First Steps

15 days before the first Launch

“As you all know, we have none of the plans for rocket parts we once had. Before we escaped from Kerbin, we all would have turned away from this challenge. But we have no option to do this if we want to achieve once more what our species has achieved on Kerbin. This time we do a different approach however. Our ancestors might have strapped themselves in Rockets, demonstrating a ‘safety is irrelevant’ attitude. I have done this too, over and over. As of now, the problem here is: we are less than two hundred Kerbals currently. We would need a thousand years or even more to be even able to do that again. This time however, safety is important. Our first launch will, because of those reasons, not be manned. We have developed “Sounding Rockets”, small, solid-fuel-boosted probes automatically controlled. We think it is safer that way. Safer for Kerbalkind. For Kerbalkind! For science! For progress!” Jeb looked at Bill, the current lead engineer. “What’s the matter?” “We’ve got another problem. We haven’t got big enough facilities to build what we are used to.” “Are you able to build small atmospheric probes? The engines we have aren’t big enough for orbit. And we only have very limited control over our probe once it has launched. Staging is the only thing we’ll be able to do anyway.” Bill smiled at those words. Kerbals liked to build those massive spaceships, but they could build small too. In fact, they had been mastering the art of building small a good while ago.

The first Launch

“three,two,one,Lift-off! We have Lift-off!” The Sound of Gene, Director of Rocketry and Aerospace Missions, was heard by everyone in the room. They had launched what Bob had called a ‘Sounding Rocket’ in his speech to the public. Those were small, relatively cheap rockets designed to gather some data. The Gael Atmospheric Probe I (GAP I) in particular had got a simplistic and very kerbal design. Static fins simply strapped on the outer booster shell, solid-fuel boosters with built-in decouplers to lift the payload off the ground and no control but staging. This was due to the fact that they neither had other fuels nor engines for those. It had got some, albeit limited battery storage stored in standard AA Batteries. The Parachute was, at best, a roundish thing designed for ‘emergency’ plane droppings (or fearless plane jumpers, e.g. Jeb).

As the rocket shot into the sky(and I cannot speak of ‘launching’ anymore when the Launch TWR is >5, might have overdone it), the Staff at Mission control looked closely to their monitors. Luckily, the data they got on that was fairly accurate. Staging got done pretty well, and the rocket, despite the lack of steering, eventually reached Apogael at about 13 km. This was the time the probe was told to log the science data found in the probes. Landing, albeit criticized later as unsafe by some, was done perfectly too. On purpose, the full-open Altitude had been set to a hundred metres above ground only, as the probe would, by then, be slow enough to not need 300 metres for full opening.

Everyone in the viewing room clapped their hands when splashdown happened. Recovery was smooth too, and so, the mission delivered the first science data for the space program. But nothing was ready yet, and so more GAP Missions would follow.