MISSION ONE: Sub-Orbital Launch So here we go - let's see if we can successfully launch a rocket into the upper reaches of the atmosphere and get the guys back alive. By proxy, this is the first thing most people attempt in the game anyway since the chances of your initial rocket being capable of reaching orbital space are very slim. It's all about the testing - getting higher and higher, an extra fin here and another fuel tank there - until your continual improvements get you where you want to be (spinning around a big rock which, in turn, is spinning around a giant hydrogen explosion.) Baby steps are essential in this game, especially for me since I'm not allowed a free pass if my crew die on the job. With this in mind, I strap them onto the biggest fuel tank I can find with a thruster engine powerful enough to blast half the population of Kuala Lumpur into deep space, let alone get my three little fellas a few hundred feet off the ground.
In fairness, this is actually quite a safe set up since there's very few parts which can fail on me. Engine, fuel tank, my Kerbals' capsule and a decoupler which can separate the explosive stuff from the stuff I don't want exploding. It probably won't get very high - despite having loads of fuel, I would need loads and loads and loads of fuel to get into the upper atmosphere. But that's fine. I don't want to break any records and this stage, just go up then down (in roughly that order.) I feel reasonably optimistic as I head out to the launch pad, while my Kerbals are brimming with... well, not confidence as such, more of a 'gormless contentment'. It's a sunny day at the launch site and not a single cloud in the sky (there never is.) At the touch of the space bar, everything will ignite and we'll be heading skyward. I give myself a verbal countdown, which is a bit unnecessary since it's just me sitting in my office playing a game. I do, however, manage to do a pretty good staticky-voice-over-loudspeaker impression. Nice one. As before, I'll give you a blow-by-blow account of what transpires over the course of the mission before sharing a bit of video footage. Once I fire the main engine, the following happens: 1) Everything goes wrong. And here's the link to the video. If you're not familiar with the game, all that looks pretty innocuous even if I did bail out quite soon. In reality, it was a pretty hairy situation indeed. Because I stupidly put the thruster up to full throttle before igniting the engine, the rocket blasts upward with an incredible amount of acceleration. Unfortunately, I didn't make it quite aerodynamic enough to handle such teeth-rattling speeds and the whole stack banks right. Hard. I frantically jam on the controls to try and straighten her up but to no avail (watching it back I don't know why I didn't kill the throttle which would have solved a lot of problems.) I don't know what direction the rocket wants to ultimately go. Vertically down, I fancy. But rather than wait to see what it feels like doing, I attempt to decouple the capsule and get the guys back to terra firma the safe way. Ack. The decoupler is broken. I frantically eject the parachute and in a stroke of blissful luck, the drag on the parachute pulls the capsule away from the rocket (narrowly avoiding being incinerated along the way.) I wouldn't have been surprised if the sudden drag ripped the parachute off completely but thankfully it holds and my guys float to safety while the rocket goes off on a high-speed jolly in some random direction. The second launch, with a few modifications, goes a bit better - I manage to get to about 10,000 meters - but the ultimate results are the same and I lose control of the rocket. No issues with the decoupling this time though, which is inspiring.
I run out of fuel before making a circumnavigation of the globe, but the trajectory mapping looks pretty good - I set off from the Africa-shaped continent on the right and the systems are suggesting I'll reach an ultimate height of about 200k before coming down near the coast of the... er, other-shaped-continent.
