Unknown Heights

After the success of GAP I, the GAP II Satellite, later renamed to GSOP I (Gael Sub-Orbital Probe I), and Desmond’s crazy plan for GSOP II, were launched quickly. While GSOP I was reaching impressive heights, again stabilized in atmosphere by its spin, GSOP II overshot the target by quite a bit.

GSOP I, built upon GAP I, had a carefully tuned thrust to be much more efficient than the first launch.

The probe had the same Scientific Instrument Modules(SIM Configuration) as GAP I, but an additional lower .625m SRB Stage. “How much?” “fifty thousand, maybe sixty.” Desmond disagreed with this. “I bet a hundred and fifty.” The probe would be well above even Desmond’s bet, being just short of 200 kilometres.

Desmond then told the Mission Planning Department: “I’ve got another probe. This one has the other Sounding Science Instruments and definitely won’t be short of a million metres. You should set the parachute to deploy when safe before roll-out.” “That is luckily default here.”

GSOP II was launched minutes after the landing of GSOP I. With a core out of 13 XL-Types, instead of 16 in a former attempt of Desmond, this was the heaviest rocket ever launched off Gael, despite not for long. The core led to a massive increase in Apogael height while keeping the Part Count low. Meanwhile they had done an upgrade of the Launchpad to accomodate for future missions.

"I said he is crazy.” “He may be, but this is true Kerbal beauty. Jeb would approve.” “As always, what is the height bet, guys?” Jeb: “five hundred kilometres, maybe six at best.” Bill: “That’s two thousand at least!” Desmond, not as optimistic as Bill, but also not as pessimistic as Jeb, gave a bet of one thousand.

After the Recovery of GSOP II, Mission Operator Darkin came to the conference. “We have recorded your bets, and I have good as well as bad news. The bad ones: you were all way off. the good ones: we had Apogael at over five thousand kilometres.”

Real science happened in the Manned Flight Category though. It was a real pain to get Bill’s approval. He wanted to have the rocket as safe as possible while having enough ΔV to get into low Gael Orbit. In the End, they agreed on a payload with a command pod, a parachute, a heat shield and a service bay with SIM 4-Goo-4-Temp (4 Goo instruments as well as 4 temperature readings), altogether twelve parts with a mass of 1.56 tons. The final launcher had three Hammer-Types fine-tuned to fifty percent thrust, a Thumper-Type on full thrust to go up, and a LF/O Stage with a LV-T45 to insert into Orbit and to initiate Re-Entry.

The Craft, named Gael I, and flown by Jebediah, known to have flown various Duna and Jool missions, and even, by now four hundred years ago, attempted a Grand tour, slowly made its way up into the sky.

“Thumper flameout. Separating Boosters.” “Separation confirmed.” The Thumper-type got separated without problems, but despite the low Apogael of about 32.5 km he waited until half a minute before Apogael before firing the Swivel horizontally. The ship kept burning fuel in that direction until he was safe to get out of the Atmosphere. The red glow of the ship made him rather laugh than be terrified. “What do you laugh?” “Red hot Air!” “Wait, already in reentry? That was fast!” Desmond tipped at the back of Darkin. “What’s up?” “Erm… he’s ascending into space at more than two kilometres per second total speed.” Darkin was shocked, but Jeb liked it. he had been flying that fast for hundreds of years. He knew what to do and eventually inserted into an orbit of about 91 km x 306 km to collect space science. Half an Orbit later he burnt just a little bit of his reserves to lower the Periapsis to 45 km. this would bring him down, especially as he fired the Engine once again at forty-eight kilometres, getting a sub-orbit of 80 km x 20 km. ‘Red hot air, once again. I like it’, he thought. As the ship had a natural tendency to point retrograde, he did a shutdown on the SAS controls, looking at the screens rather amused.

Meanwhile at KSC, Bob looked at the screen, terrified by the red hot Air burning through the ablative materials at the back of the ship. He took a deep breath and was glad Jeb had made it out once again.

Inside the Gael I, Jeb reported to the Mission control: “Seven thousand. Deploying Parachutes.” “Deployment confirmed. Do the remaining experiments. Should be two left.” “Copy that, doing the last two Experiments.” A few minutes later, he landed in one of the Oceans. After recovery, he would give a report about the mission to get everyone happy and get into the Piloting Area again. There would be more missions to fly. Bigger ones.