Mission 1: Jeb's Big Day

MISSION GOALS: Put Jeb on a rocket and see what happens. Acquire science.
MISSION RESULT: SUCCESS.
NOTES: Use more boosters next time.

MISSION LOG

This is our first mission as a space program, and frankly, we have no idea what the hell we're doing. We put our best engineers to the task of giving us some general guidance on parts we can use to build a spacecraft, and what they came up with was... Well, it was impressive.

They gave us a bunch of "Solid Rocket Boosters," which appear to be barrels of explosives with holes at the bottom. So we stacked four of 'em on top of each other, threw some decoupling heat shields in between like a hot bomb sandwich, and then slapped our ol' boy Jeb on top of the thing.

EXCELLENT. BUILT A ROCKET. How... How do we get it onto the launch pad?

Steve from Accounting argued that  since Jeb was probably going to die anyway, we might as well save on the parachute and leave it out. But Steve doesn't understand the words "unlimited funding," because Steve is a dumbass. So Jeb got his parachute.

JEB, PAY ATTENTION. What is so important over there?

Liftoff went smoothly as could be. It took Jeb a solid 30 seconds to realize his SAS wasn't turned on, but somehow the rocket didn't spin out of control during that time, even though we designed it to. Turns out this rocket science crap is harder than you'd think.

Is it supposed to get shorter the longer we go?

When Jeb hit the 10km mark, he suggested possibly turning the rocket at this point to "see what would happen", so we gave him the go ahead. Using math and science, we projected that Jeb would reach an altitude somewhere around 125 kilometers using this "turning the rocket" approach.

Wow. Such beauty. Such parabola.

Jeb even got a good view of the Mun once he got up there. He reported to mission control that it appeared to be taunting him and was "totally begging to be colonized."

You're next, you fat gray sphere. PREPARE YOUR CRATERS FOR GREEN FILLING.

Eventually Jeb's ship started falling back to Kerbin, and we weren't quite sure what to do. We sort of assumed he'd either explode on the launch pad or, once he got to space, would continue flying forever. We hadn't accounted for this anomalous scenario. And more importantly, we didn't have any kind of available heat shielding on the capsule, since we were using our heat shields as decouplers. No worries, though... Jeb thought on his feet and spun the rocket around, using the empty rocket booster as a heat shield. It slowed his descent enough that he was able to deploy the hotly debated parachute and make a safe landing.

Heat shields are for pussies. Jeb uses SRBs.

I've got my eye on you, Mun. DON'T THINK I'VE FORGOTTEN.

Upon landing, Jeb made it a point to test his space suit in the ocean. He also gathered some valuable science while he was there.

ACQUIRING SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE.

And there we have it, ladies and gentlemen. FIRST MISSION OF THE KERBAL CONQUEST PROGRAM WAS A RESOUNDING SUCCESS! We've gained some super valuable "science points" which, our engineers tell us, we can directly convert into useful knowledge, so we're going to go ahead and do that. And then we'll put Jeb into orbit.