Tag Archive: Jebediah

Captain Jebediah has waited nearly 5 months for his second chance to fly into space after his first attempt last year was foiled by religious extremists. Extensive training with his backup crew mate Specialist Bob prepared him to handle everything but the wait, which was increased further on his second attempt first by weather delays and then by a faulty engine on launch day. After successful ignition, launch failed due to low thrust issues that caused the engine to not reach a thrust to weight ratio (TWR) of 1.2 for lift off. Trying a second time led to the same result. Although the thrust loss was minimal and still would have been enough to push the rocket off the pad, downrange performance was called into question – it would have been a costly and embarrassing failure if the rocket had been unable to reach space due to thrust issues. Thankfully this additional mission delay was not as long as it could have been since we had another engine that was recently received & tested ready to swap in over the course of a week. After a static fire on the pad the day before launch to make double sure it was capable, Jeb was finally able to ride up into the starry blackness. His mission would be similar to the previous kerbed sub-orbital flights in allowing the gathering of medical data from the 0G environment as well as providing additional flight data on the performance of the capsule, heat shield and crew G tolerances. And as always – amazing pictures!

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