[u][i]KIS Jebediah[/i][/u]
|Mission: [s]Investigate Big Glowy Cloud[/s] [i]Land on a planet in Shao XI.[/i]
|Location: 30,000ly, Bearing 30 Degrees (quite near to the Septonium Concordant)

[b][i]Five hours ago:[/b]

The [/i]Jebediah[i] had decelerated out of the first reasonably successful, controlled, and purposeful FTL jump in Kerbal history. As soon as the Alkubierre drive had spooled down, the [/i]Jebediah[i] quietly re-obeyed the standard laws of physics and resumed going the direction and speed it had been going (relative to the galactic center) pre-jump. While the Kerbals had been prepared for this, they hadn't known what, exactly, they should have done about it. Chris had guesstimated a reasonable distance from their target asteroid, hit the little red "stop" button, swung the entire ship around, and then frantically burned retrograde. Several MkRocket Meals™ had tumbled from the snacks locker. The end result was that the [/i]Jebediah[i] narrowly missed crashing into its target asteroid at 2,236m/s - around 2,200m/s faster than their desired orbital speed. 

The whole maneuver had started because Gregara had asked a stupid question: whether or not they would, in fact, have enough fuel for both the lander to land and the [/i]Jebediah[i] to decelerate from FTL. So Danman had picked a nice, small asteroid on their way to the target.

That nice, small asteroid was, at that point, 7.2km behind them. By the time the [/i]Jebediah[i] had slowed down sufficiently, they were much closer to a different, lumpier, slighty larger asteroid. So Chris had decided that they would simply spool up the Alkubierre drive and jump to the proper side of the new asteroid to let their course and speed take them into orbit. Being the first Kerbals to ever use the Alkubierre drive for a second time, it had taken a few hours of reading the manual to realize that the drive needed to cool down before it could be reactivated after such a long initial jump.

So when the [/i]Jebediah[i] had come out of FTL orbiting yet a third asteroid, Chris threw up his hands, declared that it was good enough, and retired to his cabin.[/i]

[b]Now[/b]

Completely unaware of the stealthed ship on the far side of the asteroid, Ferfen suited up for EVA. While his brother Danman had figured out a good asteroid to aim for, this wasn't that asteroid, and Ferfen had no idea whether or not [i]this[/i] asteroid would have kethane. Kethane was a valuable and easily-refineable fuel source. The best way to detect it would have been a surface sample, but they also could use the parabolic stereomagnetic spectrographic kethane scanning dish (understandably referred to as the "Kethane Detector"), which was mounted on the outside of the ship. It was a good thing they had the kethane detector, as the lander was incapable of returning from moon-sized objects without refueling.

Ferfen adored EVA's. He could flip endlessly, and often did, just for fun. Just now, he'd completed a quinteple backflip before reluctantly activating his suit's manuevering thrusters. Nearing the kethane detector, he activated it, performed a few barrel rolls, and went back inside the ship. The results of the scan showed a few scattered deposits, and nothing else unusual. It was time to assemble the lander. 

[u]KIS [i]Bob and Bill[/i], vacuum configuration[/u]
Chris, Gregara, and Barlas all crammed into the lander's tiny cockpit. As it turned out, they had even less fuel than they'd thought - despite the miniscule amount of thrust needed to land on this particular asteroid, they ran out of fuel halfway up. They were going around 1m/s faster than the maximum impact tolerance of the landing legs. Desperate, they piled out of the ship, grabbed on, and activated their spacesuit maneuvering thrusters. The [i]Bob and Bill[/i] slowed fractionally. Around 15 seconds before impact, Gregara shoved everyone back into the cockpit, trying to at least angle the ship so that the legs would all touch down simultaneously.

Unfortunately, the [i]Bob and Bill[/i] was landing on a hill. It touched down, the legs compressing to their fullest extent before one of them collapsed. The shock caused the entire lander to start tumbling down the hill end over end, bouncing in the very low gravity, before settling in a cloud of dust and small rocks at the bottom, miraculously rightside up, though leaning precariously. Pleased at their progress, Chris ordered everyone out. Their first order of buisiness would be finding enough rocks to make up for the missing leg. Between the three of them and the low gravity, they should be able to lift it. Their second task would be to use the [i]Bob and Bill's[/i] mounted drilling and refining units to refuel the [i]Jebediahi[/i]. That would take several trips from the asteroid's surface back up to their ship. After, of course, Chris planted the mission flag.

Landing the [i]Bob and Bill[/i] would be interesting now that one of the legs was missing. Chris made a mental note to aim for somewhere more flat next time.

[hider=The Bob and Bill, Landed][img=http://i.imgur.com/kxhiQUA.png][/hider]

---

[u]Kerbin[/u]
Eva Kerman, current KIS administrator, stared at the small pile of papers on his desk. Out of the corner of her eye, she'd noticed something stuck to the bottom of her "in" box. Curious, she lifted the box, dumping half of the project requests and approval-needed papers into an auxilliary "in" box. The paper was a small brief about a potential rescue mission.

She had to do a double-take at the date and location of the rescue mission. This form was from 150 years ago. It was written on by none other than [i]Jebediah and Bill Kerman![/i] Still, Eva had had rescue missions take a long time before. A few kerbals may or may not be still trapped on Eve. They had been for at least 35 years. She kept meaning to rescue them, but with the Alkubierre drive, there were so many other interesting places to go. She did at least paradrop them supplies every so often, along with notes saying that she'd really rescue them soon, and that she meant it this time. 150 years, however, was pretty long.

And the location of the stranded kerbalnaut? Kerbin. Some mysterious desert temple. She wrote a note:

[quote="Evas Note"]Rescue 'Ace' from mysterious temple!!!

PS: Either rescue the Eve mission, or give up on them! Stop just sending them supplies and putting it off for another year!
PPS: The Eve mission really hasn't had a supply of snacks for a while; we should probably do something about that before they die.[/quote]