Early morning an Arrow IIB stood on the launchpad, carrying a ScanSat A3 gravioli density scan. It would target a polar orbit and launch from Woomerang.
One minute into the flight telemetry showed something was wrong. The payload was well within the capacity but the rocket started losing speed as if it was pulled back down.
Flight control struggled to reach Apoapsis and used the first stage to boost the altitude and engage the sensors. “It won’t circularise, but at least we can figure out something,” Bob said. And indeed the craft relayed a strong inverse gravioli stream before it came down through the atmosphere”. It would crash on the north pole.
The fuel burned and the equipment acting as wings it actually would survive the impact and relayed some data to KSC before the batteries that had smashed into the surface gave in. Gene requested a mission to recover the debris.
Firesar Airforce would send out the X-105A Hopper with Lt. Katerney Kerman to check it out. With a whopping 28000 m/s range it could reach the target at 520 km distance and get back too. Its 160 m/s cruising speed was nothing to be excited about nor its ceiling at 4km altitude. But being capable of vertical landing and takeoff was. The hopper was designed for carrier duty with folding wings but proved too large for the Neptune. The new Trident class was still on the drawing board. It would take 45 min to reach the polar circle, a little more to reach the almost intact crash site.
“I’ve got the data KSC, relaying now.” Bob was happy when the data came in. He looked at the numbers and immediately saw the anomaly. “A tight beam of anti-gravitons,” The satellite was mimicking the signal from a Monolith and apparently something had responded, and pulled the craft from its orbit. “Extrapolating coordinates, there!” Bob had its data. “Send a patrol to these coordinates and let them investigate, perhaps there is something of interest there.”
Two days later Finni and Fjallar gasped at the source of the graviton beam. “I think we should call this in,” Finni said. “Yeah, this qualifies as something of interest I would say,” Fjallar responded.
Skip ahead one month and you would find a completely new polar base, using new revolutionary “leveling” technology. Dr. Erilorf was there to decode the alien language on the many systems and controls they had found. Fjallar had started to work on deciphering the navigation systems and discovered references all over the system and Finni Kerman had paused his research into Kerbal hibernation because his biology skills were needed for something else.
In the craft had been the remains of two different alien life forms: one closely resembling the statue of Tut, but the other one had multiple arms resembled a fish that was all around the northern seas, but this fish was now in the command seat and the controls seemed to be optimized for the tentacles of the Kra-ken.
KSC Archives 