Waking up
*blib* cryo pod 3 thawed, Judith yawned and opened her eyes.
“Hi Judith, you should be hearing this message. This is Gene.” sounded the intercom, she wanted to respond, but then remembered that she was probably deep in Kerbol system and there was a time delay. “Anyone else awake?” no response came. “Odd, why wake up the engineer first?” She thought.
She would learn soon enough. They were 12 days out of Jool and there was a lot of work to do. Mission Commander Scott Kerman was woken next, then Bob as the lead scientist. Obviously, there was the reactor fix, but there was more: they were coming in way too fast.
Building the ship while flying it
One option was to burn all of their fuel, but there was another. The Shadow Mage had a deployable heatshield. A mechanical arm was to put it over the engine, but KSC deemed it too fragile. The large gravitic collector was moved to the science lab, then the heatshield was moved to the front.
Scott and Bob worked in the lab to recycle the broken radiators and build new ones. Based on the tests this would do the trick. They had to be certain though. If it would fail, they could perhaps burn at 1/10th of the normal desired output.
After the relay data from KSC, they ran a thermal test. The reactor got hot, but not that hot. It seemed that the engine problem was fixed.
The green furnace
With all systems primed, there was little to do than to pray for the best. they aimed at a periapsis of 180 km, estimate arrival speed was nearly 10 km/s. “Jool is getting awfully large very quickly,” Scott reported.
Nevertheless, it was a sight to behold. The green atmosphere licking the edges of their instruments. There was the science to be discovered, As the slogan of the Kerbal Science institute was: “non est gaudium maius est denudantis iudicia scientia” so they smiled as they entered the green fire.
The reactor shielding kept the craft pointed in the right direction but at a price. Several explosions rocked the craft and by the time they reached the outskirts they had bled off nearly 2000 m/s and several structural panels.
They ejected the heatshield and flipped for one more burn that rattled the entire spaceship, but allowed them to get captures and intersect with Tylo, some free delta-v was waiting for them, 6 days from now, by then the Galahads would have arrived as well.
The arrival of the knights
Galahad 08 had already made a free capture and was preparing for the next burn. It’s brethern would arrive soon.
The aftermath
“Judith to Scott, we have some serious damage to the radiation shield here, it will hold for now, but all safeties are off.” She inspected further. “I also see engine and reactor damage, I recommend low thrust settings to avoid radiating the crew. There is a serious chance we will blow this thing to smithereens.”
KSC Archives 