The Log Entries of Ronney Kerman

[TheDataMiner]

The fallowing is a transcript of the Ronney Kerman's audio log entries during the Ambassador 5 mission.

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LOG ENTRY 1 MET: 002:04:53

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The guys back at KSC have been bugging me for weeks to make log entries every day. I don't like it but I guess there's not much else to do, so here we go.(a little muffled) Hey, Tomkin where should I start? (Faintly) Tell um' how you got here, from the very beginning.(Back at full volume)Well, you heard what he said, so i'll start from the very beginning. My full name is Ronney M. Kerman but I go by Ronney. I never really had too much interest in the space program as a kid; sure, I thought it was pretty cool when Jebidiah first stepped onto the Mun or when Bob landed on Minimus but my interest faded after a few days. What really got me excited was Pilkin's big discovery.

He had been looking for planets outside of our solar system for years when he finally found one, a gas giant, like Jool, but when he did the calculations he found that it was the size of the entire sun! Other scientists rushed to confirm his findings and they did, since then, 8 more gas giants have been found, all as big or bigger than the Sun. And that's what got me interested in the space program, the fact that our solar system was somehow special, that we haven't found anything in the universe like it, that's what fascinated me.

Back when I first heard it I was still in the Air Corps, as a fighter pilot. I applied for the job as a kerbonaught and got it. It's been a long struggle, but after 3 shuttle flights and a 5 month stay at the space station I managed to work my way up to the elite rank of kerbonaughts and I was selected to pilot this mission to Dres on the first manned interplanetary spacecraft ever built, the Ambassador 5. Yesterday my crewmates and I launched it into orbit and just 5 hours ago we left Kerbin orbit and left for Dres. That brings us into the present, i'll make another entry tomorrow, it's not as if I have much else to do. Ronney Kerman signing out.

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LOG ENTRY 2 MET: 003:09:14

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It's been a day since my last log entry and already I can start to feel the boredom set in. I've never been this far from Kerbin before and tomorrow we’ll break the record for farthest kerbal away from Kerbin. since yesterday Kerbin’s shrunk down from dominating the sky to being not much more than a small, bright dot in the sky.

At least I have my crewmates to keep me company. I've known Tomkin for years, he was the Science Specialist on my first shuttle mission and commanded the Space Station for two of the months I was onboard. Tomkin also commanded a Minimus mission and has landed on the Mun three times. He was selected to be the Mission Commander for the Ambassador program as well being the Orbital Science Specialist because he’s had the most experience out of all of us.Over the years we’ve become friends and though we don’t always see eye to eye on every issue we can generally put our differences aside.

Danfred is another matter, I barely know him, We've never been on a mission together and the few times I met him during training he didn't talk to me much, we only communicated enough to get our training missions done. Back at the Complex I asked some of the Kerbonaughts he served with about him. They all came up with pretty much the same response, that he’ll get the job done but he’s just not the social type. I heard that he was a sergeant in the army until he was injured in combat during the war in the Northern Mountains. That’s probably just rumor, but I do know for a fact that he got a degree in geology before he joined the space program. He’s been on both the Mun and Minimus before he was selected to be the Geologist for this mission. I’ve haven’t gotten to know him much so far but, well I've got plenty of time.

KSC is telling us that we’re big news back on Kerbin and to expect a televised interview in a few days, before the communications lag gets too long. The president might even talk to us! Being a kerbonaught definitely does have it’s perks. Other than that, not much has been going on, we've been performing routine check-up’s on the hardware, taking pictures and calibrated our sensors. To keep us sane, before we launched we all got tablets full of books and movies to pass the time, i’ll definitely be needing it. hopefully, my next entry will be more exciting. Ronney Kerman signing off.

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LOG ENTRY 3 MET: 004:12:25

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Exciting doesn't even begin to describe today. KSC delivered on their promise, We were on live T.V. on pretty much station on Kerbin. Director Kenner sent us a few popular questions from social media and as we were in the middle of answering them all we got a guest. The President of the Kerbal Union himself! I can’t remember exactly what he said but it went something like this:

You men are doing something no Kerbal has ever done, go beyond the confines of our own small world and to another far away. You’re sacrifice and commitment has made your country and all of kerbalkind proud. I wish you good luck on your journey.Tomkin thanked him and said he was honored and so were Danfred and I. The President hung up and after recovering, we went on to finishing the rest of the questions. The broadcast ended and we were just sitting there in shock thinking did that really just happen?

At least that’s what Tomkin and I were thinking, I don’t know what Danfred was thinking, during the broadcast he only answered two out of our 15 questions and both quickly and reluctantly. I don’t think he likes the attention much, but I honestly don’t have a clue. He might just be the hardest kerbal to read and even after three days of living with him in a confined space he still hasn't said anything to me other than the bare minimum to perform our duties. Believe me, I’ve tried to talk to him, tried to get him to tell me about himself but all he comes back with is the same response: does it matter? it’s infuriating! I’ve talked to Tomkin about him. He says that Danfred just has a laser focus on the mission and that he considers anything else to be extraneous. maybe, but even if he’s right, after nine months with nothing else to do, I’m sure he’ll crack. Looks like Tomkin just turned off the lights, it must be bedtime, so I’m gonna have to wrap up this log. I think I have a copy of the broadcast on my hard drive, i’ll see if I can include it in the log folder sometime soon. Anyway, this is Ronney Kerman, signing off.

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LOG ENTRY 4 MET: 006:7:24

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It’s been about two days since my last log entry, nothing noteworthy happened yesterday and I was considering not making a log today but I figured that I could take the opportunity to talk a little about the mission and how it started. I guess it was first dreamed up about two years ago. It was the ten year anniversary since KSP’s last big accomplishment, landing on Minimus, sure every once in a while some Kerbonaughts landed on the Mun or Minimus but no new ground was being broken aside from probes that occasionally went to other planets and moons. In short, people were tired of the same old space program, they wanted something new. with all this pressure to do something big with the manned exploration, astronomers made a discovery, the planet Dres was lining up to be the closest to Kerbin ti would get in 100 years. It completely changed the direction the space program was headed in, Instead of going to Duna, Dres would be our next target. for the next two years the engineers at KSC worked around the clock to build a rocket that would get us there and back in time for the launch window. The old Mun lander designs were beefed up a little and a whole new command and service modules were created to get us there. The final design was huge, double the size of the mun rockets. In fact, a whole launch pad was built just to fit it on top.

After that, well, you know the rest of the story. Time to get back to the present. Other than the routine, there is something I forgot to mention. Yesterday, Mission control sent us some new software, the Real-time Audio Recorder or RAR for short. It’ll let us record audio from our spacesuits or inside the command and lander modules as events happen and send the data back to the hard drive in our central computer. It’ll probably be useful in the future, considering that tomorrow live communications to KSC will be impossible, the lag’s just too much to carry any instructions or conversation. that’s about it, i might make another entry tomorrow if anything goes on. Ronney Kerman, signing off.

Edited February 9, 2014 by TheDataMiner
Log entry 4 added

[TheDataMiner]

Please feel free to give me suggestions and criticism, I need it

[NASAFanboy]

I suggest you work on grammar and spelling a little, but otherwise, its actually pretty nice for a starter.

May want to have the plot start to revolve around his adverntures in the astronaut program, and keep going after that.

[TheDataMiner]

I suggest you work on grammar and spelling a little, but otherwise, its actually pretty nice for a starter.

May want to have the plot start to revolve around his adverntures in the astronaut program, and keep going after that.

Yeah, I quickly scrawled this out on an iPad, I'll correct it right away.

The story is going to be only about this one mission, this first log is more of a prologue than a chapter.

[TheDataMiner]

New Entry added!

[TheDataMiner]

And another!

Please comment, I really want your thoughts on this and advice on how to make it better.

Thanks!

[KSK]

And another!

Please comment, I really want your thoughts on this and advice on how to make it better.

Thanks!

The story itself is looking good. Nice mix of characters, a bit of background for Ronney and plenty of scope for excitement and adventure on the journey, or alternatively, plenty of time for Ronney to fill in more of the background to the mission, if that's what you have in mind. There's already one interesting question to answer - why Dres for the first interplanetary mission and not Duna for example?

I like the diary format too!

Where you could improve is in the presentation. Nothing major, just using a couple more paragraphs and putting speech in quotation marks would make it easier to read. Purely as an example (feel free to ignore)

The guys back at KSC have been bugging me for weeks to make log entries every day. I don't like it but I guess there's not much else to do, so here we go.

"Hey, Tomkin where should I start?"

"Tell um' how you got here, from the very beginning."

Well, you heard what he said, so i'll start from the very beginning. My full name is Ronney M. Kerman but I go by Ronney. I never really had too much interest in the space program as a kid; sure, I thought it was pretty cool when Jebidiah first stepped onto the Mun or when Bob landed on Minimus but my interest faded after a few days. What really got me excited was Pilkin's big discovery. He had been looking for planets outside of our solar system for years when he finally found one, a gas giant, like Jool, but when he did the calculations he found that it was the size of the entire sun! Other scientists rushed to confirm his findings and they did, since then, 8 more gas giants have been found, all as big or bigger than the Sun.

And that's what got me interested in the space program, the fact that our solar system was somehow special, that we haven't found anything in the universe like it, that's what fascinated me. Back when I first heard it I was still in the Air Corps, as a fighter pilot. I applied for the job as a kerbonaught and got it. It's been a long struggle, but after 3 shuttle flights and a 5 month stay at the space station I managed to work my way up to the elite rank of kerbonaughts and I was selected to pilot this mission to Dres on the first manned interplanetary spacecraft ever built, the Ambassador 5. Yesterday my crewmates and I launched it into orbit and just 5 hours ago we left Kerbin orbit and left for Dres.

That brings us into the present, i'll make another entry tomorrow, it's not as if I have much else to do. Ronney Kerman signing out.

Hope this helps!

Edited February 3, 2014 by KSK

[TheDataMiner]

Thank you KSK! I definitely will take your advice but I still haven't mastered BBcode.

Sorry about the wait, log entry four was just added I'll try to make more timely updates in the future.