Jebediah Kerman and the Mission to Duna
"Throttle to full, engage SAS module, engage RCS thrusters," Jebediah said calmly, laying supine as the crew prepared for liftoff.
"10, 9, 8, begin ignition sequence, 5, 4, 3, start burn, 1, blast off!"
The massive rocket slowly lifted off the ground, straining under the intense weight of its payload.
"Liftoff! I repeat, we have liftoff!"
Jebediah looked at his crew. The scientist, Bob, was calm and collected, as always. His brave co-pilot, and also the one responsible for going down to the surface of Duna once they arrive, Valentina was having the time of her life much like Jeb himself.. However, there was one member of his crew that did not look amused, and that was the engineer, Bill. His caterwauling was barely drowned out by the roar of the engines. 'He's a great engineer, absolutely brilliant,' Jeb thought, 'if only he weren't such a poltroon.' And then there was Jeb himself. A world-renowned pilot, he has flown almost every mission the space center has required. As owner of Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard and Spaceship Parts Co., he not only flies the rockets, he makes them. Of course, the rocket he was now piloting, the Kraken, was made mostly out of parts from the big corporations like Rockomax and Kerbodyne. His humble little business was a mere adjunct to the effort, providing only a few parts. His parts were affordable but not powerful enough to supply this mission. They were going to Duna, the red planet. Valentina was going to pilot the lander down to the surface with Bob, where they would stay for two weeks gathering data before heading back up and rendezvousing with the main rocket to take them home. It would be a tricky maneuver, and if they failed, they would not get another launch window for over 2 years.
The sonic boom thundered as the rocket shattered the sound barrier, snapping Jebediah from his reverie. As he woke, he saw the complex liturgy of the ascent procedures well underway.
"Approaching Kerbin's upper atmosphere, making initial turn." Jeb said, steering the nose of the rocket towards the horizon.
"Apoapsis rising. Will stop at two-hundred fifty kilometers." Jebediah sat back and watched the ship's apoapsis, the highest point in it's orbit, slowly rise. When the solid fuel "Kickback" boosters were depleted, he decoupled them, and did the same as soon the liquid fuel boosters ran out. When the apoapsis hit the two-hundred fifty mark, Jeb throttled the engines down.
"Valentina, get me a circularization maneuver set up."
"Yes sir. Calculating," Valentina replied. "Maneuver node set at t minus five minutes and twenty three seconds, delta v is seven-hundred thirty three meters per second, estimated burn time is thirty-six seconds."
Jebediah sat back, confident in his skilled crew. When there was about a minute left on the time, he got ready to hit the throttle. It was important that he burn when the time 'till the node was half the estimated burn time, because it would take time to finish the burn. 24. 23. 22. 21. 20. 19. 18. He throttled the engines to full.
After a whole year of traveling, the Kraken was finally on an orbital insertion course with Duna. Jeb looked around at his tired crew and thought about the past few months of travel. Having to put up with Bill's ribald raillery and quasi-soporific vignettes had nearly led them all to insanity, he simply wasn't suited for space travel or the hierarchical structure it presented. On one occasion, he was completely oblivious to the fact that he had pressed the fuel vent button, venting over a fifth of their fuel before Bob noticed. Now they had just enough fuel to get there and back, that is, if nothing goes wrong. Jeb was thinking about this when he looked up out of the window that, for the past year, had shown nothing but empty space, and saw a small red dot, a bellwether indicator that their journey was nearly complete.
"Valentina, Bob, Bill, come look, we can see it now!" Jeb cried in excitement.
"It is very very red isn't it?" Valentina wondered.
"It's beautiful, think of all the science we can get out that planet!" Bob said, hungrily.
"I think I'm going to be sick, again" said Bill.
Jeb merely imagined what it would look like from up close, the red surface with the white ice caps and the massive moon, Ike. It had been difficult in the past to get various rovers and probes past Ike's very large sphere of influence, but their path had been much more carefully planned, and Jeb was certain that they would make it down to a low Duna orbit. For the next few days they kept looking and checking their progress on the maps, until one day they were close enough to see it in its entirety.
They were all so captivated by this planet's beauty that no one noticed that the comms channel, which had been silent for months, began to beep. The next day they were awoken by the frantic wailing of the proximity alarm. Jebediah shot forward to the controls and looked at the array of flashing displays. Apparently there was a large asteroid on the starboard side of the ship. He switched the cameras on and looked. Sure enough there it was. A large rock, about two kilometers in diameter was right there. Luckily they weren't in danger of crashing; there wouldn't be much they could do about it if they were. Jebediah opened the comms channel to mission control and asked them what the hell was going on.
"Gene! Why did we nearly crashed into this massive rock?!" Of course his message would not reach them for a few seconds, because they were so far away.
"Jeb! We've been trying to reach you for hours! That rock was a piece of Ike"
"What do you mean 'a piece of Ike'!"
"Well an asteroid of unprecedented size has struck Ike, temporarily knocking it out of its usual orbit and blasting a few chunks out into space. You will need to change course immediately, your current path has you on an intercept with Ike. Don't worry, this is what the extra fuel is for."
"Don't you remember how this inexperienced idiot, that you allowed on this mission, vented a bunch of fuel a few months ago?"
"Oh yeah. Well I guess you will have to use the remaining fuel to turn around and get back home Jeb. I'm sorry. Mission aborted."
But they had come so far. Jeb would not allow this to end his mission. He was going to put the first Kerbal on Duna, and he was going to do it now.
"Bill!" he barked, "Your mistake may have cost us this mission, so you can start fixing that now by diverting all the fuel from the lander stage into the transfer stage, now!"
"Yes sir!" he said, his green skin suddenly going quite pale.
"Plot a course home, sir?" asked Valentina.
"No, course correction, give me another insertion maneuver for Duna."
"That's suicide!" yelled Bill in fear.
"I will get us home, you can count on that, but right now I need you to divert that fuel!" Jebediah replied.
Bob merely had a look of grim determination on his face, truly he was the kind of Kerbal you wanted to have with you in dangerous situation like this one. Valentina began plotting the course, a look almost of glee on her face. The comms channel crackled to life, was it a mirage?
"Jeb! What in god's name are you doing up there?"
"Gene, I have a plan and I fully intend to get my crew to Duna and back, but if you interfere, I won't be able to do my job."
"Plot a course for Kerbin now!" the hidebound commander yelled "That is an order Captain Jebediah Kerman!" Jebediah just switched the channel off, dismissing Gene as proselyte to the old way of thinking. Bill was suited up and ready to go pipe the fuel into the tanks. Jebediah knew he would get it done, because even for all his whining and inexperience, he was still an expert engineer.
Jebediah expertly executed the maneuver and in no time they were back on course; however, they did not have the fuel to land and get back. Almost all of the lander's small tanks had been depleted. They all waited in silence for the next few hours as Duna slowly got bigger and bigger in the windows until it completely filled them.
"So I take it this plan of yours involves the drills and the ISRU, correct?" Valentina asked, breaking the uneasy silence.
"Yes it does. And it involves some expert EVA maneuvering from you. Do you think you can land that thing using very little, if any, fuel?"
"Yes, of course. It won't be easy but if I get the perfect angle, I should be able to use the parachutes to land"
"Good." Jeb turned to Bob, "I need you to use the narrow-band scanner to find a spot on the surface with a very high concentration of hydrogen and oxygen."
"But it only scans a very small area on the surface at a time, I'm not even really sure it works all that well, it's highly experimental!"
"Well we may be here for a while, then."
Bob nodded grimly and began his arduous task.
"Also, Bill, do you know how the ISRU converter works?"
"I-I-I guess so," an unusually effete Bill stammered.
"Do you or don't you?" Jebediah asked, a bit more forcefully.
"Yes I do. They trained me."
"Good we are going to need to use it."
"But it's just a prototype, we were supposed to be testing it, not using to refine large amounts of ore! It may not be able to handle it!"
"It is going to have to do. I need you for this, Bill"
"Yes sir."
"I found a spot with 10% concentration!" Bob yelled in excitement.
"Good. Valentina, that is where you will need to land. Also, change of plans. Bill is going down with you instead of Bob. Bob, give Valentina a brief lesson in the operation of the scientific equipment so she can operate it instead."
"M-m-me?" Bill said, now very pale.
"Yes you. You're the only one aboard who can operate that converter so I need you down there. There is only room for two in the lander can."
Jebediah watched his crew work furiously at their appointed tasks, and, for the first time in his career, felt a bit worried. His chimerical plan was simple, but would be quite difficult to actually pull off. Valentina would pilot the lander down to the surface using only monopropellant, the stuff used to adjust attitude. Not an easy task, but Valentina was the only Kerbal alive whose piloting skills matched that of Jeb, so he trusted her. Then, once on the surface, they would activate the twin "Drill-O-Matic" Mining Excavators. They were a couple of diamond tipped drill bits that were designed to retrieve samples from deep under Duna's surface, not the mass excavation job that he would need them for. Then the ISRU Converter would kick in. It is a machine designed to convert ore that contains even trace amounts of hydrogen and oxygen into oxidizer and liquid fuel. As Bill said, it was not tested and not ready for any big jobs yet, so he could only hope that it actually worked. Then, Valentina would fly the lander back up and deposit all the fuel back into the return stage. This process would have to be repeated several times before they had enough fuel to get home, but Jeb was willing to bet on it.
After mulling this all over, Jeb looked up at the expectant faces of his crew, all finished with their tasks and awaiting further orders.
"Valentina and Bill: get suited up and head on through to the lander and undock it. Bob, get all the equipment ready."
Jeb got a collective "yes sir" in return. Jebediah was proud of his crew and he could tell the feeling was indeed mutual. In that moment, that foreign feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had assumed was fear, vanished. Valentina and Bill were about to leave through the docking port when Jebediah wished them good luck and assured them he would be monitoring them every step of the way.
They then vanished through the round door and it slid shut behind them. The two ships undocked while Jeb and Bob watched attentively on the monitors. The small lander began using its pitiful RCS thruster blocks to put it on course to aerobrake in Duna's atmosphere. The tiny craft began its long journey, around and around they would go, just skimming the atmosphere briefly, using air resistance to slow down and shrink their orbit efficiently. Jebediah hoped that they didn't get too far into the atmosphere, because with their weak RCS thrusters, their fate would be fait accompli. Many hours later, they finally had a shallow enough orbit to go for a landing. With very little thrust or fuel it would be nigh-impossible to land in such a specific spot as Bob had found, yet through Valentina's incredible piloting skills, or maybe just in an effort to get away from Bill sooner, she pulled it off and they landed safely on the surface of Duna.
"Crew reporting in, from Duna!" Valentina cried triumphantly.
Bob let out a cheer but Jebediah was more reserved.
"Congratulations Valentina, but there is still one more step isn't there?"
"Of-Of course sir. Here goes." Jebediah watched intently as she took the first step onto the surface of Duna, becoming the first Kerbal to step on another planet. She took out a flag and planted it firmly in the ground, beaming the whole time. Bill then emerged from inside the capsule and they both started jumping around, enjoying the low gravity and experiencing the dusty surface so different than the noisome morasses prevalent in parts of Kerbin, but a few minutes after that it was all work. Valentina began conducting research, receiving guidance from Bob the whole time, while Bill worked on the drills and the converter, modifying them so that they would work at peak efficiency.
After some time, groundbreaking discoveries, and several near-failures of the miniature fuel production plant they had rigged, all thankfully averted by Bill, they were ready to return home. The ride home was rather uneventful, and when they finally saw Kerbin again for the first time in over two and a half years, the joy was unmistakable. Jebediah expertly piloted the ship back into Kerbin orbit, and after some aerobraking maneuvers, the craft was finally brought down to the surface only a couple of kilometers from the space center.