Part 3: Mission: Skybreaker-1

After the death of Jebediah Kerman, we settled in for making the improvements that would enable us to do something more with our space program. The demise of the pilot took away from the fact that even if he had lived, all he would have done was flop into the water. With the Skybreaker rocket, we were trying to do a lot very fast.



The Skybreaker was significantly greater in length to the Ascender, with more fuel, but its real advance lay in the other systems. First, there was a decoupler that would, once it came time to land, break the capsule away from the rocket. Then there was the Reaction Control System, which could steer the spacecraft by firing gases out of the nozzles.

The RCS was what saved our space program.



The pilot was Bill Kerman, another top of the academy class. Bill did not seem worried by Jebediah's death and looked forward to the experience.



The Skybreaker ascended upwards-began to lose control as the previous rockets had-and then Bill engaged the RCS and deftly kept it on its arc. The Skybreaker's atmosphere sensor moved down until, finally, we had made it into outer space.



The Skybreaker had only enough fuel for a short suborbital flight. Bill was even ordered to cut the engine before fuel ran out for fear that the spacecraft would go too far and get stranded.



From the small window of the capsule, Bill Kerman saw Kerbin in all of its majesty, taking this photograph himself.



Throughout the short duration of the flight, we were very nervous. But the technology kept working. The capsule detached from the rocket as planned.



The chute opened as planned, although the descent involved subjecting Bill to an uncomfortably large quantity of G-Force.



Finally, twelve minutes and forty-four seconds later, Bill splashed down safely. We had sent a Kerbal to space and brought him back again.



This marks the final landing spot of Skybreaker-1. It was not very far from the Space Center, relatively speaking. This was due to Bill not risking much in the way of lateral movement.

While we are rightly proud of our success, getting spacecraft into sustained orbits is going to require more complicated-and volatile-rockets. I feel we must not get overconfident.