Year 4, Day 235, Hour 3, Min 30, Sec 12
Low atmosphere, Kerbin
Pegasus 9 SSTO
The two turbojet engines of the Pegasus pushed the majestic plane higher and higher into the atmosphere, breaking records, the sound barrier and several windows in the process. The temperature of the plane outside was well below freezing even though kerbals would think the friction would heat it up. No, they weren't going that fast...yet. Inside the glorious piece of Kerbal engineering, the three Kerbinauts were having a great time laughing over what they had just done.
"Jeb, you timed that perfectly!" exclaimed Bill.
"Yeah! You missed the tower by millimeters, I was almost pressing the abort switch." said Bob
"Guys, honestly it wasn't that big of a deal. I do this stuff daily." Jeb replied to the two others.
"It was still pretty cool though." said Bill.
"Yeah, it was alright." Replied Jeb.
The plane was ascending at a steady rate of 30m/s making the time until the ignition of the main rocket motor about 12 minutes away. This didn't stop Bob from getting out of his chair and heading to the back of the cockpit to grab a nutrition bar from the cabinet. This was breaking protocol. Leaving your chair during the accent of a shuttle in any state was very dangerous. Jebediah new this very well and decided to play a prank on Bob, with the massive space-plane.
"Hey Bob, you really shouldn't be breaking protocol like that. You know how the public relations guy at the Administration building gets, right?" he asked in a polite manner.
"Look I'm hungry, and don't use any of this 'protocol' business on me. You are the definition of broken protocol." he replied with a unamused face.
"It's just that we're coming up to 10000m where the tower warned us about turbulence." Jeb said.
"Look, it's probably passed by now anyway... and why are you telling me this anyway. You're not nearly this considerate in a dangerous situation." Bob said, intrigued. After realizing he had been almost been caught, Jeb threw the plane down from flying above the horizon at 20 degrees to negative 10 in less than a second. This caused the plane to feel -4 Gee's throwing everything on the ceiling at 4 times its own weight. Bob flew up to the ceiling and smashed his head off the hatch to the outside world and it almost opened, which would have exposed the crew to about -56°C. After a mountain of swearing from Bob and laughter from Bill and Jeb, Bob finally got back in his chair and started having a go a Jeb.
"Why would you do that, I could have broken my neck!"
"I didn't do anything, there was a thermal we hit, causing the plane to drop in altitude very dramatically." Jeb said in a sweet voice. "You wouldn't have hurt yourself If you didn't break protocol." That last remark sealed the deal for Bob and was almost about to throw a shoe Jeb's way when Bill turned around with some good news.
"Well guys, we're about 30 seconds away from ignition of the LV-45 so strap in, we only shut it down in a dire emergency or the burn is complete, got that. There is only 1 ignition coil in it so any mess ups and that's it for a week. You guys got all that?" After a few nods from the rest of his crew members, he commanded Jeb to slowly lower the power on the turbojets when he ignited the motor. They could still harness a small bit of thrust from the jets at a lower power even with the ever thinning atmosphere.
"On my mark." Bill said. "Three...Two...One...MARK!" Simultaneously, Bill flicked the ignition switch for the liquid rocket motor and started throttling up the second throttle lever whilst Jeb slowly lowered the turbojets power. The sequence went perfectly. With the high training and experience of the crew, the change of power was almost unnoticeable. Whilst all this was happening, Bob was sitting at the back of that cockpit checking the fuel pumps and he turned and asked...
"How long until the switch?"
"Are you deaf?" Was his response from Bill
"No, why?"
"Didn't you notice the slow increase in Gee's, the spooling down noise of the engines or, I don't know, Me shouting MARK FAIRLY LOUDLY!?!"
"Apparently I didn't." said Bob. Bill and Jeb were lost for words. They continued their accent through the different layers left of the atmosphere, slowly increasing their apoapsis until it read 115000m (The peak height of their sub-orbital trajectory). After the main engine was emptied of fuel and they were free of the atmosphere, they were weightless.
"Ahh...this never gets old." Bill remarked. The other Kerbinauts nodded causing them to spin slightly. They all laughed about for a bit because it was roughly 20 minutes until they had to activate the RCS thrusters. They were having a great time, the best of friends having fun and laughing...in space.