good news! the funding grant came in and some unfortunate tilders have enrolled in tilde.town's inaugural space exploration program. we've purchased a bit of space on the equator of far away planet Kerbin.

they've set me up with an ssh connection and put me in charge of administering the whole thing. it's flattering but also a lot of responsibility. before we get started there are a few rules which have to be observed: there's no time travel on Kerbin so we'll have to live with any mistakes made. to compensate for this the rewards for launching successful missions have been increased a little compared to other, less-successful, earth-based space programs.

we've been given a basic facility, 10k space credits and a few rocket parts mainly found "by the side of the road". Kerbin is also home to a mysterious chemical compound known colloquially and amongst the science community as "mystery goo". we've set it up in a container so that it can be properly exposed to all the different environments available on Kerbin: land, sea and explosions. understanding how the goo copes under these situations will bring in science which we can invest in new rockets to produce bigger explosions.

below you can see the basic space centre we've got set up.

let's go on a little tour. first stop is the crew quarters (the curved building bottom left) where our tilders eagerly await a mission.

this is our initial crew selection. we have two pilots and two engineers. pilots will help us a lot early on as we have to rely on manned missions and their skill handling the craft will make flying them a lot easier. engineers are less useful as their main skill is repairing things. unfortunately when things go wrong they tend to go wrong beyond repair.

it's a little disappointing to start with no scientists as we're going to want to get as much science as possible to begin with and scientists boost the amount each experiment brings in. we'll have to save up for our next crew member which will cost an entire 131,000 space credits!

next up on our tour is the little building in the top left. this is where we can accept contracts. contracts give us space credits which we can spend to take on more and more complex contracts. they occasionally give science too.

we accept the contracts to launch a vessel and do some science as these should be pretty straight forward to begin with.

there are also a bunch of contracts already accepted which will generate some easy starting cash.

the three speed records should be pretty easy to get.

last stop on the tour is the big building in the middle. this is the vehicle assembly building (VAB) where we'll be spending most of our time and doing most mistakes.

we start with a few of the most basic parts and fling them together into a basic rocket design.

there's a lot going on here but we can safely ignore most of it for now. the rocket consists of four parts, from top to bottom:

parachute - the craft contains a parachute which will slow its descent back to earth so that nobody has to die during this mission.
mk.I command module - the command module is the basic mk. I single-occupant model. the command module is pretty amazing since it contains its own life support, electric supply and reaction wheels. the reaction wheels will allow us to control to craft during flight. we've also added traditional tilde.town livery to the craft.
mystery goo container - we'll take some mystery goo wherever we go and observe how it reacts.
RT-5 "flea" solid fuel booster - the flea is the most basic rocket available. it's a solid fuel booster which means a couple of things: first, when you start it, there's no stopping it until its fuel runs out. this can be very bad. second, it comes with an engine built in so we don't have to worry about adding one separately. the flea won't get us very far but it should get us up off the launchpad.

It'll cost 2022 to launch the craft which isn't bad. we'll recover most of the parts (obviously except for spent fuel) so we can make up some cash that way too.

below you can see the first rocket ready to fly. we've called this class of rocket the Untitled Space Craft because to be honest I totally forgot to give them some kind of rad name. we'll sort that later.

our pilot for this mission is the indefatigable ~nclm. their page looks really cool. definitely love the title. unfortunately it looks like they haven't checked in since december '14. if you're reading this ~nclm, come back! I'm going to blast you into space.

it's a cosy fit in the command module. mission control (located safely well away from the launchpad) crackle in over the intercom: "~nclm, you've really made the grade."

dang this is so tense. the first ever launch out of the tilde.town space centre. we've all put a lot of work into this and everyone's hoping it just goes so well.

later ~nclm would struggle to describe the mix of feelings they were experiencing right at this moment. fear and excitement, certainly, but something else beneath that. is it hope? hope that their actions can bene

1 BLASTOFF

shiiiiiiiiii

the Untitled Space Craft I hits the boosters and almost immediately squirls north towards the VAB. ~nclm hits the emergency abort button to send out a grey alert. unfortunately the button isn't connected to anything because we haven't scienced abort buttons yet.

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

it seems that the designers at the VAB (me) have made one of the most basic errors: they've (I've) made the parachute trigger at the same time as the rocket. the rocket launches, the parachute immediately deploys and the craft gets yanked over by the drag generated by the open chute.

this is due to staging. staging is how different parts of the craft operate at different times. this is vital so that we can have the engine fire and then, when it's burned out, activate the parachute. because the engine and the parachute shared a stage for this rocket, they both activated at the same time and resulted in the death squirl seen above.

the rocket twirls uselessly just a few meters above the space centre. there's nothing to do but look on horrified as the flea booster burns through its fuel. after a few terrifying seconds it's over and the Untitled Space Craft I is descending serenely back to the ground.

the rocket touches down gently just outside the VAB. a shaken but otherwise unharmed ~nclm resists the urge to completely abandon the death craft and instead remembers their training and performs the science experiments attached to the rocket.

we observe the goo (scientists would later describe its behaviour as "identical to in labs 100m away") and get ~nclm to fill in a brief questionnaire about their experience. I won't share the contents of the report since it contains some things said in the heat of the moment which I don't feel reflect well on either me or ~nclm. some of ~nclm's snark is captured below.

~nclm poses for the press shot outside the VAB.

rather than wait for the rescue crew to turn up, ~nclm makes their way back to the crew quarters to have a nice cup of tea to steady their nerves.

the exercise wasn't a complete waste however! we recover the craft and ~nclm, bringing in a refund in the launch cost and some valuable emergency situation experience for our pilot.

we also get valuable liquid science which we rush to the research labs (the bottom right building in the space centre)

with our new science we unlock a couple of new nodes on the tech tree. we'll take a look at the new items next time.

you can also see that we've successfully completed our first couple of contracts. next time we'll try to stage a rocket properly and smash that speed record.

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