The XC-2 and the accidental trip around the world

[Wizard Kerbal]

(2 things before this starts- I picture the start of the KSC as 1950, and I think kerbals that do not work at KSC exist.)

The first cirkumnavigation of kerbin was an accident, after world-famous pilot Jebediah wasn't paying attention, and hit the abort button instead of turning up the heater.  Now, even though there wasn't any pilot input, the plane in question, an experimental military cargo aircraft, was stable, and so it continued, until running out of fuel, and krashing into the ocean.

Due to the nature of the Kraft, it wasn't told to the public. Residents that lived near the Dessert Airport saw a strange craft high in the sky. It was, as we now know, a C-2 being transported to the KSC after the last of the retired, obsolete C-1s had been delivered to the graveyard. The flight was nothing special, a climb to cruising altitude, then relax until landing procedures commence, and land at the KSC runway. Easy to handle for any astronaut, who Jebediah Kerman of course was at the time. And he preformed as expected, except when he dropped his muffin and nosed the plane down hard. But all was normal! And then, a bit later, 34 minutes and about 20 seconds into the flight, while closing his eyes and yawning, he went to turn up the heater. But of course, he missed, and pressed the abort button, instantly throwing him out of the aircraft and deploying his chute. This should be an outlier in the whole aircraft crash 3 minutes after takeoff and 8 minutes before landing statistic, but it wasn't. This happened 6 minutes before scheduled touchdown.

Luckily, the air traffik kontroller's inexperience and paranoia paid off. As soon as they saw the plane wasn't following the predicted kourse, instead of radioing in with Jeb, desperately trying to find the "Radio on" button, they thought something terrible had happened, and instantly went into emergency mode, notifying the military their prototype was going to crash into a building, which I shouldn't joke about, lest I get a horde of vengeful amerikans. 

The military, initially panicked their enemies would get access to the prototype, decided to do nothing about it. The plane was close to the equator, far away from the USSW, and anyway, it was at 13 kilometers, cruising safely, until it ran out of fuel, at which point, it would be destroyed. And so, they sent a single Jeep to recover Jebediah in the grasslands next to the KSC.

While the military & KSC's reponse was quite reasonable, the public response was, well, one "misklick" started the popularity of extraterrestrial konspiracy beliefs. 
A lot of cities are close enough to the equator to see a strange, white craft drifting across the sky. And because of the appearance of the C-2, boomerang-shaped front attached to the rear with 1 strut, can look like 2 kraft suspiciously bound together. Instantly, the morning, or nightly news were reporting on, "strange craft seen in the sky, what does this mean?" or "Aliens exist! strange kraft seen in sky!" News krews were happy to get such in-your-face statements. 

And, at the end of it, the XC-2's engines finally cut out, and it rolled to the left before diving into Roswell.
The military was sad to lose a prototype, the KSC lost the military's trust, and Roswell bekame alien kapital of the galaxy, bringing in thousands of tourists and boosting Roswell's ekonomy.

Now, usually i'd be in a place relevant to the story, but the crash site, aircraft graveyard with all C-2s are closed due to KOVID, and I can't interview Jeb while he's on route to Mars.

In case you didn't want to read that, it was how I accidentally did a circumnavigation after pressing EVA and not view, presented in a short documentary-style whatwouldbeavideobuti'mnotthatgoodsoit'sa script, with many fictional aspects to make it cooler and more accurate to the kerbal world. BUT the plane did crash in the desert. NM, USA is a desert, so Roswell probably is too.

The plane in this video is a C-1, but the C-2 looks quite similar. You'll see the shape I described. https://youtu.be/Jl5pUs9uuto

Edited October 5, 2021 by Wizard Kerbal