(Pre-Rewrite) Chapter 2: These Are The Voyages...
B9k was not normally a pushy sort of individual. Just that was amazing, if one considered the fact that he was an AI. However, he was always referred to as a member of the crew.
Presently, however, urgency was driving him to ...
“ATTENTION! Vessel approaching warp exit point, all hands to warp transfer stations!” B9k started an exceedingly obnoxious klaxon to awaken any crewmembers that persisted in their slumber. “I repeat, all hands to warp transfer stations!”
Once this message rang out through the newly active intercom, the crew set to work preparing to drop out of FTL travel. All inessential personnel strapped in for any potential jolt that might be experienced, while the essential personnel scrambled and floated over to their consoles. Once there, they to strapped in and awaited orders from their commanding officers.
“This is Commander Jebediah, requesting confirmation from all sections. Are you in position?” Jebediah spoke into the intercom.
“Reactor Control, confirmed!”
“Capcom, confirmed!”
“Navcom, confirmed!”
“Roccom, confirmed!”
“Scicom, confirmed!”
“All sections green, Commander!” Bill started powering up the systems that had been left off for the voyage. “All readouts optimal!”
“Alright. All hands, brace for warp drive power-off!” Jebediah followed his own advice, just as Bill switched off the drive. A sudden blur was seen outside windows that had just moments ago been black. Stars, planets, asteroids, comets all came back into visibility as the ship slowed to what its velocity relative to the planet they were traveling to had been.
Which was still 20 kilometers per second. Way too fast for the planned aerocapture maneuver.
The flight plan from here on out was as follows. First, they fired the engines in a direction that was a combination of retrograde and radial out, to use the navigation terms, using almost 7,000 m/s of Delta-V to do a combination of decelarating the spacecraft to approximately 14 km/s, and lowering the periapsis into the atmosphere at an altitude of 70.5 kilometers above the ground.
They would then deploy the forward aerobraking shields while they retracted the twin “Balka-XL” solar panels attached to the flanks of the ship. The fore shields, when deployed, where 45 meters in diameter. The solar panels when deployed, however, were 2.5 km(1) in length across the ship. As such, the panels are retracted prior to the aerocapture maneuver. Once this was completed, they would re-extend the solar panels, and wait to come back around for one more pass before circularizing at an apoapsis of approximately 850 km. Once there, they would begin Phase 2 of the exploration of the planet.
“Beginning rotation towards maneuver node. Warming up MPD thrusters… Activating Reaction Control thrusters,” Bob said, never once taking his eyes off the controls. “Bi-propellant drain levels nominal.”
“Alright. Execute maneuver in T-minus 10,” Jeb began counting down the time until they would fire the engines for the maneuver. “10,”
“9,”
“8,”
“7,”
“6,”
“5,”
“4,”
“3,”
“2, engine warm-up complete,”
“1,”
“0! All engines firing!” Jeb’s entire body was gently shoved back into his seat as the 1,250 kilonewtons of force from the extremely power hungry engines at the bow. Only about two or three minutes later, the acceleration stopped.
“Maneuver complete, commander,” the voice of B9k rang out.
“Alright. Let’s get oriented towards prograde. Start extending the heat shields. Begin solar panel retraction,” Jeb ordered.
“Yes sir,” Bill and Bob said simultaneously.
“B9k, start a timer for aerocapture initiation. Make sure to make any course or heading corrections prior to the aerocapture. We wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened to the Atlas, now would we?”
“Of course not sir. Timer set,” B9k responded. “Heading locked into Universal Mechatronics Flight Computer.”
“Good,” Jeb said, his voice losing the commanding tone that had made him infamous in the Astronaut Complex. “Attention all hands, this is Commander Jebediah speaking. You may return to your previous activities.”
At this, the crew began to go back to what it was they were doing before the klaxon had rung out. Some returned to the crew relaxation area to play video games, watch the latest episodes of whatever TV show they happened to like, and maybe have lunch considering that it was 11:56 am, going by Kerbin Time(2). The rest went back to their quarters, to do whatever they really felt like doing. Lunch proper would be served at 12:00 pm, with Kirlak Verici(3) having been chosen to cook this week based on how well he had done on Saturday’s lunch.
“Hey, Jeb! What are you going to go do? I’m thinking of playing some games in the game hall,” Bill said, his voice going from its “on duty, doing my job” tone to a more jovial, social tone. “I also heard that they received the newest episode of Doctor Who(4), if you want to watch that.”
“I’m probably going to try and improve my high score in Ace Combat Zero(5), actually. I want to show the others why my nickname during college was Mobius,” Jeb replied, then shrugged. “Who knows, there may actually be a member of this crew who is better at Ace Combat then me.”
“Not likely, Jeb, but whatever floats your boat,” Bob spoke up. He was the quietest of the three brothers, and the least remarkable. While Jeb had been the teenage prodigy pilot (he had beaten the top ace of the Kerbin Defense Force’s Air Corps in a simulator at the age of 20), and Bill the genius scientist with PHDs in most fields, Bob had all but fought his way through engineering school, trying to get his way into the Space Exploration Corps on an engineering recruitment. He succeeded, and Jeb requested him as his second in command.
While Jeb was relatively personable when not on the job or off active duty during a mission, and stoic and determined while on duty, and Bill was slightly neurotic, prone to becoming absorbed in his work as a scientist, Bob was the balanced, personable engineer. As such, when planning maneuvers, they bounced ideas off of each other, resulting in them having a reputation of being utterly brilliant at operating spacecraft.
“Reconvene when the timer goes off?”
“Sure.”
“See you then.”
“Well, let’s see what we can see with the new telescope,” Twilight Sparkle thought to herself as she stood on the balcony of her library home. “I’m really happy I managed to get one of those new telescopes that are normally only available in the Crystal Empire!”
Twilight had recently purchased a special kind of reflecting telescope, which recorded what it saw to an enchanted crystal. The crystal could later be used to play back footage captured during observation. The drawback, however, was the sheer cost of the telescopes, as the crystals used were rare and precious, and the telescopes had to be hoof-made to the buyer’s specifications. Thankfully, Princess Celestia had given her the bits necessary to purchase a telescope from the business that sold them. She had gone for a telescope optimized for stargazing and astronomy.
However, getting it set up and turned on was another challenge altogether.
“Let’s see, so I push this to turn on the recording crystals, and push that to turn them off, but not that because you aren’t supposed to remove the playback crystal while it’s being recorded to. Okay, let’s test that it works as claimed.” Twilight turned the recording function on for about 4 seconds, then turned it off again. She knew what the section of sky she had pointed the telescope at had looked like, so it was a good test of whether it could actually record the sky or not. She pointed it at the projection screen as directed in the user’s manual, and activated the crystal. She also let out a squee of delight as the screen lit up with the night sky she had pointed the telescope at. “YES! It works!”
She quickly went back to the telescope, re-inserted the playback crystal, and started recording. The manual said you could safely record over old footage, and she would take them at their word for it. She looked up, looking for something interesting to look at when she saw something that just should not have been happening.
She saw an unscheduled shooting star. Normally, Princess Luna would give a heads up to most Equestrians when a shooting star was due, about where in the sky it would be, and when it would be visible.
“Actually, that looks more like a meteorite. It’s too big and too bright to be anything else. DEFINITELY worth a look,” she thought as she slewed the telescope to track the, U.F.O(6), as it would come to be called in common terminology. “Wait.... that doesn’t look right. It’s too flat-ish at the front, and definitely too uniform in shape. What the buck IS that?!” Her befuddlement was thoroughly justified, as she had seen meteorites, comets, and shooting stars through her other telescopes, and they were always irregular, rocky objects – simple debris. But this was not irregular in any sense of the word. If anything, it appeared artificial in its uniformity.
“I need to report this to the Princesses.”
“Spike! Need you to dictate a letter!” Twilight turned to walk into the library, turning off the recording and removing the playback crystal. Spike needed to see this as well, and showing it to the Princesses would ensure that they believed her.
“I just hope that this all goes over well...”
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Automatic thumbs up man! Go KSP!
3972786 Thank you, good sir.
3972795
Using it's (contraction for it is) when its (possessive pronoun) should be used. And out of place commas.
Only complaint might be the lack of 'Kerman' as a surname for EVERYONE on the ship
Also- 3.75 meter parts? Are you a KW rocketry or Nova Punch fan, because if you are, I love you even more than I did already. Also: I think the Kerbals really ought to be a bit more comedic than this. Remember the look on on Jeb's face when you first booted up the game and shot him off (without a parachute. We all did that one.)? That screaming, wondrous, completely bewildered look?
Yeah... the Kerbin Space Program, it seems, is much more slapdash than this. But, hey, can't wish for everything, can you? You're doing a great job, and I look forward to future installments!
Of all crossovers possible, KSP seems to be that weird odd one that's uncommon, but within the category of uncommon, is quite notable. And of all KSP crossovers I've seen here (which I can count on one hand), this has probably taken the most unconventional approach. But the changes are, uhh... refreshing.
4.5km is stupidly long though.
Aaaanyways, I really wish I could play KSP right now. Good computer went on the fritz 30 seconds before I was landed on the Mun.
3972882 This is more the RSS, realistic space program type thing than the slapdash space program of most installs. If you don't like that, well, sorry. Besides, I don't like the portrayals of Jeb in the other crossovers on the site. They either make him slightly forgetful, or make him a Leeroy Jenkins-esque "do it first, plan it out later" type.
Also, I am more of the, less comedic, more sciency type when I play. I never shot Jeb off without a parachute. Unless you count spaceplanes.
And if you would point out where these errors are, it would be much appreciated.
3972920
If your curious, my approach is that of a RSS player. Both Equus and Kerbin are about the same size as Earth, with Equus being slightly smaller. I want this to be as realistic as possible for the space program side of it while still not being Earth. I don't like saying that they cram an unrealistic amount of stuff into the spacecraft, or use wormholes or other natural phenomena to get to Equus. I want it to be, at the MOST unrealistic, purely theoretical technology. Not to mention, that distance is so that they can keep the crew quarters and crewed payloads away from the reactors,which are at the front of the ship. This also increases the stability of it's puller design as any flexing has an immediate effect on the center of mass that's more noticeable, which causes it to correct itself faster. Also, the spacecraft has a crew of 120 kerbals, who are NOT crammed into a module with all of the modules at maximum capacity. The kerbals have enough modules to house, for short periods of time, up to 220 kerbals, and life support to supply 200 kerbals indefinetly, resulting in there being plenty of living space and spare power, O2, and food.
I want to like, but all the references to real world stuff and mod packz in the way that you're trying to takes me out of it.
3972993
Since when should alien cultures make sense?
Besides, it could be that it's not their literal surname, but refers to their planet of origin. Which could actually come down to a lesser advanced culture, as surnames as we know them hail from towns, for ease of differentiating bank accounts.
For example, Bob Kerman is from Kerbin, while Bob Dunman is from Duna.