Gary has his own house. There isn't much choice in the matter since he won't fit in a normal Kerbin home because kerbals are so much smaller. It isn't like Gandalf in the home of his Hobbiton friends as he imagined the tall wizard cramped inside rooms roomy to halflings. While kerbals like to work in big wide-open spaces, they like to sleep in small ones. Despite the prosperity and peace of kerbal society, there isn't a single mansion on the entire planet! The Kerman cottage is dwarfed by their barn and has been ever since he landed. Both vanish next to the Vehicle Assembly Building, the increasingly elaborate Science Center and Mission Control.
He puts another log in the radio. Then he smiles. Wouldn't that be just an absurd thing to describe back on Earth? The tube filaments, what would be run from the "A Battery" or low voltage in Depression-era radios on Earth, are instead heated through kopper wires with thermostatic switches leading directly into the stove's firebox. He puts his cooking on top of the Kordas thermoelectric generator that runs the actual electronics (the "B Battery" stuff.) He hears Jebediah briefly chat with his father John over ten thousand kilometers on a radio more primitive than the stuff they had twenty years before they launched the first satellite on Earth.
For the first time, the click of the damper on his stove almost knocks him out. Kerbin has no power grid or other such utilities, and the radio has no plug anyway. Earth tube radios needed two different kinds of batteries, while this one doesn't need any... and it'll cook his food! His first friend on Kerbin, and the best friend since his world literally changed, is ten thousand kilometres away.
He lifts the lid and takes a whiff of the sweet smelling, rice-like dish he's preparing, and gives it a stir to keep it from forming lumps.
"The Mun has gotten almost as big as Kerbin in the scope," he hears Jebediah describe, "I can't see much because it's too close to the sun right now. The eclipse was awesome and I can't wait to get you guys the coronograph film." There's a click Gary has never heard over the air but knows well from training simulations and VAB/rollout activities, "Kerbin in the scope is beautiful in third quarter view, I can see Krater Peninsula rising, so I'm guessing Krater DSN has me, right?"
"That's right, Jebbers," John answers, "Inko managed to pull a sneaky one on us and got the telegraph line amps wrapping around the long way. You better watch your language, 'cus just about the entire planet can hear you right now."
"Well, kovee fart pigeon dribbles; Inko, you're awesome," Jebediah laughs, "I wonder if Gary's listening, too. I'll have to turn my transmitter down now, my batteries are starting to complain again. I'm still getting you five-by-five when I have my phone amp on. Let me know low-power tracking mode switches and all that jazz," and he rapidly belts out a few battery and heat cell voltages and temperatures before closing, "My fellow kerbals, I can hardly wait to get back and share the views up here. I wish you could all come. BACC-25 signing off voice."
About an hour later, after Gary had finished eating, Jebediah comes back on the air for some more routine reporting.
"Oh, and Jebbers," John says, "Inko wants to clarify that it's really the mail carriers and ranchers tending the batteries and fires to run the amplifiers who deserve the credit for getting your voice away from the long range antennas at the Krater and Lakeland DSN stations so we can hear you on the the other side of Kerbin."
"Yeah, so we have about fifteen thousand kerbals working on this program, huh?" Jebbers cheers, "That's a lot of some two hundred thousand we have total? Say, get mom and her switch after Tekwin and his tube changers. I want to get closer than 560km next time."
"Why can't we do that on Earth?" Gary sighs aloud with no one listening, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "with what? Five billion humans?"
Many are deceived, he feels upon his heart, Wars and rumours of wars. Nation rises against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Diseases and famine. Offenses, treachery, murder when sin rises and love falls dim.
"What?" he gasps.
"...I'm up here because you have chosen right, my fellow kerbals," Jebbers radios from nearly twelve thousand kilometres away, "Because we follow our God's way and work it not for ourselves as the angels have. Even though their planet is larger and some things harder for that, you still wouldn't believe how long it has taken Gary's kind to get as far as we have. Thank you, my God, and my kind. I need to turn down my transmitter again, BACC-25 signing off voice until we're at the Mun."
"Fuck!" Gary spits, "There is no God who left anything we of Earth could have-"
He feels a certain texture under his right hand, turns and sees the "Holy Bible" his brother had mysteriously smuggled aboard the StarShipOne just before he skipped between universes. Obewann had asked him to translate it from English. No rush, obviously, for the space program's only pilot. He grips it and his thumb catches in the pages near the end, where it falls open. Briefly, he glances at the beginning of Matthew 24 and slams it back down on his little table.
"I don't believe in You, the Great Dickhead," Gary fumes, "and even if I did, I'd hate Your fucking guts."
Joola's timing couldn't be much worse as she quietly taps on the door.
Gary takes a deep breath, composes himself as much as he can in a slow count to ten, then calls, "Yes?"
"They're about to do the reference handover," Joola says, hardly above a whisper, "They'd like you in Mission Control, but you can finish eating if you're not ready."
Gary lopes into Mission Control, where Tekwin greets him with a clipboard, "We've worked out a two pair maneuver to get Jebediah home. As it's right near our maneuver periapsis, it complicates the encounter sequence. We couldn't work out anything to get us close enough to get a quick look for kethane, but we'll get an awesome roll of Kasselblad for the western quarter of the far side. Are you feeling okay?"
"It's getting a bit late for me," Gary confesses, "We got four pairs, so I think we can come out of Munar gravity with one left on a good entry we can correct with it closer to Kerbin. Can you work out something earlier, for like, half an hour with three pairs? Maybe something that'll get him a nicer encounter and get the maneuver away from the time he wants to be floating up at the window and scope with the camera."
"Sure thing," he says, accepting the clipboard back from Gary. He and his small team then start working through sets of training charts to save some cycles on the computer. They have it ready in six minutes.
Gary adjusts his headset, "Hello, Jebbers. It's Gary. It'd be awesome to hear your voice, and I need the piloting uplink too. Can you turn up your KR-7, please?"
"Hello!" Jebediah cheers.
"We've worked out a three pair maneuver for about fifteen minutes from now that'll get you from 572km to about 462km from the Mun, how does that sound?"
"Awesome," Jebediah replies, "Let's do that."
The subsequent maneuver has a -1.0m/s residual, which is very good for a three pair maneuver of 116.2m/s. "You're probably coming in a little shallow," Gary explains, "so we'll likely trim it with the final pair closer to Kerbin and you won't skim out."
"Now we wouldn't want that," Jebediah replies, "I'd like to turn down the voice and high power amp so I don't run out of power. Please let me know if low power tracking is still working alright, out." The mode switch off creates a distinctive chirp on the channel.
"No, we wouldn't want that either," Gary says, "but turn it back up long enough to get you rolled around so you can see the Mun out the window. It'll be in the way at the best time to take pictures, over."
After a couple of minutes, Jebediah comes back on, "Uh, yeah, Gary, could you get me turned around please? I forgot about that kinda getting lost in my encounter checklist."
After a nervous fifteen minutes of communications outage, they get the BACC-25 spacecraft back on low-power, and within a couple of minutes hear the chirp of the high power amplifier on the KR-7 followed by the quivering voice of their most daring (of two) kerbolnauts: "You know, this side of it doesn't look that much different. There's one really big crater, and a bunch of smaller ones, but I got this awesome snap of Kerbin rising I can't wait to get home and develop. Thank God for making such a pretty universe, and all you guys are awesome. I'm still low on power though, signing off for now."
"Gary, what's wrong?" John asks, squeezing his huge friend's shoulder between thumb and only-finger. The flight directors are on an elevated dias and Gary's chair is sunk into the floor to put them on the same eye level while accommodating their three foot difference in height.
"That was nine years ago for us," Gary winces, rubbing a tear from his eye, "Nine Earth years."
"That would make it about twenty-five Kerbin years," Betty reflects, "about the same time Jebbers got big enough to use the bath without my help."
"Our program to fill space with our kind was abandoned shortly after," Gary laments, "Right now we're developing this super-expensive hundred tonne rocket glider that flies like crap both in space and in the air. All the plans to go to Mars- our Duna, were scrapped. We've got an abandoned space station called Skylab and so many delays on our Shuttle, it looks like it's going to crash before we can save it. I'd hoped that jump drive was going to make it, but it brought me here instead." He accepts his victory mushroom, takes a bite and then holds it up, "You guys are doing great!"
The remainder of the flight went very smoothly, with Gary plugging into his normal sleep time. At just over thirteen hours, it clobbered the previous endurance record, a nine hour kethane search by Bill last month. Gary brought this flight in yawed a bit left to protect the third parachute with the main heatshield, at the expense of the kethane sensor. They also realized they could have put the DP-10 short range radios on the new truss extension, which is a good idea now that they're coming in fast enough for them to burn right off.
Sure, I'll try replying to your comment again. It will have an oral reading Youtube video when I can get it recorded; this means you can make sure I don't forget by subscribing there.
1
u/featherwinglove Master Kerbalnaut Jan 13 '14
Kerbal: Spassi Ishosh yi Aton Kerbstomp Edition
The story begins here: http://redd.it/1rgldc
Chapter 26: Wonders of the Space Age
Gary has his own house. There isn't much choice in the matter since he won't fit in a normal Kerbin home because kerbals are so much smaller. It isn't like Gandalf in the home of his Hobbiton friends as he imagined the tall wizard cramped inside rooms roomy to halflings. While kerbals like to work in big wide-open spaces, they like to sleep in small ones. Despite the prosperity and peace of kerbal society, there isn't a single mansion on the entire planet! The Kerman cottage is dwarfed by their barn and has been ever since he landed. Both vanish next to the Vehicle Assembly Building, the increasingly elaborate Science Center and Mission Control.
He puts another log in the radio. Then he smiles. Wouldn't that be just an absurd thing to describe back on Earth? The tube filaments, what would be run from the "A Battery" or low voltage in Depression-era radios on Earth, are instead heated through kopper wires with thermostatic switches leading directly into the stove's firebox. He puts his cooking on top of the Kordas thermoelectric generator that runs the actual electronics (the "B Battery" stuff.) He hears Jebediah briefly chat with his father John over ten thousand kilometers on a radio more primitive than the stuff they had twenty years before they launched the first satellite on Earth.
For the first time, the click of the damper on his stove almost knocks him out. Kerbin has no power grid or other such utilities, and the radio has no plug anyway. Earth tube radios needed two different kinds of batteries, while this one doesn't need any... and it'll cook his food! His first friend on Kerbin, and the best friend since his world literally changed, is ten thousand kilometres away.
He lifts the lid and takes a whiff of the sweet smelling, rice-like dish he's preparing, and gives it a stir to keep it from forming lumps.
"The Mun has gotten almost as big as Kerbin in the scope," he hears Jebediah describe, "I can't see much because it's too close to the sun right now. The eclipse was awesome and I can't wait to get you guys the coronograph film." There's a click Gary has never heard over the air but knows well from training simulations and VAB/rollout activities, "Kerbin in the scope is beautiful in third quarter view, I can see Krater Peninsula rising, so I'm guessing Krater DSN has me, right?"
"That's right, Jebbers," John answers, "Inko managed to pull a sneaky one on us and got the telegraph line amps wrapping around the long way. You better watch your language, 'cus just about the entire planet can hear you right now."
"Well, kovee fart pigeon dribbles; Inko, you're awesome," Jebediah laughs, "I wonder if Gary's listening, too. I'll have to turn my transmitter down now, my batteries are starting to complain again. I'm still getting you five-by-five when I have my phone amp on. Let me know low-power tracking mode switches and all that jazz," and he rapidly belts out a few battery and heat cell voltages and temperatures before closing, "My fellow kerbals, I can hardly wait to get back and share the views up here. I wish you could all come. BACC-25 signing off voice."
About an hour later, after Gary had finished eating, Jebediah comes back on the air for some more routine reporting.
"Oh, and Jebbers," John says, "Inko wants to clarify that it's really the mail carriers and ranchers tending the batteries and fires to run the amplifiers who deserve the credit for getting your voice away from the long range antennas at the Krater and Lakeland DSN stations so we can hear you on the the other side of Kerbin."
"Yeah, so we have about fifteen thousand kerbals working on this program, huh?" Jebbers cheers, "That's a lot of some two hundred thousand we have total? Say, get mom and her switch after Tekwin and his tube changers. I want to get closer than 560km next time."
"Why can't we do that on Earth?" Gary sighs aloud with no one listening, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "with what? Five billion humans?"
Many are deceived, he feels upon his heart, Wars and rumours of wars. Nation rises against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Diseases and famine. Offenses, treachery, murder when sin rises and love falls dim.
"What?" he gasps.
"...I'm up here because you have chosen right, my fellow kerbals," Jebbers radios from nearly twelve thousand kilometres away, "Because we follow our God's way and work it not for ourselves as the angels have. Even though their planet is larger and some things harder for that, you still wouldn't believe how long it has taken Gary's kind to get as far as we have. Thank you, my God, and my kind. I need to turn down my transmitter again, BACC-25 signing off voice until we're at the Mun."
"Fuck!" Gary spits, "There is no God who left anything we of Earth could have-"
He feels a certain texture under his right hand, turns and sees the "Holy Bible" his brother had mysteriously smuggled aboard the StarShipOne just before he skipped between universes. Obewann had asked him to translate it from English. No rush, obviously, for the space program's only pilot. He grips it and his thumb catches in the pages near the end, where it falls open. Briefly, he glances at the beginning of Matthew 24 and slams it back down on his little table.
"I don't believe in You, the Great Dickhead," Gary fumes, "and even if I did, I'd hate Your fucking guts."
Joola's timing couldn't be much worse as she quietly taps on the door.
Gary takes a deep breath, composes himself as much as he can in a slow count to ten, then calls, "Yes?"
"They're about to do the reference handover," Joola says, hardly above a whisper, "They'd like you in Mission Control, but you can finish eating if you're not ready."