A year? Already?! Well, I can’t imagine a better time to be writing this, already two days into our most ambitious launch campaign yet that is firing off rockets – into space!! If you had asked me a year ago what I would be doing now I could have only dreamed this is what it would be. Of course, it was always the plan to get rockets heading up past the boundaries of the atmosphere within a year but the challenges that we knew we would have to surmount at the time seemed so huge! The fact that we have made it this far in so short an amount of time is testament to the dedication of all the employees here at the Kerbal Space Agency who are dead set on seeing kerbals become an inter-stellar species. We know we are not alone, and we know we have to find the answer to the existence of the Monolith.
But we need to remain grounded (ha!) and focused, working on the basic technologies that will pave the way for future endeavors. We are right now in the process of making a big step, introducing automated control to our rockets. The first flight of the Progeny Mk5 yesterday was not a complete success, however it did an incredible job of moving us closer to a fully-automated rocket flight. I’ll be attending a flight review meeting later today after which we will release full details on what went right and what went wrong. We may have made it to space already, but these are still exciting times. There will always be new boundaries to push for, new frontiers to explore.
Despite all we’ve achieved so far, I don’t think a year is long enough for reflection, so I’d like to continue to look ahead. Our Extremis program is still developing slowly, picking up its pace gradually as the first launch window approaches late next year. Lots of R&D work is in progress and we still expect to hear from our astrodynamics team later this month on whether they have worked out new trajectories or will be sticking with our original windows & flybys. There hasn’t been anything announced yet but rest assured we are working on design specs for orbital engines that will soon be released for contractors to begin designing & bidding. Currently we plan to achieve orbital flight in the first or second quarter of next year and the orbital engine specs will depend on what type of escape trajectories our Extremis probes will require. As eager as all of our astronauts are in getting up into space, they are certainly not eager to die. In order to ensure their safety as much as possible we will be slowly and carefully working our way towards kerbed spaceflight sometime in 2019.
Finally I would like to thank all members of the public reading this right now, because the fact that you are shows you have a vested interest in the KSA, and your support is valuable to us. Please continue to interact and provide feedback as we go about our operations. Enjoy these following four launches over the next week and a half, I know I will 🙂 Here’s to another exciting year!
– Drew Kerman
Founder & Operations Director
