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_{A rare picture showing two worlds at once. Technically.}

Journal of Jebediah Kerman, Kerbonaut Lost in Space

They tried again. Bob botched the orbit, got poisoning from fuel getting into his air intake. Coulda killed him if he didn't crash and get recovered fast enough.
Is my life moving back to the planet and away from this hunk of junk really worth risking the lives of so many others? Bill and Bob, next Archie. After he fails...what then?

Sometimes, I think about telling them not to bother. My life, against all the resources and the health of my coworkers, colleagues...they're my friends, I guess. The three of us have been here since the beginning, when we had dreams of reaching the Mun and settling Laythe and making a giant rocket that would make Minmus crash into Kerbin if we wanted it to. Do I want them to risk their lives to take me away from this place and into some other place? Hell no!

That's why I'm glad they're sending Archie. Dumb kid.

---

We slap another set of boosters on the Mark Six and call it the SciMax Mark 6+. No way this behemoth won't make it to orbit with fuel to spare!

The launch is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a bit sluggish.


<sub>Archibald passes the time by making funny faces. Dammit Archie, watch the instruments!

Is that rocket tilting?

"I say, got mo' tea?"
"You are in a rocket a mile above Kerbin, rocketing into space on a rescue mission, and you want tea."
"Yup. Did I make m'self clear, guv'na?"

"You seem to be tilted far to the right, Archibald. Don't you think you should--"

"It'll be alroight, guv'na. Quicher belly-achin'."</sub>

Evidently, the rocket "handles like a mule wi' no carrit 'r stick," in the lower two stages at least. Before we get to 5,500 meters, the rocket is propelling itself horizontally. While the scientists are a bit divided on this point, general consensus is that that is not how one performs a proper gravity turn. Archibald is ordered to blow through all remaining stages at once.


<sub>This does not go exactly as intended,but it works well enough.

Observers were pelted with large quantities of what was erroneously called "deadly space shrapnel". The shrapnel never even left the lower atmosphere!
In other news, why the hell are people still gathering to watch these? We'd keep them away, but out budget doesn't allow for a security force.</sub>

Stuff hits the ground.


<sub>"So, Oi can 'ave some tea when Oi 'it the ground?"
"*sigh* Yes, Archibald."
"All roight!"

A suggestion is made to not include flags in pods on missions not heading to extrakerbal bodies, but the suggestors get some kind of foul, boiling liquid thrown in their faces.

Soins, guv'na!</sub>

A quick modification is made to the SM6+ to make it more stable: Launch Stability Enhancers. We relaunch.


_{"Even brou' me backup 'mergency tea."}

Somehow this makes the launch even less stable.


_{"Me cabbag--Oi mean, tea!"}

We hit a maximum altitude of 617 meters before the rocket begins pointing downward. 32 seconds after launch, it plows into the ground. Thankfully, Archibald had already evacuated. Somehow. Look, it isn't important.
We toss some fancy winglets on it, to try and stabilize it more. This...kinda helped.


_{Koddammit, not it's tipping over the OTHER way!}

So. Another crash. An impressive screenshot of an exploding stage-ejecting spacecraft that I lost. A decision to revert to the Mark Six for further rescue attempts.
This took off straighter and faster, allowing Archibald and his spare backup emergency tea to be sent into orbit.


_{"I shoul' prob'ly foind 'notha place t'put this tea."}

The flight goes as normal, gravity turn around ten kilometers, burn until the apoapsis is past 80.


<sub>"...Wait a second. What am I doing here? AAAH!" *chug*

"Ah, that 'it th'spot. Now, where was Oi?"</sub>

We empty the first set of liquid fuel tanks and GODDAMMIT WHY ARE WE IN A POLAR OBITAL PATH AGAIN?!?
Too little and too late, we set up a burn perpendicular to our orbital path.


_{"Oh my."}

Okay, let's try again, even though I've already spent a while on this. This time, instead of using d to turn, I'll try...s. I'm wondering if there's something with the orientation of the command pods that's causing--


_{"Hurry up, wanker. The game's on in ten."}

Alright, alright. The orientation of--


_{"Shut up and tell me if I get to orbit!"}

Alright, alright. Ascent, gravity turn, cut burn. Going westward--not ideal, but we're in the same plane as Jeb now. Not that we achieve orbit, of course. So. Next time, we'll be launching 180 degrees from where we did this time, and hopefully we will get into orbit to save Jebediah.


_{"Yes! Oi'll be able t'catch the game!"}

Not so fast, Archie. You still need to get back, I'm not waiting for splashdown to update.


_{Every minute wasted on giving these kerbonauts a range of expressions was worth it.}

I haven't ignored Alistair, it's just somewhat hard to figure out what an eight year old would say to his five-year old friend having a crush on him.

You didn't even read it.

Also, this plot isn't over. Mark my words, the dragon wasn't alone.

@GWG You might want to pair up that artifact of yours with the crystalline projector/crystals themselves and see if you can create something interesting out of them.

Anyone have a crystalline projector they want to lend Grate?

Also, somewhere deep in the threads it was once stated by Steve that the crystals are minorly psychic, so that might be the key to 'wiring up' the generator to anything.
Actually, there's also the HEP based on an artifact from that mission, so you might look into wiring the power source of yours to it. If you need tokens for those experiments, Maurice can lend you a few, especially after the payday/mission end, as he is quite interested in that line of research as well.))

Noted.
The what?

"I have this object which is entirely useless to me!  What do?"
"You could throw it at people."
"It cost me five tokens!  No way I'm going to risk it!"

The thing is...I'm sure it has use. And a one-shot weapon that barely does anything if it hits (and that's optimistic) is...kinda stupid.
I'd consider your offer, but A. I'm sure I'll find a use for it and B. you kinda made a blunder there.

Quote from: GreatWyrmGold on February 22, 2014, 08:46:47 pm

Well, you didn't post.

No. The hammer you have weighs basically zero. Zero for all intents and purposes, certainly. You can make it bigger..

Except I did.

Quote from: GUNINANRUNIN on February 19, 2014, 08:51:58 pm

Make a better light hammer. One that is not a wiffle ball bat.

You even responded to it. >.>

Well what I was getting at is won't making it bigger make it heavier? I mean it'd have to be massive of course since it'd be made of light. I kind of want to try to make a hammer that stretches into the stratosphere. But really I just made a hammer out of light, which is impossible I believe, so I don't see why we've suddenly begun using sense again.

What would your bigger hammer do? It would still be more or less weightless, and while it would be heavier, its surface area would also be bigger. Yes, the square-cube law helps a little, but light is really friggin' light, so you still wouldn't be getting any appreciable weight until you got big enough that air-resistance-induced torque would be a bigger obstacle to swinging it.

Quote from: HugoLuman on February 23, 2014, 12:00:12 am

What he's saying is that no matter how big you make it, it won't weigh anything. Zero times zero equals zero.

I just figured that since I had just made a hammer out of light that we weren't entirely obeying the laws of physics.

Magic has its own laws.

((From the standpoint of physics, light does indeed have mass.

And that is the only reason the light hammer weighs "effectively zero," not "exactly zero".

...

Lunette examines the dragon corpse.

"Save-or-die" is a term used to refer to spells and such that, if they affect you, you're out of the fight. Dominate Monster, Finger of Death, Hold Person, etc. It's not actually dead, just under...Cyrielle's control?

pointless?

POINTLESS?

-snip-

Yes.

Right here.

...How does that answer my question?

fine, magical girl against the super hero/villain that GWG finds plausible when?

It's not that I find it implausible so much as pointless.

Didn't we agree that mirror Kyle would have earth powers?

Yup.

Where do you find these gifs?