SOUNDING ROCKETS

<Werner>

ZZZZZ...

ZZZZZ...

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GAH! Is that… Oh, you must be Jebediah Kerman! I didn’t see you there. No, I wasn’t napping. You’re napping. Look, meet me in the conference room in five minutes, alright? Just… Five more minutes…

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TIME WARP TUTORIAL

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Sorry about that. If you haven’t noticed, things are pretty dead around here at PROJECT POLARIS. Ever since that cursed MELON KERMAN used his private fortune to fund his own space program, KESTREL CORP, everyone’s gone on strike. It’s all ‘inadequate minimum safety regulations’ this, and ‘shoestring government budget’ that. He’s making us look bad. Still, you’d know better than anyone, wouldn’t you?

I can’t believe he fired you. You’re the legendary test pilot, Jeb Kerman! You landed an FA-18 in the middle of the desert without knowing how to put the landing gear down, thrice. THRICE in the same day! I mean, I’d have given the manual a gander after at least round two. What you’ve got, Jeb, it’s… really something special. Just what we’re looking for.

So, being my favorite, and our only, test sub…tronaut. Test Subtronaut. That’s what we call them here. Anyways, you’ll be flying most of the things we make. Right now, we’re trying to make rockets that’ll get into orbit.

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Our mathematicians’ current theory is that orbiting is more about going sideways than it is about going up. It’s no coincidence that our mathematicians are afraid of heights. I think it’s a crackpot theory, but they’re insisting we try it. But that’s getting waaaaay ahead of ourselves, we’re still working on going up. So, get yourself to the launchpad! You need to test out our latest invention; the sounding rocket!

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FLYING TUTORIAL

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For future reference, you can pick up more missions like this in the <Mission Control Building>. POLARIS specific missions will be marked like this: <INSIGNIA>. Feel free to ignore the missions for now, but be warned; KESTREL CORP is always advancing their program. Put off POLARIS missions too long, and they’ll beat us to LANDMARKS, like the first Mun landing, or the first rocket to orbit. If that happens, we could lose funding or be shut down or our wife could leave us.

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We’ll need better technology to achieve LANDMARKS, so make sure to do SCIENCE while you’re out and about. We’ll be able to learn more about our technology to gain the SCIENCE POINTS needed to improve it. So get to it, Subtronaut, and good luck!

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UNLOCK ACHIEVEMENT: SUBTRONAUT – adds Polaris cmnd capsules, flags, useless snack part?

FLY LOW SWEET CHARIOT

<Werner>

Well, you seem to have flying down. You might want to try flying up too, but hey, you’re the expert.

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Now we just need to try steering more. We don’t really have a rocket that does that… I didn’t think we’d get anyone in the first one, to be honest. You’ve flown a lot of things, maybe you could help oversee construction of a better rocket. Go to the Vehicle Assembly Building and help them crank out something bigger.

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Oh. Um. I /guess/ that’ll work. I was picturing something with more stripes.

There’s a couple ways we could test this thing, I suppose. Firstly, there’s a mountain range to the Northwest. If you did a low flyby of that, we could scan the area for valuable resources. Secondly, there’s an island to the East. We’ve heard rumors that KESTREL CORP has put a secret base there to spy on us. You could do a flyby of that. And finally, you could just go straight up and get a feel for the whole area.

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Now that we’ve got the famous Jeb Kerman on board, the department’s given us plenty of money, so don’t be shy about trying a few times, or even redesigning your rocket. After all, you’re the poor su… Subtronaut we’ll be strapping in to it.

>Moutain Path

<Werner>

Excellent job, Jeb! These resource scans have given us valuable information! I DID leave a picnic basket up there during the company retreat. Well, I say company, but it was mostly just me. Me and a large basket of cheeze. Boy, I hope it hasn’t gone off… Well, come and get me when you want to try something new, eh? We’ve got to get that cheeze back, and I think we should do it in rocketplane.

>Island Path

<Werner>

Well, the good news is that that’s no secret Kestrel base. That’s the runway extension module I bought from Rockomax six months ago! They must have installed it in the wrong place, or I wrote down the wrong address for delivery. My “fives” always look like “sevens”. You should try it out, get our money’s worth! Meet me at the spaceplane hangar! That’s the discount barn by the VAB.

BREAKING ATMOSPHERE LANDMARK

<Melon Kerman>

Hello, Jeb.

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It’s me, your conscience.

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HA HA HA. Just kidding.

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You don’t have a conscience, do you Jeb? You couldn’t even spell ‘conscience’.

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After all, it’s got ‘science’ in it.

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…

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(Text boxes now accompanied by Melon’s face)

It’s me, Jeb! MELON C. KERMAN! I’m talking to you through a transponder we at KESTREL CORP put in that stick of gum you found on the ground after I fired you. You’re the only Kerbal I know that eats gum without chewing it. I wanted to keep an eye on you, you see. You are WAY too stupid to go unmonitored. So stupid, I see you’ve joined with the pathetic POLARIS PROJECT.

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I wouldn’t tell them about the transponder, by the way. They might try to get it out of you. Super high-tech stuff. It’s vibrating your stomach juices at a frequency that rattles your brain-bones into thinking I’m talking to you! At least that’s what the pop-up book my science team gave me said.

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Long pop-up book short, I can talk to you anytime I want, and you can’t stop me. My ethics team said this was “a gross violation of Kerbalitarian rights”. My explanatory ethics pop-up book said that means “bad”. So, I doubled their salaries to find a way to make it ethical! And you know what? They did. Almost immediately. __________________________________________________________________________________

That’s why Kestrel Corp is gonna beat you to the Mun, Jeb. There’s no problem so big you can’t throw money at it until SOMEONE fixes it. And makes a colorful, easy-to-read pop-up book about it. But congratulations on being the <first/SECOND> Kerbal to orbit. <I hope your victory tastes as good as mint-choc gum does. / I’d tell you to eat my dust, but I think dust might make the transponder explode, so, y’know. Don’t do that.>

MUN FLYBY LANDMARK

Manned Low Mun Flyby- Approach (Periapsis 6000m-10000m)

<Melon Kerman>

You’ve got to stop eating gum, Jeb.

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I mean I’m looking at the nutrition facts right now. There’s like, six grams of sugar in a stick. Do you know how much is in a whole pack?

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…

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No, of course you don’t. Because that’d require multiplication. And if you were smart enough to learn multiplication, you wouldn’t be strapped to a chair whizzing towards the Mun at twice the speed of, I dunno. Cheetah. They say that only TWENTY percent of your Space Program scientists graduated high school, after all. Here at Kestrel, we have THREE TIMES as many high school graduates. Do you know how much more smart that makes us?

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Cause I don’t. I never learned percents. Percents and cheetah speeds are for Kerbals that can’t afford a space program.

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Anyways, hate to break it to you, but my scientists tell me the odds of you crashing during this encounter are 1 in 100. You’ve really swallowed the gum this time, Jeb. So I thought I’d say goodbye now and save myself the trouble of having to attend your funeral later. So long, Jebediah “Subtronaut” Kerman.

Manned Low Mun Flyby (departing SOI)

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<Melon Kerman>

So apparently I don’t understand odds, either. 1 in 100 odds of crashing turns out to be pretty safe.

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