Days of the Mün

by Ianare

It all began with a thirty-six kilometre hop. Jeb, Bill and Bob's pioneering flight aboard Kerbal 1 sparked the imagination of a planet and marked the beginning of the Space Age on Kerbin. The first artificial satellites were next, followed by crewed orbital flights and the first robotic probes to the Mün and beyond. Then came the Pioneer Program...

1. Chapter 1

Watching Bob's team strap the Pioneer 3 crew into their couches was a pointed reminder of how far we'd come - and how far we still had to go.

And I know I've already covered all of this but I think it only really sank in that afternoon. Founding the Kerbin Interplanetary Society. The long years of sounding rockets and struggles, trying to build something - anything - large enough to fit a crew capsule on. Kerbal 1 and Bill's photographs that set the world on fire. Orbital flight, the so-called Space Race (and I still loathe that media creation with a passion) with Rockomax. The CORDS programme and what came afterwards.

Then came the Kerm crisis. We launched the day after the news broke.

The Pioneer 1 crew ventured a thousand times further into space than anyone else before them. They circled the Mün and became the first kerbals in history to watch Kerbin rising over a new horizon.

Pioneer 2 may have been less obviously impressive to the kerbal on the street but it was the vital next step. We flight-tested the entire Pioneer spacecraft from lander to capsule and back again. Between them, the crew managed to simulate almost every part of a Munar landing without ever going near the actual Mün.

That would be a job for Pioneer 3.

- Jebediah Kerman: KIS - a History of Kerballed Spaceflight.