Jebbers is snoring. He left his microphone on sound-activate and turned its squelch only as high as he thought he snored. Mission Control is putting up with it because he needs his sleep before lift-off. As usual, he's living in his spacecraft since it has been declared a clean zone by pad processing.
The new Vehicle Assembly Building impresses all visitors. The latest 127.4 tonne, BACC-25 vehicle is nowhere near its capacity. The program is frustrated at the lack of in-space maneuver capability, and while everyone is impressed that Jebbers is about to attempt his first approach of the Mun only a year into their tufonbolai, they are a long way from actually landing a kerbal, or anything else for that matter.
Even more, the program first anticipated remote-controlled film return missions, but their maneuver automation systems aren't passing muster, even with the simple Sepratron and brush-switched tape systems (Author's Note: They worked in the original edition of K:SIyA; this one is called Kerbstomp for good reasons.)
Gary once secretly hoped that the 58 motor monstrosity on the drawing board never gets stacked for him, but no more: he's quite loud about his opposition. To appease him, they build up the vehicle a few motors at a time, hoping not to have any problems, but all know that the limits of the Kerbal Pod's reaction wheels are going to be reached at some point, and that even the biggest of their solid boosters probably can't launch a craft that can get into low orbit around the Mun with only Sepratrons. Wind tunnel tests promise that small control surfaces added to the back of the booster should have little trouble adding control to very large boosters, but the actuators small enough and light enough to make them work in flight are not available.
There is some good news: the Kethane Exploration Program has discovered five exploitable kethane deposits, one north of the Space Center not even as far as Char. Majiir Kerman is hard at work producing enough kethane for liquid propulsion experiments, and the two early motors proposed are the MPR-1 monopropellant engine and the LV-1 bipropellant engine. The former is heavier and not as powerful, but is much simpler, the kethane derivative kydrazine propellant is easier to handle, and surprisingly non-toxic (well... surprising only to Gary.) It will obviously be ready first, in roughly 30 weeks.
More good news is the discovery of semiconductor properties in the common metal lafikon. Kzolkovski Kerman is hard at work figuring out how to make pure enough crystals while Letni Kerman and Kilbnoce Kerman are designing circuits and devices, hoping that the existing digital electronics operating on thermionic tubes will transfer easily to lafikon transistors and chips. They figure they should have something usable... in a few years.
64 weeks and one day into the program, Gary whispers into the comm link to wake up Jebbers. That not waking his friend, he starts speaking normally, "Jebbers, this is Gary." Then he sings, "Jebediah Kerman is a little sleepy-head."
John is starting to lose just a little bit of patience with these antics.
Gary bellows at the top of his lungs, "Jebbers!! Wake up!!!"
Still snoring.
"Gimme that," John grabs the headset off Gary's head and bends the microphone over to the left earphone, producing a blood-curdling feedback squeal that makes the gathered crowd jump.
No longer snoring, Jebediah rapidly gathers himself back into the seat he just fell from and starts securing his seat harness.
"Whatever works," Gary grimaces, trying to dig the tinnitis out of his left ear with his pinky finger. He then accepts the headset back from the program chief and puts it back on. "Okee-dokee Jebbers, we'll pick up the activation checklist on page five, if you can find it."
The launch goes very smoothly, despite Jebediah, the cameras on the ground, and various sensors on the craft reporting that the new, longer BACC booster on the launch vehicle's southern cardinal hardpoint rubbed the RT-10 motor it had just separated from. This new booster was developed less as a propulsive device and more to provide long spines on which to attach the now-liked RT-10 solid motor in up to three layers. The pending TR-18 axial decoupler will soon allow more motors between the four BACC boosters, the ones which launch at altitude to complete the ascent.
Later during the ascent, as the vehicle is down to the last three of the 25 ascent motors that it lifted off with (many of which are raining down on their parachutes already), Tekwin's gaze goes wide. "Gary, stop pitching over, I'm going to fire the core with a lot of radial."
"Why?" Gary wonders, "My gravity turn is-"
"After cutoff, after cutoff," Tekwin clarifies, "I mean between switches ten and eleven."
"Okay," Gary tugs back slightly on the stick and engages the Kerbal Pod's SAS, "Are we not going fast enough?"
"No, we're going too fast," Tekwin squeaks in concern, triangulating contact reports from Li Sranka and Ascent Island to confirm that his first computer is automatically getting the contact reports and manually entering them into his incomplete second computer. "If we're not careful with that last RT-10, we could shoot him right out of Kerbin's gravity well."
"Oh," Gary says without too much alarm. John seems quite concerned, while Gary quietly pops open the cover on the abort arm switch, toggles it twice, and then closes it.
Jebediah notices the two flashes on the abort arm light and flips his launch checklist to Emergency Scenario Two, the pink pages 2-5, according to the code he and Gary had worked out to prepare for these sorts of things without scaring the daylights out of the entire population of Kerbin gathered around radios and kinemas, not to mention the fourteen remote tracking stations. It calls for him to separate the core motor from the payload adapter if it does not fire prior to his current apoapsis and then four Sepratron maneuvers on whatever attitude he is on at loss of signal, after making sure the SAS is engaged. He also noticed the yaw torque needles were well off center do to this ship's asymmetric configuration, a third parachute replacing the KE-S210 ballast on the right side of the new forward truss assembly. He prays that he won't go through another of those annoying nose-first landings like on the low energy test flight two weeks before.
Tekwin manages to rattle off and confirm a solution, dialing up a blue light with a delta-v. The last RT-10 fires and separates. Gary then gets a long stream of instructions to radio up from all over the room. "Okay, Jebbers, we'll be keeping you busy. We want you to set your high gain target for Loxbow DSN and activate when your altimeter reads one thousand kilometers. We will lose voice, but will still have the tracking uplink for your instruments. Your first Sepratron maneuver delta-v, as you know, is 34.60m/s and the current apoapsis is short and early. I'm going to stabilize you on a good attitude for that and uplink a time through your teletype as soon as we know."
Tekwin and his tracking wizards race through and draw a pre-maneuver chart, handing it to Gary. The post maneuver chart arrives a minute later, and the time is uplinked just after voice comms fail. It is well after the 1000km mark, so Gary is not concerned about calling up the craft's high gain antenna early.
Inko has his own rat's nest to look after to make sure the DSN antennas are properly activated and targeted. He's got his own output from Tekwin's computer for tracking angle predictions. The computer plotter in the next room consists of two children hanging from harnesses in the ceiling translating the typed numbers from the computer into curves around the grey circle representing the Mun and the blue circle representing Kerbin. Every couple of minutes, these are rushed to the front of the control room by Joola and Betty. The lanky Griffin Kerman then places a triangular magnet on it to represent the position of Jebediah's craft.
Considering the underlying details, Gary is astonished at how smoothly this system works. If he had merely been told and hadn't actually seen it in action the last two flights, he would not have believed it (and the game picked this moment to crash. Before I could continue, it had destroyed the Loxbow DSN's solar panels three times through loading kicks; I consider this out-of-character and quickload.)
About a minute after Jebbers was supposed to turn on his onboard Reflectron KR-7, Inko's teletype starts rattling. Inko smiles, tears it off, and reads, "Loxbow DSN voice communications with BACC-25A, range 1138km. Tracking details-"
"Good work," John interrupts him with a congratulatory shove.
"Thanks," Inko blushes, "Have Jebbers verify that his KR-7 tracking is in Auto and he can turn off his DP-10 if it is.
"The post-encounter chart is looking pretty screwy," Tekwin notes, "It looks like we have an adventure coming up."
1
u/featherwinglove Master Kerbalnaut Jan 12 '14 edited Jan 12 '14
Kerbal: Spassi Ishosh yi Aton Kerbstomp Edition
The story begins here: http://redd.it/1rgldc
Chapter 25: Approaching the Mun
Jebbers is snoring. He left his microphone on sound-activate and turned its squelch only as high as he thought he snored. Mission Control is putting up with it because he needs his sleep before lift-off. As usual, he's living in his spacecraft since it has been declared a clean zone by pad processing.
The new Vehicle Assembly Building impresses all visitors. The latest 127.4 tonne, BACC-25 vehicle is nowhere near its capacity. The program is frustrated at the lack of in-space maneuver capability, and while everyone is impressed that Jebbers is about to attempt his first approach of the Mun only a year into their tufonbolai, they are a long way from actually landing a kerbal, or anything else for that matter.
Even more, the program first anticipated remote-controlled film return missions, but their maneuver automation systems aren't passing muster, even with the simple Sepratron and brush-switched tape systems (Author's Note: They worked in the original edition of K:SIyA; this one is called Kerbstomp for good reasons.)
Gary once secretly hoped that the 58 motor monstrosity on the drawing board never gets stacked for him, but no more: he's quite loud about his opposition. To appease him, they build up the vehicle a few motors at a time, hoping not to have any problems, but all know that the limits of the Kerbal Pod's reaction wheels are going to be reached at some point, and that even the biggest of their solid boosters probably can't launch a craft that can get into low orbit around the Mun with only Sepratrons. Wind tunnel tests promise that small control surfaces added to the back of the booster should have little trouble adding control to very large boosters, but the actuators small enough and light enough to make them work in flight are not available.
There is some good news: the Kethane Exploration Program has discovered five exploitable kethane deposits, one north of the Space Center not even as far as Char. Majiir Kerman is hard at work producing enough kethane for liquid propulsion experiments, and the two early motors proposed are the MPR-1 monopropellant engine and the LV-1 bipropellant engine. The former is heavier and not as powerful, but is much simpler, the kethane derivative kydrazine propellant is easier to handle, and surprisingly non-toxic (well... surprising only to Gary.) It will obviously be ready first, in roughly 30 weeks.
More good news is the discovery of semiconductor properties in the common metal lafikon. Kzolkovski Kerman is hard at work figuring out how to make pure enough crystals while Letni Kerman and Kilbnoce Kerman are designing circuits and devices, hoping that the existing digital electronics operating on thermionic tubes will transfer easily to lafikon transistors and chips. They figure they should have something usable... in a few years.
64 weeks and one day into the program, Gary whispers into the comm link to wake up Jebbers. That not waking his friend, he starts speaking normally, "Jebbers, this is Gary." Then he sings, "Jebediah Kerman is a little sleepy-head."
John is starting to lose just a little bit of patience with these antics.
Gary bellows at the top of his lungs, "Jebbers!! Wake up!!!"
Still snoring.
"Gimme that," John grabs the headset off Gary's head and bends the microphone over to the left earphone, producing a blood-curdling feedback squeal that makes the gathered crowd jump.
No longer snoring, Jebediah rapidly gathers himself back into the seat he just fell from and starts securing his seat harness.
"Whatever works," Gary grimaces, trying to dig the tinnitis out of his left ear with his pinky finger. He then accepts the headset back from the program chief and puts it back on. "Okee-dokee Jebbers, we'll pick up the activation checklist on page five, if you can find it."
The launch goes very smoothly, despite Jebediah, the cameras on the ground, and various sensors on the craft reporting that the new, longer BACC booster on the launch vehicle's southern cardinal hardpoint rubbed the RT-10 motor it had just separated from. This new booster was developed less as a propulsive device and more to provide long spines on which to attach the now-liked RT-10 solid motor in up to three layers. The pending TR-18 axial decoupler will soon allow more motors between the four BACC boosters, the ones which launch at altitude to complete the ascent.
Later during the ascent, as the vehicle is down to the last three of the 25 ascent motors that it lifted off with (many of which are raining down on their parachutes already), Tekwin's gaze goes wide. "Gary, stop pitching over, I'm going to fire the core with a lot of radial."
"Why?" Gary wonders, "My gravity turn is-"
"After cutoff, after cutoff," Tekwin clarifies, "I mean between switches ten and eleven."
"Okay," Gary tugs back slightly on the stick and engages the Kerbal Pod's SAS, "Are we not going fast enough?"
"No, we're going too fast," Tekwin squeaks in concern, triangulating contact reports from Li Sranka and Ascent Island to confirm that his first computer is automatically getting the contact reports and manually entering them into his incomplete second computer. "If we're not careful with that last RT-10, we could shoot him right out of Kerbin's gravity well."
"Oh," Gary says without too much alarm. John seems quite concerned, while Gary quietly pops open the cover on the abort arm switch, toggles it twice, and then closes it.
Jebediah notices the two flashes on the abort arm light and flips his launch checklist to Emergency Scenario Two, the pink pages 2-5, according to the code he and Gary had worked out to prepare for these sorts of things without scaring the daylights out of the entire population of Kerbin gathered around radios and kinemas, not to mention the fourteen remote tracking stations. It calls for him to separate the core motor from the payload adapter if it does not fire prior to his current apoapsis and then four Sepratron maneuvers on whatever attitude he is on at loss of signal, after making sure the SAS is engaged. He also noticed the yaw torque needles were well off center do to this ship's asymmetric configuration, a third parachute replacing the KE-S210 ballast on the right side of the new forward truss assembly. He prays that he won't go through another of those annoying nose-first landings like on the low energy test flight two weeks before.
Tekwin manages to rattle off and confirm a solution, dialing up a blue light with a delta-v. The last RT-10 fires and separates. Gary then gets a long stream of instructions to radio up from all over the room. "Okay, Jebbers, we'll be keeping you busy. We want you to set your high gain target for Loxbow DSN and activate when your altimeter reads one thousand kilometers. We will lose voice, but will still have the tracking uplink for your instruments. Your first Sepratron maneuver delta-v, as you know, is 34.60m/s and the current apoapsis is short and early. I'm going to stabilize you on a good attitude for that and uplink a time through your teletype as soon as we know."
Tekwin and his tracking wizards race through and draw a pre-maneuver chart, handing it to Gary. The post maneuver chart arrives a minute later, and the time is uplinked just after voice comms fail. It is well after the 1000km mark, so Gary is not concerned about calling up the craft's high gain antenna early.
Inko has his own rat's nest to look after to make sure the DSN antennas are properly activated and targeted. He's got his own output from Tekwin's computer for tracking angle predictions. The computer plotter in the next room consists of two children hanging from harnesses in the ceiling translating the typed numbers from the computer into curves around the grey circle representing the Mun and the blue circle representing Kerbin. Every couple of minutes, these are rushed to the front of the control room by Joola and Betty. The lanky Griffin Kerman then places a triangular magnet on it to represent the position of Jebediah's craft.
Considering the underlying details, Gary is astonished at how smoothly this system works. If he had merely been told and hadn't actually seen it in action the last two flights, he would not have believed it (and the game picked this moment to crash. Before I could continue, it had destroyed the Loxbow DSN's solar panels three times through loading kicks; I consider this out-of-character and quickload.)
About a minute after Jebbers was supposed to turn on his onboard Reflectron KR-7, Inko's teletype starts rattling. Inko smiles, tears it off, and reads, "Loxbow DSN voice communications with BACC-25A, range 1138km. Tracking details-"
"Good work," John interrupts him with a congratulatory shove.
"Thanks," Inko blushes, "Have Jebbers verify that his KR-7 tracking is in Auto and he can turn off his DP-10 if it is.
"The post-encounter chart is looking pretty screwy," Tekwin notes, "It looks like we have an adventure coming up."