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Time to shoot for a mountain, I guess.


_{The landing lab, which is most certainly not near any kind of explosion that people are running away from.}

The rocket is given eight good-sized fuel tanks and six high-thrust engines. Bob is ready to fly out for science! We start the flight, try to figure out which way to turn to reach the mountains, and begin wishing we had added some reaction wheels as it promptly begins handling like a drunken kerbonaut. It turns slowly and stops turning slower. Then we run out of fuel.


_{It's not mountains 12 kilometers away, and it's probably not mountains here either.}

We maneuver the more stable lab section into a vertical alignment, release the parachutes at 4,000 meters, deploy the landing gear, and...land.
We missed the mountains, but we are evidently in the tundra region.


<sub>...Whatever you say, things that give us science.

Bob celebrated the only way he knew how: Scientific papers and a new flag!


Science rules! Safety us something like twenty-second to the throne.</sub>

Well then. We're almost halfway to Aerodynamics, which should make sciencing Kerbin much easier! We're so excited, we decide to do something...orbiting science.

The Max-Sci-Mum Mark One is pretty good, all things considered.


_{Another rocket. Small, but with the eight solid boosters added after this photo was taken, it has nearly 5,000 m/s of delta-velocity, so we should be able to get into orbit.
Which is to say, we'll almost certainly crash. That's why we're sending a new guy up.}

Enden volunteers for this important mission.
We reach 9,300 meters when the solid boosters give out and are released. They seem to stick and the engines don't work...wait, I didn't put the decouplers and rockets in the same stage. I turn on the liquid rockets and dammit the solids are still on. There are some disturbing sounds and flashes of light (explosions?) as we gravity-turn. Well, not frikkin' much I can do right now (although I'm double-checking those decouplers for the next version).
Our orbital velocity goes pasta kilometer per second. We're above 30 km. This stage is almost dry. Apoapsis a bit past 50 km. Let's see how this goes.
The apoapsis reaches 76 kilometers. There's a bit of fuel left in the second stage...might as well keep it. Almost two minutes to apoapsis.
The launch has been going for three minutes. We're almost to space, and 45 seconds from apoapsis. We start burning, emptying that stage, then we eject--successfully!--and continue burning prograde, horizontally.


_{This launch has been exceeding the expectations of our most cynical (and hence experienced) engineers!}

Four minutes in. We've finally started falling. Periapsis has risen about a hundred meters, but it's still hundreds below Kerbin's rocky surface. And while the burn is increasing our periapsis, it is (very, very slowly) lowering our apoapsis...shifting more prograde than horizontal. That helps, even though the prograde marker is below the horizon.
Four-forty, periapsis -200 kilometers, apoapsis almost 80 kilometers, altitude less than 74. Rise, you damn periapsis!
Five minutes. Periapsis exits the surface right before; craft enters the atmosphere right after. Burn continues, slightly more upwards. Fuel...maybe a half, maybe a third...call it 40%. Also, the screen turns funny.


_{Why, interface, why?!?}

Periapsis quickly nears my current altitude. I kill the thrust, since my apoapsis is 400,000 meters--more than enough to guarantee I'll make it back out of atmosphere.
Periapsis is passed.
Eight-twenty. We re-enter space. A maneuver node is made to circularize the orbit.


_{Node way!}

It requires just under 200 m/s of delta-v, and we have over 600 according to MechJeb. Nothing left to do but wait for apoapsis and circularize in a roughly-400-kilometer orbit. The highest any kerbal has ever been, I believe.
I turn on the Smart Automatic Stabilization System included in the MechJeb system, which will point us at the node. Useful doohicky, but hardly a replacement for that famed kerbonaut.

Nothing left to do now but time-accelerate and wait.


_{Yes, the image is sloppy. Shut up, I was trying to capture and save it before I overshot the node.}

The lovely thing about MechJeb is that it keeps you pointed the right way even as you move and turn and stuff.
Twenty-eight minutes. The deed is done. The orbit is circularized. Time for science. Which I failed to set an action group for. Ah well.


_SPAAACE!

The science is done within a half an hour. Now we need to make a decision: Do we want to orbit a while longer, or head straight for KSC to get our science?
...Not really a question. Especially since Enden reports biological needs, and we failed to include appropriate facilities.
We have a nice victory lap around the planet, then once we're at apoapsis we burn retrograde, bringing the periapsis to about 20 kilometers. The maneuver is well within our capabilities.

But first, a picture, taken right before the deorbit burn.


_{You ca almost see the spacecraft there, a little down and right of the center. It's downright...um...something.}

I'd send in an IVA pic as well, since those are always scenic and whatnot for others, but mine are always...well...


_{That doesn't look like space...}

I overshoot the burn a little, causing the ship to flip, but eh. Periapsis is a bit under 17 km instead of a bit over 20 km, but what's 3.6 kilometers between friends? And with the aerobraking taking us down to nil long before then, it really is meaningless.


_{Hiya, Kerbin! We're coming home!}

The rocket is ejected shortly after we enter the atmosphere; it rockets off behind us and is left behind before we can even blink. We bob every which way until the Smart A.S.S. (get it?) is set to Radial Out (also known as "up," I think). It puts us at an odd angle, making me rethink that.
After an hour and forty-five minutes on the dot, we land far from home and collect science.


<sub>The landing. Note that we're about a third of a world from KSC. And well past the Sandy Flag Crash.

We are so friggin' close to aerodynamics!</sub>

Enden scurries off to the bathroom, and is promptly told to get back into a rocket. He didn't really want to, but we threatened to fire him if he didn't. We checked the decoupler issues, probably fixed them, and sent the kerbonaut to the poles. Okay, just the north one.
After a fried snafu where we started going south, we get to a good start. Then the solid boosters still don't come off (I've had it up to here with radial decoupler malfunctions), and some disturbing explosions still happen. Once we're on the third stage (puny, high-ISP) rocket, we have trouble keeping our vertical and horizontal velocities from dropping. We dip to a bit over 2,400 meters above ground level (3,000 above sea level) when Jeb's flying finally brings us back into a climb.

Wait, Jeb?


_{"Yes, Jeb. Sorry about that other guy. He really wanted to go to space today."}

Four and a half minutes in, we're completely out of fuel and eject the last rocket. We've traveled a mean "speed" of about one degree of latitude per minute. It's dark, but with Jeb (and the MechJeb--mostly the latter, actually) we deploy the parachutes exactly a kilometer above the ground. Five minutes in, it's nearly unfurled and we hear something smashing into the ground, probably one of the rockets.
We got farther than most rockets.


_{Pictured: Farther}

Despite his best attempts, Jeb cannot ascend back to the lander after taking a surface sample. Meh.


_YAY!

We grab aerodynamics. This unlocks several new parts and Supersonic Flight.


^{A better name than "Advanced Flight," even if you can already achieve supersonic flight with a rocket engine and paid-up life insurance.}

So. What should we do with our new jets and wings? Science plane? Space jet? Something else?