The Next Frontier (Kerbal Space Program/Something)

[Simon_Jester]

However, terraforming equipment is probably less portable.

Question: would the Alliance's quantum entanglement communications work with such excellent bandwidth and low lag if they were being used over interstellar distances?

Also, how is the next update coming?

[Zaune]

However, terraforming equipment is probably less portable.

The equipment might not be, but just having a few college-level textbooks on the science behind it would move the tentative plans for terraforming Duna forward by decades. And in any case they've got plans and documentation for the warp drive onboard and could spare a few spare parts for reverse-engineering, which they'd happily donate as a goodwill gesture to facilitate trade... Or at least that was the original intent.

Question: would the Alliance's quantum entanglement communications work with such excellent bandwidth and low lag if they were being used over interstellar distances?

Good question. According to everything both parties thought they knew about their physical principles the answer is no, but the theory has yet to be put to the test, and in the present circumstances it would pay to keep an open mind about what is and isn't theoretically possible. I will however confirm that the link back to Kerbin wasn't noticeably worse when they tried it for the first time.

Also, how is the next update coming?

It's coming along pretty well but isn't quite ready to post yet. I don't want to give a hard number in case I jinx myself, but it should only be a couple of days at most.

[Zaune]

Not happy with this at all, to the point where I'm rethinking my stance against major rewrites before the plot's over and done with, but anyway:

TABAdmiral Liu called for an in-person conference of every captain in the taskforce; this wasn't the kind of conversation one had over the radio, and in any case it bought time for Captain Tarrant to be helped into his ready-room and brought round with smelling salts.

TAB"I'm terribly sorry, Admiral," he said weakly, as the Chief of the Boat pressed a mug of hot sweet tea into his hand, "but it appears I've finally gotten around to going insane."
TAB"Actually, the thing with the aliens really happened."
TAB"Oh."
TAB"We're getting a conference organised. Two of the Kerbals -that's what they call themselves, apparently- are coming aboard too."
TABCaptain Tarrant could have objected, technically; permission to come aboard was one area where the authority of a ship's captain theoretically trumped the orders of an officer of higher rank. But even if the Admiral didn't have ample grounds to have him relieved of duty (and a small part of him thought he might've been relieved in more than one sense of the word if that came to pass), there probably wasn't much point in trying to simply delay the inevitable. "Very good sir."

TABHe might have been slightly comforted by the knowledge that the shock and amazement hadn't been a one-way street; in fact, the pandemonium breaking out at the other end of Starfarer 1's QEC line put his reaction entirely to shame, mostly thanks to the first four words of the first contact report:

TAB"They have artificial gravity."

TABThey'd seen it on the television, of course; one of the shows they'd used most extensively to test the translation software was actually a drama series set aboard an Alliance Navy warship, which Scott had become quite fond of. But when the Kerbals saw people walking around its interiors normally in spite of the lack of a gravity wheel, they'd drawn the obvious conclusion; the budget didn't stretch to filming on-location in space all the time, so the series had been set in some nebulous near-future period where not much had changed except that someone had come up with a technobabble-powered artificial gravity device.

TABBut apparently that hadn't been the case after all, forcing some fairly drastic reassessment of which programmes should be treated as pure fiction and which might have more grounding in reality, not to mention some rather urgent questions about what else Kerbin's immediate neighbours might do with the ability to manipulate gravity. Estimates of their warfighting capabilities were being revised sharply upwards.

TABThe atmosphere in the lander was therefore somewhat tense.

TABImproved electronics had made room for a second seat in the Mk1 capsule, barely, and Bill was crammed in alongside Jeb. A laptop with translation software and a VHF radio antenna that could be plugged into it were wedged awkwardly in between some spare O2 bottles, taking up most of the remaining space.
TAB"I still think we should've left the guns behind," Jeb remarked, shifting uncomfortably as the service automatic dug into his back.
TAB"Leave yours in the capsule if you want, but I'm keeping mine."
TAB"For the guy who was the most psyched about making contact you're awfully twitchy about this."
TAB"I've been watching their TV. Didn't understand a lot of it, but I didn't like a whole lot of what I did."
TABJeb shrugged. "Whatever makes you feel better, buddy. We'll tell 'em it's a cultural thing." It was sort of true, actually; Bill was the only one of the original three to come from an armed forces background, having been a lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers before breaking his leg badly enough to warrant a medical discharge in an accident he refused to discuss to this day. He was also the only one of the original three -Jeb had made a point of not asking Scott or Kurt about this- who'd ever fired a gun before the work-up to this mission, the only one who'd scored better than barely acceptable in training and the only one who was really comfortable handling them.

TABIt wasn't just the guns that made Jeb uneasy, though. Bob was a remarkably level-headed guy, usually the least nervous astronaut in the capsule even if Jeb was a bit better at hiding it. It'd take something pretty damn serious to make him this jumpy.

TABThe landing bay airlock was bigger than he'd expected, enough for a couple of decent-sized spaceplanes to pass through at once. Maybe the terminology hadn't translated all that well and this thing was a pocket carrier rather than the Kerbal definition of "cruiser".

TAB"Homesteader One, this is Fredriksson approach control. Fifteen seconds to grav envelope, suggest pointing your landing gear downwards, over."
TABJeb chuckled wryly. "Copy that, Fredriksson. Still not used to that. Rotating now, over."
TAB"Understood. Be advised, some nausea and dizziness during transition is common for us-" Jeb hastily released the controls as his stomach lurched and his head spun both at once. By the time he dared open his eyes again, they were on the deck.
TAB"Us too, by the look of it," he said weakly. "Is it always this bad, over?"
TAB"I'm not EVA-rated, but I've been told you acclimatise after a while. I'm going to hand you over to the deck crew now, Homesteader One. Approach control out."

TABTwo space-suited figures were waiting for them, carrying something that looked like a handheld searchlight. "Can you understand us okay?" one of them asked over the suit radios, the translation a half-second behind over the secondary channel.
TAB"Just fine," Jeb replied, climbing down the ladder. "I'm Jeb and this is Bob. We don't have secondary names quite like you guys, and yes, it does get confusing sometimes."
TAB"Huh... Well, welcome aboard. I'm Master Chief Petty Officer Thomas O'Reilly and this is Crewman First Class Emilio Chang." One of the suited figures offered his hand, which Jeb shook. "Captain Tarrant sends his apologies for not meeting you in person, but it's against regulations for the commanding officer to go on EVA. Were you briefed on the sterilisation procedure we'll be using?"
TAB"No, but I expected one. Are those things UV-based? Microwaves might not be very good for the laptop."
TAB"Yep, they're UV alright. Do you need eye protection?"
TAB"Got it built in." Jeb slipped his helmet's protective screen down and obligingly stood with his arms held out. A glance to one side showed a silent and grim-faced Bill doing the same, somewhat grudgingly from his body-language. The two humans thoroughly worked over every surface of Jeb and Bill's suits with ultraviolet light, as well as the laptop and the spare air bottles, then each other's. If they noticed the sidearms they apparently didn't think them worth commenting on. "We're going to purge the air supply in here to be on the safe side," O'Reilly told them. "You might want to put the computer in sleep mode if it's air-cooled."
TAB"It'll survive a few seconds," Bill replied gruffly. Jeb sighed inwardly and wondered if he should have taken Bob instead.
TABO'Rielly gave him a strange look, but shrugged and got on with doing something to the airlock control panel, probably a manual pressure-bleed. There was a long, loud hiss that faded into silence as the air was vented off, then back in as the airlock was repressurised.
TAB"Alright, gentlemen... if you, uh-" O'Rielly sighed. "Never mind. Follow me, please."

[Zaune]

Okay, folks, I've come to a decision. I'm going to take some time off from posting new updates to rework my existing material; some of the pre-First Contact scenes need a rewrite and the last update was just a bloody mess. I didn't really want to do this, but I think it's unavoidable at this point.

And if anybody's interested, while I'm doing all that I'll also look into making the story available for download, probably in PDF form because I can't find an epub/mobi/whatever reader for my laptop that doesn't drive me up the wall.

[Borgholio]

If it matters at all, I thought your first contact was fine...and actually pretty funny.

[Zaune]

That part I'm happy with. It's the update from yesterday I'm going to start over on; it was rushed because I let myself get nagged into posting something and I already thought it needed a rewrite.

[Simon_Jester]

What problems do you perceive?

[Zaune]

Giving Bill a military background seemed like a good idea at the time but doesn't make a whole lot of sense in retrospect, artificial gravity being a huge shock seems a bit silly as well, and the last few paragraphs were rushed. It's not the worst thing I've ever written but it needs tightening up.

[Borgholio]

Giving Bill a military background seemed like a good idea at the time but doesn't make a whole lot of sense in retrospect, artificial gravity being a huge shock seems a bit silly as well, and the last few paragraphs were rushed. It's not the worst thing I've ever written but it needs tightening up.

A lot of Apollo astronauts were ex-military pilots, so it was pretty common. Bill could have been a pilot who was recruited to the KSP for his flying skills.

As far as artificial gravity, hand wave it as something that was discovered while they were developing the warp drive. It is not unreasonable to assume that one of the technologies used in the warp drive has a side effect of generating artificial gravity.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Don't sweat it, and don't do a detailed postmortem now. Personally I wouldn't sweat converting it for downloadability either, not yet- it's just another frustration and distraction from making good fiction happen. Go back to the last bit that's solid and you have confidence in, and work forwards again from there.

What might help, because this really is quite an odd situation, is to sketch out both sides' positions first, what they know or think they know, what they want; in something this unusual, a little preparation would not go amiss.

In terms of the worst case scenario, for a basically- well, for a species for whom weapons are not a large part of their culture, let's weasel it at that, I'd expect a lot of lasers because they are so potentially, immensely useful for non- violent purpose. Long range LIDAR mapping and spectroscopy? Mining to serve ISRU? Communications, small craft- accelerating solar- sail remote probes on their way? Use the optics to recieve, as a telescope, as well as emit? Lots of uses for a distant probe. As well as if the worst comes to the worst.

(Laser weapons don't need long barrels, they need wide lenses- they would tend to look like optical devices, cameras, telescopes. A sufficiently paranoid Kerbal could 'film the ceremony' and leave the humans none the wiser that he had them covered with ravening death beams.)

And now a spanner in the works- yes, you more or less have to develop artificial gravity on the way to a working version of a drive that basically bends spacetime, but scaling the actual alkerbierre drive effect down to something as piddly as shipboard AG would be like gearing a 1000HP tank engine down to power a mechanical pencil.

If the humans went down a blind alley with artificial gravity research, managed to get a complicated, twitchy, low power application just right but in doing so headed in the wrong direction from the big prize, the Kerbals might be very relieved by that.

Although- their ship is going to be very distinctive, although not obvious at first sight to the humans of the 'verse. The draft designs for alcubierre drive have structures associated with it that are as much a giveaway as the masts and rigging of a sailing ship or the pusher plate of an Orion; the field emitter that 'blows' the warp bubble has to be a fairly solid ring structure wider than the length of the main hull.

I know what you mean about subspace, now; I wonder if Roddenberry did? Anyway, the humans might easily not cotton on to this until after someone says 'starship', so don't worry. Just write something you're happy with.

[SMJB]

I have some suggestions.

The Alcubierre drive requires the existence of negative mass in order to work--which means exotic matter of some unknown description. I don't know much about this whole Kerbal Space Patrol thing (literally just what I've read here), but you mentioned a space anomaly called "the Kraken"--perhaps the kerbals could mine exotic matter from there?

This would have some rather interesting implications for the setting. Firstly, even if the Alliance gets schematics for an Alcubierre drive, they won't be able to build one. If they steal an Alcubierre drive, they'll have a grand total of one. Secondly, the Kerbals have something that it's absolutely worth sending an invasion fleet lightyears from home to gain control of. I know in your other thread you were talking about war between kerbals and humans. The kerbals are going to want to keep control of all the exotic matter even before they learn about the various dirty secrets of the Alliance (my impression is that there are limits on freedom of the press in the 'verse) because they are technologically advanced and clearly warlike to some extent, and the Alliance is going to resent this because it means the kerbals can hit them and they can't hit back. It might be worth it, from the Alliance's point of view, to get in a first strike at highly relativistic speeds and attempt to secure the Kraken now, while the kerbals have only one FTL ship (or what few they make in the next few years).

Now, my impression is that the Alliance is going to want to hide the existence of the kerbals from their people and try to trade slightly-outdated or mainly-harmless technology for exotic matter. The Alcubierre drive will have obvious military potential, and they don't want that info leaking to would-be rebels. I don't know a lot about the kebals, but I imagine the principles of capitalism alone will drive them to seek greater exposure (and potentially better deals) sooner or later.

The thing to remember is that the Alliance is barely unified (they've only been so for six or seven years, and that at the barrel of a gun) while the kerbals aren't unified--there is a great deal of potential here for dealing across species lines.

Back to the Alcubierre drive. They work by enclosing a bubble of space and warping the universe around it--who says the bubble has to contain only one ship? Or that the drive has to even be attached to a ship in the first place, rather than acting as an interstellar ferry? This last one has pros and cons--on the one hand, you won't be wasting reaction mass dragging it everywhere you go, but on the other hand, what if it falls into the wrong hands or you need to GTFO quick-like?

[Zaune]

Don't sweat it, and don't do a detailed postmortem now. Personally I wouldn't sweat converting it for downloadability either, not yet- it's just another frustration and distraction from making good fiction happen. Go back to the last bit that's solid and you have confidence in, and work forwards again from there.

What might help, because this really is quite an odd situation, is to sketch out both sides' positions first, what they know or think they know, what they want; in something this unusual, a little preparation would not go amiss.

I did some of that in a thread in the SF section here.

In terms of the worst case scenario, for a basically- well, for a species for whom weapons are not a large part of their culture, let's weasel it at that, I'd expect a lot of lasers because they are so potentially, immensely useful for non- violent purpose. Long range LIDAR mapping and spectroscopy? Mining to serve ISRU? Communications, small craft- accelerating solar- sail remote probes on their way? Use the optics to recieve, as a telescope, as well as emit? Lots of uses for a distant probe. As well as if the worst comes to the worst.

(Laser weapons don't need long barrels, they need wide lenses- they would tend to look like optical devices, cameras, telescopes. A sufficiently paranoid Kerbal could 'film the ceremony' and leave the humans none the wiser that he had them covered with ravening death beams.)

Unfortunately, Kerbal laser technology isn't that great; they can shoot down an incoming missile pretty reliably but when it comes to offensive weapons they're dependent on good old-fashioned guns and missiles.

And now a spanner in the works- yes, you more or less have to develop artificial gravity on the way to a working version of a drive that basically bends spacetime, but scaling the actual alkerbierre drive effect down to something as piddly as shipboard AG would be like gearing a 1000HP tank engine down to power a mechanical pencil.

If the humans went down a blind alley with artificial gravity research, managed to get a complicated, twitchy, low power application just right but in doing so headed in the wrong direction from the big prize, the Kerbals might be very relieved by that.

Might go for the opposite, actually; the Kerbals got to take a big shortcut because they had a Negative Space Wedgie to poke with a stick, and they missed some intermediate steps because there's several holes in their understanding of the theory.

Although- their ship is going to be very distinctive, although not obvious at first sight to the humans of the 'verse. The draft designs for alcubierre drive have structures associated with it that are as much a giveaway as the masts and rigging of a sailing ship or the pusher plate of an Orion; the field emitter that 'blows' the warp bubble has to be a fairly solid ring structure wider than the length of the main hull.

Hmm. I didn't know that. I could change the design, but it'd be easy enough to handwave as the early theorists getting some stuff wrong. That bears thinking on.

[Zaune]

I have some suggestions.

The Alcubierre drive requires the existence of negative mass in order to work--which means exotic matter of some unknown description. I don't know much about this whole Kerbal Space Patrol thing (literally just what I've read here), but you mentioned a space anomaly called "the Kraken"--perhaps the kerbals could mine exotic matter from there?

It's Kerbal Space Program, which is basically a spiritual successor to Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. This should give you some idea.

And the Deep Space Kraken thing is actually kind of an in-joke. The game engine really strains to cope with the biggest planet in the system, and can get really glitchy when ships are operating near it. Sometimes they'll just blow up, but one one occasion I saw a video where part of a ship got suddenly launched in a random direction at eight times the speed of light. And the germ of an idea was planted...

This would have some rather interesting implications for the setting. Firstly, even if the Alliance gets schematics for an Alcubierre drive, they won't be able to build one. If they steal an Alcubierre drive, they'll have a grand total of one. Secondly, the Kerbals have something that it's absolutely worth sending an invasion fleet lightyears from home to gain control of. I know in your other thread you were talking about war between kerbals and humans. The kerbals are going to want to keep control of all the exotic matter even before they learn about the various dirty secrets of the Alliance (my impression is that there are limits on freedom of the press in the 'verse) because they are technologically advanced and clearly warlike to some extent, and the Alliance is going to resent this because it means the kerbals can hit them and they can't hit back. It might be worth it, from the Alliance's point of view, to get in a first strike at highly relativistic speeds and attempt to secure the Kraken now, while the kerbals have only one FTL ship (or what few they make in the next few years).

Now, my impression is that the Alliance is going to want to hide the existence of the kerbals from their people and try to trade slightly-outdated or mainly-harmless technology for exotic matter. The Alcubierre drive will have obvious military potential, and they don't want that info leaking to would-be rebels. I don't know a lot about the kebals, but I imagine the principles of capitalism alone will drive them to seek greater exposure (and potentially better deals) sooner or later.

That's pretty much what I'd got in mind for the Alliance's agenda. But the kerbals will have ideas of their own and aren't necessarily inclined to take orders from their hosts. They've been watching the news, where the fallout from the Miranda leaks is currently the lead item, and the local equivalent of the History Channel.
All this is going on in the public eye back on Kerbin, I might add. Clips from the intercepted TV broadcasts are getting played on the evening news, anthropologists are getting interviews in the papers; this is the story of the century. And all the usual suspects are working up a good head of righteous indignation about the many sins of the Alliance, both known and suspected, and demanding that Something Be Done.

The thing to remember is that the Alliance is barely unified (they've only been so for six or seven years, and that at the barrel of a gun) while the kerbals aren't unified--there is a great deal of potential here for dealing across species lines.

Ironically, though, the kerbals have much less recent history of armed conflict; their last real war was decades ago and hardly any of their serving military personnel have ever seen combat.

Back to the Alcubierre drive. They work by enclosing a bubble of space and warping the universe around it--who says the bubble has to contain only one ship? Or that the drive has to even be attached to a ship in the first place, rather than acting as an interstellar ferry? This last one has pros and cons--on the one hand, you won't be wasting reaction mass dragging it everywhere you go, but on the other hand, what if it falls into the wrong hands or you need to GTFO quick-like?

I may work that into any sequels I decide to do, but Starfarer 1 definitely can't bring any other ships home with her unless they're either attached to a docking port or lashed to the hull with cable; they could probably expand the warp bubble by a few percent but the safety margin isn't that big.

[SMJB]

It's Kerbal Space Program, which is basically a spiritual successor to Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. This should give you some idea.

Was that supposed to not have sound?

And the Deep Space Kraken thing is actually kind of an in-joke. The game engine really strains to cope with the biggest planet in the system, and can get really glitchy when ships are operating near it. Sometimes they'll just blow up, but one one occasion I saw a video where part of a ship got suddenly launched in a random direction at eight times the speed of light. And the germ of an idea was planted...

If it's invisible, that just means it's so negatively massive that it bends light away from it, like a reverse-black hole. Which is good, because you need a planet's worth of unobtanium to make the Alcubierre work.

Here's an idea that seems more inline with how the Kraken works, however: bradyon-tachyon conversion. The advantage of this is that as we have no idea how it would even happen, you can fib about it. My suggestion is to claim that Starfarer 1 is taking a contained piece of the Kraken's anomaly-energy with it, which they unleash a little of (very carefully) every time they need to transition between being made of tachyons and bradyons (real matter). As far as I'm aware, there's only one weird effect, but it's a biggy: the normal sort of time dilation is inverted. however arbitrarily quickly you can travel from one star to another in the time frame experienced by an outside observer, it will always take the same number of years as the lightyears traveled from the inside. Cryogenics may be in order, but it still raises Cain for any sort of ansible-like system, as you won't be communicating with the home system in real time, you'll be communicating with the home system years in the future in real time.

Hmm. Perhaps the Kraken has some sort of temporal compression effect on its victims as well. Why not? We're already screwing with spacetime as it is. Things shouldn't line up perfectly, of course--that would be a bit too convenient--but if we're talking a time displacement of days rather than years, that's workable. And if you want causality to hold as well as Relativity (you picky person you ), I do recall something about a "Visser effect" which prevents wormholes from affecting their pasts by making them collapse (or was it explode?) if they try to get close enough to do so. That's the problem with trying to do FTL without throwing out Einstein--there are all sorts of bizarre consequences.

IMHO, however, it's better to go with out-and-out magic than to try to be realistic and fail.

That's pretty much what I'd got in mind for the Alliance's agenda. But the kerbals will have ideas of their own and aren't necessarily inclined to take orders from their hosts. They've been watching the news, where the fallout from the Miranda leaks is currently the lead item, and the local equivalent of the History Channel.
All this is going on in the public eye back on Kerbin, I might add. Clips from the intercepted TV broadcasts are getting played on the evening news, anthropologists are getting interviews in the papers; this is the story of the century. And all the usual suspects are working up a good head of righteous indignation about the many sins of the Alliance, both known and suspected, and demanding that Something Be Done.

The kerbals must be rather civic-minded, then, because in the real world we can't even get the people behind an effort to get Saudi Arabia to stop child marriages. I can't imagine it'll be long before some brainless cultural relativist says they should "respect the culture of the Alliance", even without factoring in the fact that it's quite large and powerful. Of course, the people will have a hell of a lot more interest in the Alliance (because OMG ALIENS!!!) than the typical First Worlder has in Saudi Arabia, but still, it'd be a good idea to at least touch on these contrary sorts.

The thing to remember is that the Alliance is barely unified (they've only been so for six or seven years, and that at the barrel of a gun) while the kerbals aren't unified--there is a great deal of potential here for dealing across species lines.

Ironically, though, the kerbals have much less recent history of armed conflict; their last real war was decades ago and hardly any of their serving military personnel have ever seen combat.

There's still room for both sides to try to play the other's factions off against one another.

[Zaune]

No it wasn't supposed to have no sound. And I'm actually planning on glossing over the science of exactly how the FTL drive works because I want to focus on the clash of cultures and ideologies.

And I was thinking more of the fuming and fulminating about the goings-on in Syria and how the West ought to be... Well, nobody really had a coherent idea what we should be doing, but it involved blowing shit up.

[SMJB]

No it wasn't supposed to have no sound. And I'm actually planning on glossing over the science of exactly how the FTL drive works because I want to focus on the clash of cultures and ideologies.

That's probably for the best. But you still have to know how your FTL works, if for no other reason than to keep from tripping over your feet later.

And I was thinking more of the fuming and fulminating about the goings-on in Syria and how the West ought to be... Well, nobody really had a coherent idea what we should be doing, but it involved blowing shit up.

Ah, yes. That's probably a pretty good model, actually, especially considering that we didn't end up actually doing all that much.

[Zaune]

And here's the revamped opening to Act 3, or at least part of it. Sorry it took a while. I'll put the revised versions of Parts 1 and 2 up in the Completed/Cleaned Up Fics sub-forum shortly.

(EDIT: Or not... Is that mods-only or something?)

TABWhen Captain Tarrant next became aware of anything, he was lying on the bunk in his ready-room while a corpsman was taking his pulse. "Take it easy, Captain, you might've hit your head. Hold still for a second, I need to check your pupil reaction." A penlight was shone in one eye, then the other. "All looks normal, sir. I'll need to run a few more tests to be certain, but it looks like you just had a vasovagal attack."
TAB"A what now?" Tarrant tried to sit up, then decided against it as his head swam.
TAB"You fainted, sir," the medic replied. "It's a stress reaction, basically your brain hitting the emergency shutdown button."
TAB"Oh." Tarrant very carefully turned his head. As he had suspected, Admiral Liu was standing nearby. "I'm terribly sorry about this, Admiral. It appears I've finally gotten around to going off the deep end."
TAB"Would you feel better if I told you you didn't hallucinate the aliens?"
TABCaptain Tarrant's head thumped back onto the pillow. "Not... particularly," he groaned.
TAB"The situation's under control. Consider yourself temporarily relieved of duty due to ill health and let the medics take you down to sickbay."
TABCaptain Tarrant briefly considered objecting, as the Admiral wasn't technically empowered to do that without the Chief Medical Officer's endorsement, and something must have shown in his expression. "It's not an order," the Admiral assured him, "but it will be if you walk back out there and faceplant again."
TABHe had a point, Tarrant decided. If nothing else, collapsing on the bridge in front of everyone had been embarrassing enough the first time. "Aye sir," he said resignedly.

* * *

TAB"Is he going to be alright?" asked Jeb.
TAB"Nothing a long vacation won't fix," replied Admiral Liu. "Not your fault, he's just had a rough couple months; it's kind of an eventful time to be in the Navy."
TAB"So we gathered," Bill said dryly. "We've been watching your TV whenever we're in line-of-sight. The news channels have been... instructive."
TABLiu smiled wryly. "I'm sure my political leadership will be truly overjoyed to hear that."
TABJeb decided he liked the admiral. He'd been impressively level-headed about the whole First Contact business so far, and appeared to have both a sense of humour and a robust intolerance of bullshit. Maybe that was why he was posted to what Jeb gathered was the remote and unfashionable end of the Zyrix system.

TABWhich didn't appear to have any other name, incidentally; much like the Kerbals, the locals just referred to it as "the sun" in ordinary conversation. That was something the anthropologists had asked him to make inquiries about, along with a few more details about this mysterious Earth-That-Was they'd heard mentioned a few times, because despite all of Bill and Bob's dilligent efforts they'd yet to figure out where exactly it was; its orbital period didn't coincide with any of the planets they'd located so far, which admittedly couldn't have been even a third of the total in this system if their information was anything to go by, and the local equivalent of an Astronomical Unit seemed to put it well outside the habitable bracket of the local star. Jeb had a theory about that, one that he hadn't yet worked up the nerve to voice aloud.

TAB"I've been asked to deliver a letter of introduction signed by the leaders of most of our governments back on Kerbin by hand," Jeb explained. "I'd like to request permission for myself and Kurt here to come aboard. We'll wear pressure suits and submit to any biohazard decontamination process you deem necessary."
TAB"That can be arranged. I'll consult with our chief medical officer and get back to you with the arrangements."

TAB"Do you really think that's necessary?" Jeb said warily, watching Kurt struggle to strap a gun-belt on over his suit.
TAB"Better to have it and not need it, boss. I mean, can you imagine what'll happen to my promotion prospects if I let you get kidnapped and dissected by aliens on my watch?" He finally got the catch done up, then reached into the arms locker for his pistol. It was a space-service weapon, small enough in calibre and muzzle velocity that its recoil was manageable in zero-gravity and the rounds weren't capable of puncturing anything vital inside a spacecraft. They weren't capable of puncturing anything vital inside a kerbal who was wearing even the most rudimentary body armour either, but one had to make certain compromises in extreme environments.
TAB"You want to take one too?" he asked, slipping four twenty-round magazines loaded with hollowpoint ammunition into his suit's pockets.
TAB"Best not. We can pass you off as my security detail but I'm technically a diplomat. Besides, I barely even qualified with the damn things, remember?"
TAB"Alright." Kurt slipped a fifth and final magazine into the gun and holstered it, leaving the chamber empty; regulationss and good sense forbade loaded weapons in cockpits. He thought long and hard for a moment, then grabbed a second, even smaller pistol and a couple of magazines for it and stuffed them in his flight-bag. He didn't honestly think there was much danger, but it'd still be good to have something to arm the boss with in the event of things going sour.

TABThe Mk1 Mod 5 capsule had much better and more compact electronics than its ancestor, leaving room for a passenger seat and a couple of small storage lockers. Elbow-room was still at a premium.
TAB"Are you sure this was a good idea?" Kurt said worriedly, as a nearby corvette spun lazily to track their course with its forward guns.
TAB"What are they gonna do, torture us for information to help them plot the invasion of Kerbin?" Jeb laughed derisively. "They've got enough to do keeping their own people in line, and the only FTL drive within several light-years is on our ship."
TAB"That's what worries me," Kurt replied. He hadn't just been watching the news broadcasts, although those had been worrying enough. One of the channels they'd identified specialised in historical documentaries, for a given value of the word 'historical', and Kurt had gravitated towards it out of professional curiosity when the anniversary of a recent armed conflict had come up. It had been highly informative in ways the network had probably not intended.
TABJeb shrugged. "I don't trust the Union of Ostensibly Allied Planets all that far, but this Admiral Liu guy seems to be on the level. If he's not, well..." He opened the manilla envelope containing a print-out of every non-classified detail of the Alkerbierre Drive's operating principles and held up a photograph of what was left of Eeloo. "Think this'll get their attention?"
TABKurt laughed out loud. "That will do nicely," he declared, with some satisfaction.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

C&C, mod only, yes; if the board nominates a story as being worth including, it is edited, stripped of comment posts, and archived there. It's supposed to be like a hall of fame.

The mod's- Mayabird's- profile suggests she has not logged on for over twenty months, incidentally.


Redrafting was a good idea; keep at it.

[Zaune]

Fair enough. Not sure if I can justify starting a new thread, so you'll find the revised versions of Acts 1 and 2 at the Arch Rival or the official KSP forums.

[Zaune]

Good grief it's been far too long. This scene took so long to get right I wish I'd cut it altogether. But anyway, I'm partially recovered from Christmas and hope to be back to churning it out again.

TAB"IAV Fredricksson, this is... Uh, we never picked a callsign so let's go with Homesteader One. On approach, requesting docking instructions, over."
TAB"Homesteader One, this is Approach Control. You're cleared inbound for the main landing bay, indicated by four flashing yellow lights. Be advised, our grav-envelope starts approximately two metres inside the outer airlock door. Some minor nausea and dizziness are normal during transition, over."
TAB"Copy that, Approach Control." Jeb shook his head. "That's gonna take some getting used to."

TABThe revelation that their neighbours had artificial gravity had caused no small amount of consternation back home. They'd seen it on local television a couple of times, but only in the context of programmes that were obviously fictional, and had written it off as one of those technobabble-powered handwaves that even determinedly hard-SF series had to resort to sometimes; renting a spacecraft or orbital facility for location shoots wasn't cheap, and wire-work and bluescreening* only went so far.
TABCaptain Tarrant had obligingly and rather dramatically disproved that particular notion, throwing much of their anthropological analysis into disarray and forcing some drastic reevaluation of the Alliance's estimated tech-base. They still didn't seem to have FTL yet, but it seemed they might be closer than the kerbals had previously realised.

TABThis was doubly unfortunate given everything else the Kerbals had been learning from human television. Jeb had always been a proud and vocal member of the share-and-share-alike camp when it came to the distribution of knowledge, but even he was starting to have doubts about the wisdom of placing everything they knew about the human race in the public domain. The public mood had swung from excitement to alarm rather quickly once they'd pieced together what G23 paxilon hydrochlorate was intended to do as opposed to what it had actually done, and in some cases it was hardening into anger. The fact that a large faction of the local government was less than pleased about what had been going on behind their backs was helping only moderately, and the usual suspects were still working up a good head of righteous indignation and demanding that Something Be Done. Nobody seemed to have a clear idea what that something should be, but when had that ever mattered?

* * *

TABThe landing bay was bigger than he'd imagined; apparently a few nuances had escaped the translation team and the Fredricksson was a pocket carrier rather than what Jeb had first thought of when he'd heard her described as a cruiser. A bright red line was painted on the deck; judging by the fact that a pressure-suited figure carrying a pair of lighted batons was standing quite normally on the other side of it, it indicated the edge of the gravity field.
TAB"Hoo boy. Approach Control, this is Homesteader One. Request guidance on crossing the gravity threshold without denting your deck, over."
TAB"Homesteader One, Approach Control. Normal practice is to touch down short and taxi on thrusters. And don't feel bad if you scuff the paint some, everyone does the first couple of times, over."
TABJeb chuckled. "Copy that, Approach Control."

TABHomesteaders weren't really designed for taxiing, but on occasions when they had to be moved around after landing but the local gravity was too high to hover on RCS thrusters alone the landing skids could have wheeled trolleys strapped to the underside. They were remarkably similar in size and shape to a skateboard, and had therefore probably caused more injuries and property damage than any other piece of equipment in the history of Kerballed spaceflight.
TAB"It might be easier to get out and push," Kurt remarked. Jeb gave him a Look, not bothering to dignify that with a response, and engaged the lateral thrusters.

TABAnd then promptly regretted it as they crossed the threshold, making his head spin and his stomach lurch both at once as having half his body in freefall and half in 115% of Kerbin stndard gravity sent his autonomic nervous system into a kernel panic. The loud and urgent squawking from the instrument panel suggested the autopilot hadn't fared much better.
TAB"Minor nausea and dizziness, the man says," Jeb muttered. "You okay?"
TAB"I'll live."
TABJeb hit the RESET button for the SAS unit to shut the alarm up, making a mental note to turn it off before entering or leaving a grav-envelope in future, and took a look out of the window to see a couple of ground crew and some sort of towing vehicle approaching the capsule. "Valet parking service, huh? Better get buttoned up."
TAB"Can you hear us okay in there?" someone broke in over the radio.
TAB"Loud and clear. We're suiting up now. Uh, is this gonna take long? The computer doing the translating is air-cooled, it's only rated for ten minutes in hard vacuum."
TAB"No problem. We'll be done in less than five."
TAB"Great. Stand clear." Jeb pulled a lever next to the hatch, opening a valve to equalise pressure. There was a faint pop instead of the drawn-out hiss he'd been expecting, and Jeb somewhat belatedly realised the airlock had closed behind them at some point while he was busy trying not to be sick. Feeling slightly silly, he opened the hatch and climbed out.

TABFour humans were waiting for him. Two of them were unarmed, unless something that looked vaguely like a pressure-washer and a handheld searchlight counted as weapons. The others had some sort of carbines or sub-machine guns and the look of a security detail; apparently not everyone as as relaxed about this situation as Admiral Liu. Their eyes locked onto Kurt's gunbelt, and while they didn't raise their weapons, their sudden change in posture suggested it was a possibility.
TAB"If you guys are on the radio circuit, I'm going to take my sidearm out of its holster and lay it on the deck," Kurt told them. "The chamber is empty but it has a full magazine."
TABThe two humans exchanged surprised looks. "What were you expecting, a death-ray?" Jeb quipped.
TAB"Now you mention it..." one of them replied.
TABThe resulting laugh broke the tension, and the guards both slung their weapons. One of them picked up Kurt's pistol and examined it with interest, then turned a dial on his suit's wrist and spoke for a moment on a channel the kerbals couldn't hear, presumably asking for further instructions. Apparently satisfied, he switched back and handed the gun over to Kurt. "My superiors say you can keep your weapon, sir."
TAB"Thanks." Kurt made to holster it, but hesitated. "This thing probably needs to go through decon procedures."
TAB"We'll take care of it." The crewman with the handheld spotlight thing stepped forward. "We're going to use a combination of UV and an antiseptic wash. You have protective visors on those helmets?"
TAB"Sure do." Jeb slid his into place. "Let's get this done."

TABThe process was fast and not terribly dignified, involving every inch of their suits being blasted with a mixture of water and industrial bleach at several hundred psi to eliminate anything the UV lamps hadn't got rid of. Once it was complete, one of the deck crew gestured to someone behind a control room window overlooking the airlock. "We're going to dump the atmosphere in here and repressurise, just to be on the safe side," he explained.
TAB"That's not going to cut into your safety margin, is it?" Jeb asked, rather worried; it was a pretty big airlock and they were a long way from their home port.
TABOne of the humans gave him a slightly odd look. "No, we're fine, it's standard procedure for chemical or biowarfare defence. Some nasty stuff got thrown around in the Unification war."
TABJeb saw Kurt's eyes narrow at that, and made a mental note to ask him just which side was the first to start throwing those chemical and biological weapons around back then.

TAB"It doesn't make sense," Captain Tarrant muttered, staring at the CCTV feed from the airlock. "Their technology's barely in the 21st century. How the hell did they jump straight to FTL before they even got grav-envelope technology?"
TAB"I wouldn't extrapolate too much from that one ship," Admiral Liu pointed out. "Nuclear-thermal's rugged as all hell, got a fifth as many moving parts as laser fusion drives and it'll run on plain tap water. And that grav-wheel? Hell, it's got between zero and one moving parts depending how you look at it. Now, if you were going to be so far out in the Black that your nearest approved spare parts dealer was a couple years away at best speed..."
TAB"Point taken," Tarrant admitted. "But-"
TABWhatever he was going to say was forgotten as a Marine looked in through the conference room door. "They're here, sirs."



* For obvious reasons, the Kerbals had never been able to take advantage of the benefits of green-screening.

[fnord]

Zaune,

Not sure if you inspired this or vice versa, but

KSP Interstellar

To quote the blurb:

KSP Interstellar is a plugin for Kerbal Space Program, designed to encourage bootstrapping toward ever more advanced levels of technology as well as utilising In-Situ resources to expand the reach of Kerbal civilisation.

Players will first gain access to contemporary technologies that have not been widely applied to real space programs such as nuclear reactors, electrical generators and thermal rockets. By continuing down the tech tree and performing more research, these parts can be upgraded and later surpassed by novel new technologies such as fusion and even antimatter power.

We attempt to portray both the tremendous power of these technologies as well as their drawbacks, including the tremendous difficulty of obtaining resources like antimatter and the difficulties associated with storing it safely. The goal being to reward players who develop advanced infrastructure on other planets with new, novel and powerful technologies capable of helping Kerbals explore planets in new and exciting ways.

The principal goal of KSP Interstellar is to expand Kerbal Space Program with interesting technologies and to provide a logical and compelling technological progression beginning with technologies that could have been available in the 1970s/1980s, then technologies that could be available within the next few years, progressing to technologies that may not be available for many decades, all the way out to speculative technologies that are physically reasonably but may or may not ever be realisable in practise.

And some of the new parts:

Current upgradeable parts and the Technologies which unlock upgrades (More soon!)

[Per Part] Alcubierre Drive: Standard Field Geometry ----> Advanced Field Geometry (Faster charging times and higher maximum speeds)
[Ultra-High Energy Physics] Antimatter Reactor: Solid/Liquid Core Reactor ----> Liquid/Plasma Core Reactor (3x power output)
[Per Part] Computer Core: Standard Mainframe ----> Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Core (Guaranteed to open the pod bay doors while within warranty period!)
...

(emphasis mine)

[Zaune]

Haha, no, I'm pretty sure the creators of that mod and I hit on the idea independently. I haven't installed it yet, but I might use it to create some scale models if I can't find a willing artist once I get a new graphics card.

[Zaune]

Right, then. New policy: Post early, post often, because you guys help motivate me.

TAB"It doesn't make sense," Captain Tarrant muttered, staring at the CCTV feed from the airlock. "Their technology's barely in the 21st century. How the hell did they jump straight to FTL before they even got grav-envelope technology?"
TAB"I wouldn't extrapolate too much from that one ship," Admiral Liu pointed out. "Nuclear-thermal's rugged as all hell, got a fifth as many moving parts as even the simplest laser-fusion drives and it'll run on plain tap water in a pinch. And that grav-wheel? Hell, it's got between zero and one moving parts depending how you look at it. Now, if you were going to be so far out in the Black that your nearest approved spare parts dealer was a couple years away at best speed..."
TAB "Point taken," Tarrant admitted. "But-"
TABWhatever he was going to say was forgotten as a Marine looked in through the conference room door. "They're here, sirs."

TABThe two aliens entered the conference room a moment later. They were a little shorter than a human on average, the taller of the pair coming to about five feet six by Captain Tarrant's reckoning. Their heads were taller and more cylindrical, and their hands had only four fingers, but otherwise their similarity to homo sapiens was just close enough that with a bit of stage makeup they could pass for human at a distance. Tarrant wasn't sure if that made him feel better or worse.

TABTheir spacesuits, on the other hand, couldn't have passed for human unless they were kept in a museum. Either their internal biology was significantly different, accounting for the much bulkier and heavier suits, or their materials science was about a century behind humanity's.** He wondered what that might mean about their society; did they simply have different research priorities, or had they reverse-engineered their FTL drive from some third party?

TAB"Good morning, gentlemen," said one of them. "Apologies for the shock we gave you, Captain Tarrant. We'd intended to get in touch by radio once our colleagues back home perfected our translation software, but you happened to be in the neighbourhood."
TABTarrant smiled awkwardly. "Quite alright, Mr... uh..."
TAB"I'm Jeb and this is Kurt. We don't use secondary names quite the way you do; I think there's maybe twenty different ones total, all representing a different ethnicity. And yes, it does get confusing sometimes," he added with what looked like a faint smile.
TAB"Your knowledge of human culture is pretty impressive; have you been studying us long?" Tarrant replied, with a note of suspicion that was not lost on the Kerbals.
TAB"Not especially. We arrived about a year and a half ago by your calendar, and once we realised this system was inhabited we decided to maintain a low profile until we knew what we were getting into. A few weeks later we managed to pick up some satellite TV transmissions; that's how we got the translation software working."
TAB"Just like in the movies," Admiral Liu quipped.
TAB"Yep. Our movies too, funnily enough. Anyway, I have some official communiques from the various nations of our home system here..." He fumbled in a plastic document folder and handed over a sheaf of paper. Tarrant skimmed the first page; apart from the occasional phonetic spelling, it was undistinguishable from the dry official boilerplate of government communications everywhere, which was at once vaguely reassuring and moderately surreal. He put it to one side for more detailed perusal later.
TAB"I'm sure you have a lot of questions," Jeb continued, "but there's something I really have to ask. We've had our optical and gravimetric sensors searching around the clock for nearly a month, but for the life of us we can't figure out where your homeworld is."

TABThere was an awkward silence as Captain Tarrant and Admiral Liu exchanged looks. "That's... complicated," Liu replied. "And kind of embarrassing."

* * *

* For obvious reasons, the Kerbals had never been able to take advantage of the benefits of green-screening.
** Four centuries if you wanted to be picky, but there hadn't been much opportunity for scientific advancement during the long flight from Earth-That-Was.

[Enigma]

MORE!!!!

[Zaune]

I'm working on it.