Rutabaga Space Industries

[Rutabaga22]

Rutabaga sat behind the stage, sipping an ice cold Kola. He was about to make an announcement to the world, he was going to start a company, their one goal was to put the first kerbal on Minmus. 

2 years later...

Rutabaga tapped the table as he watched the launch pad on the big screen in his office. After years of development and testing the small kraken launch vehicle was built, containing a small demo payload that would be sent to munar orbit. Rutabaga stood up and slowly walked to the door. It's about time I get to mission control. He thought, walking down the halls.  He went through the the winding halls of the administration building  whistling along to the faint music playing. He opened the glass doors to mission control, on the large screen up front was the Kraken, sitting there majestically.

"when are we lighting this candle?" Jeb asked excited for the first mission. 

"T-10 minutes left until launch, weather is clear, and fuel is loaded!" The flight controller yelled from the back of the room.

Rutabaga sat at his panel, it didn't have any control, but it did have a PC loaded with many different space themed video games. He decided to boot up Human Space Program and mess around in the VAB.  He played for the 10 minutes he had before being interrupted by someone yelling "Launch in T-7 seconds!"
 

Everyone held there breath, silence filling the room, broken at T-1 by someone dropping a pen. The launch sequence began a moment later, the whirr of the turbopumps filled the room, the roar of engines came moments later, and then the rocket lifted off the pad to a loud cheer from everyone in mission control.

The launch was going well, nothing seemed out of place. Suddenly, a loud pop came from the rocket, then a metallic creak, then an engine shut down, then another, then another. What had gone wrong? That was what all of mission control asked themselves at the exact moment. The rocket quickly spun out of control on the yaw axis. 

All the other engines experienced a loss of thrust causing it to fall down as it's thrust to weight ratio fell below 1. It fell into it's own exhaust and heated up to the point that a tank began melting. This lead to an explosion of the tanks and a failed mission.

Morale at the program took a real hit, but everyone was determined to find the issue and fix it.