.”

Bob tightened his grip on his parachute and the hatch lever, not that bailing out would do him much good at five hundred meters. “Seven hundred fifty…,” he called, reading the altimeter, “…seven hundred.”

Nobody said a word in the control bunker. Jeb put all of his willpower into commanding the squibs holding the parachute in the reefed position to fire, as if his pure will could make the last bit of the mission go right-

And just then, the capsule passed five hundred meters and the parachute opened all the way. At four hundred meters, Bob was descending at a leisurely four meters per second. Finally he was just ten meters up, and he braced for the big splash, glad that he had remembered to stuff a blanket beneath him in the acceleration couch before liftoff.

He was crushed into the blanket at splashdown, but none the worse for the wear when he keyed the mike and said, “Jumping Flea Mk1 reporting, successful flight. Awaiting recovery. Over.”

His words greeted a breathless mission control, which, after one second of pure silence, erupted in cheering and laughter.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[KSK]

Love it! 

Scuse me a moment though. Be right with you... yup that'll buff right out... almost done...

Your lampshades sir. All polished up and good as new. Hope you don't mind - couldn't help notice them hanging there and figured you'd want them back.  

 

[Confused Scientist]

12 hours ago, KSK said:

Love it! 

I'm glad to hear that after adapting from deep-space police chase shenanigans to seaside rocket-building shenanigans. Going through the engineering process of the rockets is going to be really fun, and since the basis of improvement is failure I'm eager to apply my new favorite literary device: the noodle incident. Just imagine...

"Well," Jeb gasped, "I never thought I'd have to run like that in my life. Who knew that the liquid hydrogen storage tank would keep rolling for so long after it-"

"Shut up," Valentina said.

[KSK]

Oh I do like me a good noodle incident! Shamelessly borrowed from a former writer on these forums:

 

Quote

And no, I don't know what it was doing in VAB 4 either, but I don't envy whoever put it there when Gene gets his hands on them. I don't think I generated that much paperwork after the RT-5 Incident!

Comments:
July 21st, 22:47

Not quite, but it was a close-run thing. I'm still mad at you.
- Gene

July 21st, 22:50
The owner of that yacht was looking for a good tax write-off anyway, we found Bob in the end, the trailer really wasn't all that badly damaged and I bought you another car with my own money. Will you let it go already?

 

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 9- I'm Fixing a Plot Hole in the Roof Where the Rain Gets In

The old fishing trawler dashed across the ocean with surprising speed towards the Jumping Flea, bearing for the small orange signal flag that in retrospect was rather redundant for locating the capsule compared to the massive parachute lying deflated next to the capsule. Bob had cut it loose, but it still hadn't floated away.

Gene grasped the tiller and pulled up alongside the capsule. "Jeb, Valentina," he ordered. "Deploy a raft and get the flotation collar around it."

They nodded and went back to the crate full of their recovery supplies, including the store-bought raft and airbags for the capsule. Then they opened a different crate, put on wetsuits, and donned flippers before jumping backwards off the bow into the crystal ocean.

It had been decades since Jeb or Val had been swimming, and for a few panicked seconds they found that they didn't remember how. Then they recalled some faint memories from their childhood and, graceful as any seal or dolphin, cut through the water. Jeb smiled for a minute as he thought how they were essentially surrounded by the combined ingredients of rocket fuel, and then he was upon the capsule, shepherding the flotation collar into place as Val came up from behind, towing the raft. She held it steady as Jeb got in and knocked on the capsule's hatch: Shave and a haircut-

Three cents, came Bob's reply, drummed on the inside of the pressure vessel. Jeb turned and smiled at Valentina before returning his attention to the hatch. He grasped the handle firmly with two hands and pulled it out of its recess in the door. Flexing with all of his might, he turned the stubborn latch through its full clockwise rotation before remembering that he had to turn the other way to open it. With less resistance, it turned, and all at once swung open.

Bob poked his head out, banging his helmet on the frame. He said something, paused, and then opened his faceplate before trying again.

"I've never been more glad to see you," he said.

Jeb grinned. "That's a little ungrateful, considering you didn't say that after I came back from being stranded on Eve."

"What did I miss?" Valentina asked, swimming around to the side of the raft. "Hey, Bob. Want some water?" She passed him a bottle from the side of the raft.

Bob twisted the top off and drank heartily. "It wasn't space, but I think we're all going to go back pretty soon."

Jeb helped him into the raft, which Valentina towed back to the fishing boat, where Bob was congratulated heartily. Then Gene turned the ship, and Wernher put his fishing skills to good use to snag the Jumping Flea on the trawler's old hook for the fishing net. Everybody was sill in a jovial mood on the trip back to shore, except for Bill, who distracted himself with some maintenance on one of the boat's engines. Valentina suggested that the engines should be stopped before Bill worked on them, but he just insisted that he was doing purely cosmetic work even though Val could see a shuddering mass of gears gyrating just millimeters from Bill's hand. Then they all pulled into dock and met Mortimer and Sunny, who had stayed onshore (there was room in the boat for them both, but Mortimer was worried he'd be seasick and Sunny wanted to get a journalistic view from the beach as well as keep Mortimer company).

"A toast," Wernher announced, "to our intrepid explorer!" Then he realized that there was nothing to toast with. "Come on, let's go into town and get something to eat."

Half an hour later they were all sitting at a table at the Route 77 Diner and Cafe. "I'm starving," Bob said. "I could eat-"

The waitress came up. "What can I get for you all?" she said.

"Four fried chickens and a Coke," Bob finished, before realizing that the waitress might think that was his order. "Sorry... I mean, dry white bread, toasted- no, I mean, uh, the scrambled egg of a dodo. No, that's not it either... I'll just have, uh..."

"I'll have the Bloated Burger," Valentina said. "Rare."

"Yeah, uh, me too," Bob said.

It was only after everybody had ordered Bloated Burgers all around that Bob thought to ask the obvious question. "Say, what's on the Bloated Burger?"

Jeb shrugged. "The menu said green chile, bacon, Canadian bacon, an extra patty, barbecue sauce, red chile, an extra patty, cheddar cheese, lettuce, pickle, an extra patty, swiss cheese, avocado, an extra patty, a fried egg, mustard and an extra patty."

"What..."

Jeb was grinning. "It comes with a large fries!"

"He's just kidding," Valentina said. "There is only one extra patty."

"That's good," Bob replied. "Wait, that means it really has all that other stuff?"

Jeb nodded.

"Whatever," Bob said. "But wait... how much does all that cost?"

"It's not to worry," Mortimer said. "I'm paying, remember?"

"Oh," Bob said. "Yeah."

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Kernel Kraken]

Just came back to see there were TWO! new chapters!

"from this perspective I can observe the underwater topography". Best line. Except for the four extra patties part...

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 10- New Thriller Star

Progress with the rocket testing was good, and it was measured in explosions. Bill tested out a new stretched version of the Trashcan, that Valentina called the Jumping Flea, and christened it the Hammer, because he "dropped a box of hammers on it by accident and it didn't break." All four members of the Kraken's Spit crew took a ride in it, and Mortimer realized that his startup program was even more profitable than he had thought. Even paying a team of twenty engineers to work on Wernher's newest project, just a few Hammer flights were enough to pay nearly a year's salary with prize money alone.

"Where does it all come from?" Jeb muttered, surveying another briefcase full of cash. "Who pays for the Kerbin World-First Record-Keeping Society prize money?"

"They sell the data to the Kuinness Book of World Records," Mortimer told him. "People go crazy for those books, even though it's pretty much the same every year. So they have some money to spare."

However, the real money-maker for the KSP was a development of the Junkers Jello engine, which Mortimer had shown to the engineers at the Kontinental Motors division before yelling at them and giving them a deadline for the scaled-up version, which he called the Juno. This new engine had promise, so he quickly built an all-new, high-altitude, high-speed passenger jet, which he was eager to sell to Kontinental Airlines which, as the name implied, was also owned by Mortimer. When Kongress heard this, they were planning to, as they called it, "bust the trust." Even though no one knew what this meant, one of Mortimer's top executives ran a campaign and got elected, and vetoed the bill by sliding it underneath a desk, and just in time too, because the first airframe was ready for testing.

"I don't like this suit," Jeb said.

"Shut up," Valentina grunted. "I don't either, but this is what... ugh... commercial pilots wear."

"Bill and Bob don't have to wear them."

"They're flight engineers."

"Hmm." Jeb looked around the cockpit. "Where's the stick?"

"There isn't one, just a yoke."

"What! Why did Mortimer put us in this thing?"

Valentina shrugged. "You want to go to space, don't you? When Sunny gets to tell everybody that astronauts were flying the new jet, we'll be flooded with support."

"Really?" Jeb's eyes widened and he started grinning.

"Oh, no," Valentina said. "I know that grin." She keyed the intercom and said, "Jeb's grinning. Strap in."

Bill and Bob looked at her from the jump seats in the back of the cockpit. "Why are you using that? We're right here."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Jeb was still grinning as he brought down the gear for the final approach. Bob was more worried.

"I think some people might think these new Junos are too fragile," he said. "What if they don't trust jet technology?"

Valentina nodded. "They might think that this new plane isn't good enough- WHAT ARE YOU DOING, JEB?"

"What does it look like I'm doing?" he asked. "I'm selling planes."

"But you're selling them upside-down?"

"Not just upside-down," Jeb replied. "The rudder is also extended all the way to the right."

"So it's a barrel roll. Much better."

Jeb came out of the roll and pulled up hard on the stick. "How's our glideslope?"

"Perfect, somehow," Bill said.

"Good. How's our intercept on ILS?"

"Looks like the roll pushed us back on course... even though we were already on it beforehand."

"Okay. Preflare... radar altimeter?"

"Fifty," Valentina called, "forty, thirty, twenty, ten, five... touchdown."

"Reverse thrust, spoilers out."

"Main gear coming down... touchdown."

"Full brakes... slowing down... and we're stopped."

Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val were still used to all of the extensive postlanding checklists of a spacecraft, so they were pleased when a staircase was rolled up and the met Mortimer at the bottom in just a few minutes.

He looked at Jeb. "Well, it worked," he said. "Trans-Pam Airlines put in forty orders after your stunt, and Kerbfleet United and Dispirit Airlines were trying to take each other's places in line. But I have one request, Jeb."

"What?"

"The next time you try something like that, tell me so I can have an ambulance waiting!"

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 11- Drawing Straws

A few new buildings has sprouted up near the launchpad- a large hangar, a small shed with a radio, a more permanent mission control, and the very beginnings of a crew quarters. Gene was surprised when Mortimer had added the construction of the last building to the budget, asking why they couldn't use that money on more rockets. "Because," Mortimer explained, "if we're thinking long-term, the engineers will need a place to stay so they don't have to drive from Juno's Landing every day, and if we need more pilots they can stay there, too. At some point I also want a runway. As for the money, this research project seems surprisingly profitable and I expect that soon we can afford a state-of-the-art R&D department on-site."

At this point Gene nodded, and speaking quietly, said, "Let's show him the hangar."

Jeb, Bill, Bob, Val, Wernher, Gene, Sunny, and Mortimer walked inside Hangar 7 and were greeted by the small but enthusiastic team of engineers that had been supplied from the normal stock of Kontinental workers. "Hey, boss!" one of them shouted, and Jeb smiled. With the history of a century of spacefaring stored in his mind, he was confident that he didn't need a team of hundreds of engineers. Gene and Val and all of them preferred a small, close group of workers, but they knew that if they wanted to achieve their visions of spaceflight they would need lots of boosters and lots of manpower.

Luckily, Mortimer had come to their rescue again. "The R&D team at the KSP can try new things," he explained, "like a new booster or a capsule, and then once they get good at it we can hand it over to the production lines at Kontinental Aerospace." Now the same R&D team was greeting him from inside Hangar 7, and around them were rockets.

Sunny gasped. Mortimer grinned. "These seven Lithium rockets," Wernher explained, "are able to lift an improved Jumping Flea capsule to above seventy kilometers- the Karman line." Turning to face Sunny, he announced, "Within two months, kerbals will become an all new species, one that is capable of leaving the only planet it has ever known. The risks will be great, but not insurmountable. We have invited you here to witness the selection of the astronaut. Sunny? Are you ready?"

Sunny nodded. "Have you got a camera? I want a picture with the article."

Bob ran over to a shelf and returned with a camera and a spare flashbulb. Sunny snapped a few pictures of the rockets lying in the hangar and then turned back to the group. "Okay, ready."

The engineers crowded around as Gene took a breath. "This drawing is for the pilot of the first astronaut. They will fly a ten-minute subortibal flight, up and straight back down. We have four pieces of paper. The one with the black dot represents the pilot. Then we take out one paper without the dot and the three other candidates draw; the winner of the second drawing is the backup. The backup pilot will fly the first orbital flight. Wernher?"

Wernher brought over an army helmet with four folded scraps of paper. Jeb reached in, then Val, and then Bill and Bob. Jeb smiled, looked around at his crewmates, and then opened his paper.

It was white through and through. All at once, everybody turned, and Valentina was holding her paper open, with a black dot marked in the center. She was grinning, Jeb was grinning, and everybody was smiling. Sunny took a picture, and Valentina spoke. "You know, all of this is really thanks to the engineers. They built the rockets, and I with we could take them with us into space."

The head engineer spoke up. "We couldn't have done it without you, Val. I don't know how you did it, but whenever we had a problem you and Jeb and Bill and Bob would come right in and you just knew what to do, almost like you were from the future-"

Jeb nearly passed out.

"-and you already knew what we needed to do."

Gene clapped and then cleared his throat. "We still need to choose the backup pilot. Jeb, Bill, Bob- ready?"

They nodded and chose their papers. And it was there that Jeb opened his slip and saw a single black dot, marked with a heavy drafting pencil from Wernher's desk.

Jeb smiled. "I do think that Valentina was the right choice for this flight... I know that she thinks an hour in the future, and I only think two minutes ahead. I solve problems as they come up, but she avoids them. And that is exactly why she is the right choice for the first-"

"-orbital flight," Valentina interrupted. "Jeb is right. I am good at decision-making, but Jeb is good at solving problems. For a ten-minute flight, two minutes of foresight is just about right. There are lots of problems that might happen really fast, and I think Jeb is good at solving things like that. On the more leisurely pace of an orbital flight, decision-making is important, but for this first flight, problem-solving is what we need. For this reason, I would like to trade places with Jeb."

Sunny took more pictures and ran off to the offices of the Juno Telegraph with her story. She painted a bright picture of a future full of exploration and told the story of the fearless pilots that would lead the expedition to the new horizon. Her word choice was exquisite, and she spent an entire paragraph describing a weightless astronaut peering out the window of their spacecraft at a Mun that was brighter and closer. Two days later, her story had been sold to every newspaper in the country, and the reporters swarmed on Juno's Landing.

Jeb was on his way to the doctor's office for the first of many preflight physicals, but he had arrived in town early for lunch at the Route 77 Diner. He paid for his meal (he hated counting out money and dearly missed credit cards; maybe he would invent them in his spare time) and walked out the door, to be suddenly greeted by twenty reporters from all over the continent. They all had questions, but the one they asked most often was perhaps the dumbest one:

"Are you Jeb Kerman? You're really him?"

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 12- Groundhog Day, But With Rockets

The sun rose over the cape and the engineers gathered in an all-new, shiny control room with silver dials and gauges and microphones. The night before, they had put one of their rockets on a truck, drove it over to the pad, propped it up, and filled it with kerosene.

"T-minus two minutes and counting."

Jeb sat in his cockpit, calm and eager to get the launch started. With nothing better to do, he keyed his radio. "How's it going?"

"Good," Bob replied. "The rocket still looks good and we've got about a minute and a half left on the clock... we're all waiting to see how this turns out. Good luck."

Jeb nodded and resumed scanning his instruments, nodding to himself when everything seemed normal. Not normal, he reminded himself, nominal. I've gotten out of practice.

Before he could keep thinking about how long it had been since he'd flown in space, the turbopumps on the Lithium I started up, sending a fine vibration through the rocket. Flame belched from the engine bell, and then all at once the black and white tube rose from the launchpad and began steering out over the ocean. Jeb was pushed back in his seat as he began a rapid ascent over the ocean.

The sky turned to black outside.

Inside mission control, Wernher studied the engine pressure gauges. "Looking good..." he murmured. "Wait... what's that?"

All at once the needle spiked and the rocket disintegrated, spinning out of control for a brief moment before being torn apart in the slipstream. The escape tower, due to some flaw in its wiring, fired off the nose of the capsule without taking it along. The command pod did separate from the top of the Lithium but it was quickly struck by some debris, which tore through the hatch and pulverized the acceleration couch, reducing the pressure vessel to a twisted mess of metal which began a long, arcing fall into the sea with no hope of recovery.

Gene shook his head. "I hoped it would have done better."

The wreckage of the capsule slammed into the ocean without any parachutes trailing behind it.

Wernher stood up and looked over his team. "I know this was a setback," he said, "but we can get past it. The escape tower issue seems simple enough, and the problem seems to be isolated with the engine. Valentina was flying chase for the rocket, but as soon as she lands she can help you all with the problem. It'll be all hands on deck-"

"Hey," came a call from one of the chase planes. "If it's all hands on deck you'll want me, too."

"...Oh, right. I forgot about you, Jeb."

Jeb nodded and turned his K-37 jet back towards the space center. "I think the flaw was a surge of LOX sped up the turbopump too much... but we'll have to look at the data afterwords. I'll see you in the hangar twenty minutes from now."

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

After three days playing doctor with a rocket, the KSP engineer team brought out another Lithium to the pad. This one made it up to twenty-five kilometers before the engine mysteriously shut down, but the escape tower jerked the capsule free. It splashed down beneath nylon chutes, and Wernher led his team to make the final modifications to the liquid oxygen inlets. There were five Lithium boosters left, and Mortimer was eager to put them into widespread production after the kinks had been worked out. The capsule on the third rocket was also different- it had a small package of solid kicker motors under it; Gene called them firecrackers. Valentina, hearing that, decided to call the capsule Sparkler.

Sparkler I lifted off with Bill and Bob flying chase with full afterburners for as long as they could keep up, until their engines stalled and they fell back into the troposphere and lined up for landing. Meanwhile, everybody in the control center watched tensely as the engines on the Lithium shut down and the capsule drifted free. A computer program, rudimentary by Valentina's futuristic standards, flipped the capsule a hundred and eighty degrees just as it passed seventy kilometers' altitude. Then the firecrackers went off and the Sparkler I began its fiery plunge into the ocean. The navy, who had offered to help out in exchange for three Lithiums courtesy of Kontinental Aerospace, had a small aircraft carrier there, and they hoisted the capsule aboard, scorched but intact. Everybody on the whole space coast cheered- with one exception.

Jeb was too busy reading checklists for Sparkler II to even notice that the test flight had succeeded. 

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[KSK]

Nice switch of perspective in the first section - certainly had me fooled. Also:

23 hours ago, Confused Scientist said:

After three days playing doctor with a rocket, the KSP engineer team brought out another Lithium to the pad.

You mean this is rocket surgery after all?

 

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 13- Jeb Sells his Soul for a Rocket

The sun rose over the cape and the engineers gathered in an all-new, shiny control room with silver dials and gauges and microphones. This time, however, they were not part of a literary device and Jeb was buttoned up in the rocket, with two minutes left on the clock.

He thought back to the morning. Valentina shook him awake three hours before sunrise and dragged him out of bed to the breakfast table. For the first time since arriving in the past, Jeb hadn't slept in Gene's cabin; instead, he reluctantly spent the night in the brand-new crew quarters so he would be ready to begin donning his spacesuit as soon as possible. He poked at some eggs with his fork before Gene came in.

Jeb looked up. "Ready?"

Gene shrugged. "I've been up for hours. The weather is go, and the news vans are here."

"News vans?"

Gene opened the shade. Jeb looked out across a sea of flashbulbs, microphones, and film canisters and felt fear for the first time he could remember. Even the sight Interplanetary Authority ships bearing down on a collision course with the Kraken's Spit hadn't been a sight to make his face pale, but dying wasn't as bad as messing up in front of all of the reporters.

"I didn't know there would be so many."

Jeb turned to see Sunny and Wernher walk in. "We've already made a fortune just from network deals to cover this launch," the reporter said. "This is the most interesting thing since the war. There's a lot of money-"

"Did someone say money?" Mortimer asked as he entered the mess hall. "All of the profit from this goes right back into your R&D budget. That way the KSP- by the way, I think we should change it to Kerbal Space Program- gets to be recognized as a nonprofit with all of the tax benefits that go along with that."

After a few more minutes of Mortimer fanatically listing profit margins for the new Juno-powered plane, which was being marketed as the Klonkorde, Jeb shoved his plate away. "I'll order one of those Bloated Burgers from the Route 77 Diner after I get back," he announced. "Valentina? I think it's time to begin the prebreathe."

Valentina nodded as Gene started towards the door. "It's time for me to get back to the control room," he announced. "Jeb, best of luck."

And he was gone.

Wernher and Valentina accompanied Jeb to the suit room, with Sunny tagging along behind. Jeb sniffed pure oxygen for a few minutes, and then he gestured to Valentina. Then he nodded and went to help them retrieve his pressure suit from its cabinet. When they had first showed it to Valentina, she was shocked by how hot and stiff it was. She quickly improved it with some of her knowledge of EVA suits from the future and gave Jeb the new version. As usual, it was painted orange, and soon Jeb looked like a big Jack-O-lantern swaddled in rubber. Then he tied on his black boots, laced them up to the ankles, and put on his gloves. When he tried them on for the first time, he had thought they were a little slippery, so Bob went to the store to find some gecko-rubber, whose existence Bill doubted. With the new gloves and the new pressure suit on, Valentina helped Jeb to strap on his parachute, and then all that was left was the helmet. Wernher came up from behind and carefully lowered it onto its ring and snapped it shut. Then Sunny helped to connect some of the life support tubes, and Jeb was dressed like a true astronaut.

"I have to admit," Valentina said, "a good deal of the modifications I made were suggestions by Sunny to make it look like a true spacesuit. The capsule probably won't lose pressure, so we wanted it to have a second purpose: eye candy."

And so Jeb gave the suit its most important test by walking out into the sea of reporters.

All at once flashbulbs went off and a thousand voices rose above the peninsula, but gradually they were silenced and the night was quiet except for the crickets and Jeb reached the truck for his ride to the pad. He stopped at the door with his air conditioning unit in his left hand and, turning, looked out at the cameras. Then, slowly, he grinned, and waved at the crowd.

They screamed. The reporters surged forward, but the path to the truck had been blocked off by some thoughtful engineer the night before. Jeb hurriedly sat down in the truck, with Valentina running up behind him and Sunny getting in shotgun, with Wernher behind the wheel. The ride to the pad passed in silence, the first time that anybody could remember Jeb didn't have something to say.

He was thinking, though. He realized that even though he had lived most of his life in space, he was about to fly the first-ever space mission. The awesome responsibility took its toll- if he messed anything up, everything in the future that he'd liked would disappear instantly: Station One, the Number Nine Shuttle, Munbase, and- worst of all- the Kraken's Spit. What if all of that went away?

Then Jeb realized: They were already there in the future, so this mission was guaranteed to be a success. All of the rockets after this one might blow up, and Jeb and his friends could die tomorrow, but this first flight would be flawless. Knowing this, Jeb grinned, and he knew that he could enjoy his unique place in history: on top of a rocket.

At this point the truck pulled up to the pad, and Wernher waved to Jeb.

"I'm off to check the LOX inlet valve," he announced. "Good luck to our astronaut."

Before Jeb could reply, Sunny was gone, too, chatting with some reporter by the fence around the pad. Then Jeb turned and he saw that Wernher was already halfway to the base of the Lithium. All that was left was Valentina, and Bill and Bob at the top of the launch gantry. They were the closeout crew.

Jeb and Valentina climbed up on the narrow staircase, passing hissing fuel lines and humming cables until they reached the White Room. "Let's go!" Bob announced, with his back to Jeb. "The gantry leaves the rocket in thirty minutes!"

Valentina tapped him on the shoulder. "They made me pad leader," Bob said. "I like my hardhat. It's got some red highlights."

"Mine's just got yellow," Bill sighed.

Together they walked to the hatch of the capsule. "Well," Jeb said, "I'll see you after splashdown." Then he took one last look at the faces of the three best friends he had ever known and pulled himself into the claustrophobic confines of the Sparkler III.

Bill and Bob got to work swinging the hatch shut, but Valentina crouched down before they were done. "I realized that there's no way this flight can fail," she said. "You see, all of that stuff we had in the future-"

"Yeah," Jeb said, eyes wide. "It's pretty cool."

Valentina smiled. Her smile was not like Jeb's wild grin, but a more confident one, less reckless- much like the difference between Jeb and herself. "Happy landings," she said, and then stepped back as the hatch closed.

Jeb closed his faceplate. From now on, he would only breathe canned oxygen and talk to the voices in his helmet. In the truest sense, his first flight had just started.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

"About two minutes to go, Jeb," Bill called. "How's the ride so far?"

"It's a lot less exciting than the simulations," Jeb replied.

Bill laughed. "Escape tower armed," he added, almost as an afterthought. The last minute of the countdown passed uneventfully and then, on hundreds of thousands of television sets across Kerbin:

"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, ignition!"

Right away Jeb tried scanning the instruments with all of the vibration and found it quite easy. The close confines of the capsule and the rugged acceleration reminded Jeb of his ascent from Eve. About ten seconds in and two kilometers up, Jeb called mission control. "Everything good here," he said "...and waiting for burnout in about two minutes."

"We copy, Sparkler, approaching Max-Q... Max-Q. The Lithium III is through the sound barrier."

The ride settled down after that, with the noise of the engines a distant roar in Jeb's ears. The sky outside his window quickly lost its color and, as the rocket passed the maximum altitude of Jeb's K-37 ride, stars came out during the day.

Jeb, being used to sights like this, was more focused on how different his craft was from the Kraken's Spit, which in itself was somewhat obsolete without very many digital displays and only a rudimentary autopilot. Still, it had more room and a computer, and that was what-

The engine shut down all at once and Jeb was thrown forward against his straps. There was a loud bang as the escape tower came off and then a quiet hiss as the Sparkler was thrown free of the Lithium.

"Control... I am in zero-g. Affirm landing in ten minutes?"

"Roger. Try the joystick controls."

Jeb slowly twisted the control column. "Yaw... okay. Pitch... okay. Roll... is a little sensitive." The capsule began to spin faster and faster as the stars began to blur outside. "I think we've got a stuck thruster!"

It'll be okay, I'll survive this flight, I have to...

A spontaneous burst from the pitch thruster started Jeb tumbling head over heels with the capsule falling over the ocean. As Jeb looked out the window he could see the edges start to glow with shock heating from the air in front of him. He had ten seconds, tops, before he was reduced to a puff of hypersonic smoke. His head was being whipped around-

And then he heard Wernher's voice in his helmet. "Jeb. Listen to me. Don't talk. Just listen to me. Take your left and and turn the gauge, the control mode one, change it from 'Manual' to 'SAS'."

"What's SAS?" Jeb yelled.

"Sickness Avoidance System... more professionally known as the Stability Augmentation System. But you don't need your control movements augmented, do you? Anyway, just flip that switch."

Jeb reached out, but the g-forces were really building. He missed on his first attempt and threw some circuit breakers- Probably nothing important- and then tried again. This time, he got a hold on it, but the spurious forces were about to throw his hand free. Jeb clamped down harder, digging in with the gecko-rubber, and depressed the switch.

All at once the spinning stopped. The heat shield was facing down, and Jeb was pressed back into his couch. Keeping his eye on the altimeter, he rode the capsule down to five kilometers before overriding the parachute deployment to make the main chute come out early. Then, barely twelve minutes after leaving the cape, the Sparkler III splashed into the ocean like a ton of bricks and all of the reporters went home.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[KSK]

I thought he'd already sold it for rock and roll?  

Good chapter though - grandfather paradox neatly averted. Possibly...

[53miner53]

16 hours ago, Confused Scientist said:

 

Then Jeb realized: They were already there in the future, so this mission was guaranteed to be a success. All of the rockets after this one might blow up, and Jeb and his friends could die tomorrow, but this first flight would be flawless. Knowing this, Jeb grinned, and he knew that he could enjoy his unique place in history: on top of a rocket.

Didn’t they change history on one of the previous flights, with Jeb changing the staging so that the parachute didn’t activate with the main engine?

[Confused Scientist]

6 hours ago, 53miner53 said:

Didn’t they change history on one of the previous flights, with Jeb changing the staging so that the parachute didn’t activate with the main engine?

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

Edited May 15, 2018 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 14- The New Guys

Sunny Kerman took the stage and cleared her throat. "Please, take your seats."

Flashbulbs in the audience went off. Jeb, sitting in a chair behind the podium with the rest of the astronauts, held up a hand to shield his eyes. Valentina squinted.

"I will count to three." None of the reporters looked at her. "One..."

The general din of conversation echoed through the auditorium.

"Two..."

Somewhere off to the side, a Kerbal News Network reporter and a Coyote News cameraman were engaged in a shouting match with an incredible amount of profanity.

"Two and a half..."

The Kerbal News Network reporter and the Coyote News photographer both suddenly drew a revolver from their waistband and took aim at each other's heads.

"Thr-"

Before Sunny could finish, all of the kerbals were in their seats, and the auditorium was quiet. Even the gunfight had been quietly averted.

"Thank you. I apologize that we did not have time to have a press conference after Sparkler III, so we're going to be here for a while. First, congratulations to both Jeb and Bob, who made the first two flights of the Sparkler program. The next flight will be an orbital flight, flown by Valentina Kerman. The difference between these flights is incredible; the rocket needs to be twice as powerful and the flight will last for an hour instead of fifteen minutes, enough time for the Sparkler V to make two complete orbits of Kerbin with an uprated Lithium rocket. I will now take questions about the Sparkler III, IV, or V missions."

A flock of reporters jumped out of their chairs and began climbing on top of each other and waving their arms to be seen. Finally one wrestled the rest to the ground. "Eh, KBS news," she said. "How did the preflight physicals compare to the ones taken after splashdown on Sparkler III and Sparkler IV?"

Sunny nodded. "Well, biological considerations have been a large focus of aerospace study in the last few years. For this reason, there were comprehensive exams before and after each flight. We observed no large, long-term changes as a result of the acceleration or microgravity forces exposed to Jebediah or Bob, who both agreed to have their physical data released to the public. You can request a copy of that in the lobby after the press conference."

She took a breath and pointed at a new reporter. "Yes, you, KNN."

"Thank you. What dangers do orbital flight provide that were not present in the flights that have already been launched?"

"Well, the main ones are deorbiting and reentry. In orbital flight, there is nothing to slow the capsule down once the booster is detached. For this reason, the single critical piece of equipment is the retrorocket module, which houses three small solid motors. Any one of them is capable of deorbiting the capsule by itself. After this, an orbital reentry is much fiercer than a suborbital one, although the g-forces aren't quite as high."

"What modifications were necessary to the Lithium rocket to place the Sparkler into orbit?"

"There is a small upper stage beneath the Sparkler, and the escape tower has been reconfigured to pull the capsule off of the rocket for the final orbital insertion."

Another crowd of reporters leapt up from their seats, but Sunny waved them off. "Jebediah Kerman has an announcement."

The room quieted as Jeb stood up from his chair and walked towards the podium. "There are four more flights in the Sparkler program," he began. "At the moment, we have only two astronauts that have not yet flown, so they will fly Sparkler V and Sparkler VI. If we kept it going on like that, the training schedule would be unbearable. Instead," he said, "let me introduce to you, the new astronaut candidates of the Kontinental Startup Program!"

They walked in from the wings. "All seven of them have been picked right out of the top of the Air Force," Jeb continued. "We have Ilda Kerman, Franxie Kerman, Alice Kerman, Mermon Kerman, Hansted Kerman, Boblock Kerman, and Hardbrett Kerman."

"One of them will walk on the Mun."

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 15- 45 Revolutions Per Orbit

From all over Kerbin, they came.

The Juno's Landing airport saw massive delays as kerbals from all over the world descended on the space coast with cameras, and Route 77 was clogged with cars of all shapes and sizes, from large and bulky to extremely large and bulky. They came down Central Avenue and pulled into motels and diners and casinos with buzzing neon signs; they lost money, sometimes even at the casinos.

Sunny Kerman was the leader of the Space Coast on launch day, barking orders like "Put out cones at the front gate! Run more lines for the cameras! Put up more speakers in the parking lot! And you," she shouted, pointing at Valentina and the clouseout crew, "launch the rocket!" Then she ran off to meet another hundred reporters as they used their armored tanks-turned-news-vans to shove slow cars off of the highway in front of them.

Jeb and Valentina nodded at each other and joined Wernher and Gene in the truck. Wernher turned on the radio as they drove, and they heard a reporter's voice: "With just over two hours to go before launch, there are thousands of kerbals eagerly awaiting Valentina Kerman's historic flight. In fact, I'm speaking with the flight director now!"

With some dismay, Gene realized that the radio was turned to a classical music station and that the reporter they heard was somehow jogging alongside the van at seventy kilometers per hour, prompting him to roll the windows up, just before they pulled up at mission control, where Gene got out. Then Wernher revved the engine and sped towards the launchpad, where they met Bill and Bob who were, as usual, climbing up and down the scaffolding helping out the team of twelve engineers. Bob held a wrench in his mouth, but he dropped it when Valentina came in. "Hey, Val!"

She grinned inside her helmet and raised her faceplate. "It's great to see you guys are having fun. Call the elevator for me, will you?"

At the top of the launch gantry, the small kicker stage was clearly visible. After its choice of fuel, Bill had named this uprated rocket the Kerosene, and the capsule was still a Sparkler. Valentina pulled herself in and frowned. "It's a lot roomier in here than I thought without Jeb's ego crowding the cabin."

"Hey!"

"Face it- anyone who has your kind of piloting skills has got to have some huge ego."

Bob stepped over. "Are you criticizing my flying?"

Valentina sighed. "Fine. All of you have gigantic egos."

"Nice!"

Jeb smiled and turned to leave, but he paused. "Krakenspeed, Val."

Bill and Bob sealed the hatch of the Sparkler V, which Gene had nicknamed "Mad Cow". With an hour to go until launch, a klaxon sounded, and all of the engineers climbed down from the gantry and found rides back to Mission Control.

Bored, Valentina opened the window and was blinded. Surely Kerbol can't be that bright! Has it gone nova? No, the blinding light outside was the glow of a constant parade of flashbulbs going off. Valentina idly wondered where all of the film was going in an era before digital storage. If she had a window in the right direction, she would have gotten her answer as moving trucks full of film streamed in and out of the gates at the far end of the peninsula.

The CAPCOM on this flight was Franxie Kerman, and as the moment of launch approached they stopped talking so Valentina could listen to the rocket start up below her. First the high-pitched whine of turbopumps and the roar of the launchpad sound suppression system flooding beneath the engines... then a howl as the Kerosene lit up and took flight. Out over the ocean she soared, melting back into the couch as fuel drained from the first stage.

Bang! There it went, fading in the distance as the plucky upper stage took over. She had thought that a solid-fueled insertion stage would have been best, but Wernher worried about how reliable its thrust duration would be- and besides, they needed to get experience with high-altitude engine ignitions.

"Passing the Karman line," Franxie called. "Seventy kilometers... mark. About five seconds left on the burn."

The four small engines on the insertion stage shut down, but Valentina was not yet in orbit. By Wernher's estimate, Jeb's suggestion for the final insertion shaved fifty kilos off of the second stage. Valentina looked out the window, counting down the seconds-

All at once, a flash of light and an intense acceleration, then a boom as the escape tower was jettisoned after giving the Mad Cow its final boost into orbit.

"Franxie... I'm floating in my straps. I think this is space."

There was a lot of cheering in mission control, and Valentina felt happy, too, at least until she heard a heart-sickening Bang! and a red light on her control panel came on.

"Control?" she asked. "Control? Do you read? I have a status report."

"Yes, Valentina go ahead."

Valentina looked out the window and confirmed the signal light in her capsule.

"I think we have a problem. The retrorocket package has been jettisoned and I can see it out my window."

There was silence in Mission Control. Then Gene stood up and cursed for a few minutes. Jeb raised his eyebrows, concerned but not yet worried- about Valentina, that is. He was very scared of the reporters in the press box shouting at him, asking things like, "Is the retrorocket package supposed to detach before it has served its purpose?"

Back in orbit, Valentina was talking to no one in particular. "The only rockets I have left are the RCS vents. I can't fire those at the same time, so they're useless for  maneuvering. That leaves me with-"

She stopped. She imagined approaching a space station in her capsule and yawing to the right. The nose of the capsule would rotate in that direction, but there would also be a very slight translation to the right... and if she waited until the nose of the Mad Cow was pointed away from the station, and cancelled out her yawing motion, she would be accelerating in the same direction. Then she could yaw to the left, and keep the cycle going.

Valentina's eyes widened. "Hey, Franxie... I've got an idea."

After five minutes of explaining the space station thought experiment to Mission Control (Valentina was quite proud of that analogy), Gene leaned back in his chair and brushed his hair back.

"Well?" Bill asked him.

"Well what?" Gene replied. "It's the only thing we've got."

Valentina rolled so two of the RCS vents were facing in the direction of travel and then put her plan into effect. At first, Valentina tried a very rapid back-and-forth motion, yawing left for half a second and then cancelling out with the right, but the quick motion of the capsule was unsettling and she felt like she was wasting a lot of fuel. She switched to long burns and 180-degree rotations, flipping and spinning once or twice a minute; some back-of-the-napkin math told her she would complete this cycle between forty and fifty times each orbit.

After three-quarters of the RCS tank was gone, Valentina stopped the thruster firing. "I'll need some landing estimates for my final descent on the next orbit." On the ground, nerds in white coats were already playing with slide rules to take the three-second, eighty meter per second burn and figure out how long it would take with the RCS vents. They worked together and compared their numbers, but when they chose the fastest of them to run the result back to mission control, he made a mistake.

He moved the decimal point one digit to the left.

When Gene heard the numbers, he didn't think they were wrong, and so he passed them to Franxie, who also agreed with them, and so she gave them to Valentina, who carried out a burn for the duration she was given, flipping end over end.

Jeb chewed on his knuckles during the reentry, listening to Valentina's narration of the events. "Here we go... down below seventy kilometers, I think... Starting to get a little red around the window... A/C kicking in; I hear the fan... Entry interface! Passive stability now, but keeping RCS active anyway... Fifty-five K! I think we're... uh... coming up on the reentry blackout right ab-"

The feed from the spacecraft cut into static, with worried shouts from the press box. "Is that normal?"

"Yes!" Jeb yelled. "If something's not normal, you'll know!"

For two minutes, there was just static in the control room. Then-

"Re-acquired, Control! RCS off, passive stability... transonic now... here comes the drogue! It's still reefed... coming out all the way now... and here comes the main! Oh, it's big and white and orange!"

Jeb turned to Gene and smiled. "I wouldn't mind doing that again." After all, it seemed like a simple problem to solve, and nobody realized that the only thing that had prevented disaster was that Gene accidentally gave Franxie the burn duration with the decimal point moved one digit to the right.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist

[Confused Scientist]

Chapter 16- Southern Central Fame

"Attention passengers, I regret to inform you we're being placed into a holding pattern while three high-priority aircraft land. If you have a connection we will try your best to reaccommodate you on a later-"

All of the passengers on the old Junkers Georgia booed as a Klonkorde and two K-37s descended onto Juno Airfield and taxied over to a quiet area on the tarmac. A few workers milled about taking measurements for a new terminal- to be built at the request of Mortimer to accommodate the business boom that was about to arrive- and staircases were rolled up to each one. Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val stepped out of their trainers and climbed up to the presidential aircraft, which had been nicknamed the Holy Moly. Jeb suspected that the president was particularly proud of that one.

"Thank you for, ah, coming to meet me here at this, er, airport. I would like to, eh, congratulate you, er, astronauts for the, er, ah, great achievements that you have, em, accomplished with the, ah-"

Val and Bob looked at each other.

"Er, rockets. Now, tell me: How does your, em, corporation make money?"

Bill shrugged. "We've got some contracts for testing, and we get endorsements for setting records. But mostly we make money from developing new technologies like the Klonkorde."

"Yes, an, er, terrific plane. But I would like to, eh, tell you something about, er, that."

Jeb raised his eyebrows as the president kept talking. "The next big thing to, er, come from the, eh, KSP is ten years away. That's, ah, at the end of the decade."

"How do you know so much about this?" Val asked. "I mean, you must be busy running the country."

"Not, er, really. I spend most of my, ah, time on a yacht. But I, em, know all of this for, eh, literary convenience. Also your, ah, boy Mortimer told me."

"So?" Bob shrugged. "We can wait to develop the next big thing."

"No, you, er, can't. Take a look at these, ah, pictures."

The president slid some photographs across his desk. "These were taken with, a, eh, spy plane. There's, er, launchpads. My boys did some, ah, digging and found out that, this is, er, a competing company space effort made by, em, the Marketta-Dougheed-Bloeting Company. They call it, er, Munstock."

Jeb frowned. "Big-time companies? They may whip us in the short-term if they build a competitor for the Klonkorde, but we'll still win eventually."

"Yes, but, er, I decided that, ah, the nation needs new, eh, spy satellites. It would be, ah, good if that was all under the same, er, umbrella. So I made a, em, competition: The first, er, space program to land an, ah, kerbal on the Mun before this, eh, decade is out will win enough, er, money to buy the other one. I'll make a, ah, great speech to save my, er, reputation and distract everybody from my, er, ah, secret tax evasion island."

Guards came over to escort Jeb, Bill, Bob, and Val from the Klonkorde. "Your actions will decide the, ah, future of this country. Don't, er, disapoint me."

Edited June 26, 2019 by Confused Scientist