Kerbin

Kerbin
General Information
System	Sigma Draconis (19.9 light-years from Sol)
Radius
Atmosphere	moderate oxygen/nitrogen
Moon(s)	2 small moons (Mun and Minmas)
Age	6 to 10 billion years old
Day/Year
Alias
Civilisation
Races	Kerbal
Population	500 million
Places of Interest	Civilized world
Sovereignty	Van Saar Federation (protectorate), Humankind Empire Abh (ally)
Sailor Senshi	None known
Language(s)	Federation "Common"

Description

The planet Kerbin is the newest member world of the Van Saar Federation. In most aspects it's similar to Earth and Centaurus except with more landmass and differences in atmosphere, and most Humans can survive there without much difficulty. While somewhat cooler than Earth, Kerbin isn't cooler by much (5 degrees on average) and its global weather is slightly less active.

Kerbin is home to a species of short, greenish humanoids called the Kerbals. The Kerbals are noteworthy for their curiosity, their manual dexterity, and savant-like engineering skills: they are surprisingly skilled builders. Unfortunately their analytical abilities are lacking - their common sense is weak. Nothing demonstrates this more than their space program: the Kerbals have built a great many impressive rockets in their ongoing attempts to explore their star system, but all of their attempts so far have ended in unimaginably spectacular failures that border on comedic for the sheer scale of destruction involved.

Planetary Statistics

Local Biochemistry: Partially compatible

Minerals: Scarce rare/special minerals, scarce radioactives, plentiful heavy metals, ample industrial metals, extremely plentiful light metals, plentiful hydrocarbons and fossil fuels.

Distance from local star: 0.94 AUs

Density: 5.2 (medium-iron)

Gravity: 1 G

Climate: Temperate to Searing

Surface water: 50% coverage

Cultural Statistics

World Government: Formerly an oligarchy with democratic undertones believed to be secretly controlled by a Kerbal named Jebediah Kermin. Now currently a colonial magistrate under full Federation control until the year 2020 when it's expected the first generation of Kerbals to earn their citizenship will be able to establish a government style of their own.

Pluralism: Semi-diverse (One majority subculture, but with hundreds of regional variations.)

Toleration: Semi-cordial (Foreigners are quite welcome and the Kerbals themselves are very curious, but local laws are enforced.)

Solidarity: Semi-collectivistic (Kerbals band together to engage in large-scale projects fairly easily.)

Tractability: Submissive (Kerbal society is easily governed and very stable.)

Aggression: Moderate (Social norms are enforced through rule of custom and law, backed by the threat of violence.)

Pragmatism: Mystical (Kerbals don't seem to value empirical inquiry, preferring to use intuition and revelation to understand the universe...which is probably why their space program hasn't accomplished much beyond big booms.)

Innovation: Semi-Reactionary (Kerbal society is somewhat resistant to change and more than a little conservative, which might also explain their space program.)

Providence: Semi-Reckless (Kerbal society operates on a time-span of years. Anything beyond that tends to be largely forgotten. They tend to squander a lot of resources that otherwise could be preserved with better institutional planning.)

Technological Development

Physical Science: TL 6 (Good grasp of Newtonian physics. Approximate measurements of galactic distances.)

Material Science: TL 5 (Universal production of hard steels.)

Energy Production: TL 7 (Nuclear power plants and radiothermal generators for power generation, chemical batteries and fuel cells for storage.)

Information: TL 6 (Composite here: the Kerbals have discovered radio transmission and television to a good degree [equal to the U.S. in the early 1970s], but they haven't gotten past the "electro-mechanical" stage of computer design [punch cards and vacuum tubes].)

Vehicles: TL 7 (Automobiles, jet aircraft, and crewed orbital rockets.)

Weapons: TL.6 (The Kerbals have weapons technology equivalent to Earth in the 1940s. While they have the capacity to create nuclear weapons, their reasons for not doing so are more based on cultural reasons than technological.)

Biological Science: TL 6 (Biochemistry and virus theory.)

Medical Tech: TL 6 (Mass vaccination, antibiotics, and rapid development of surgical techniques.)

Environment: TL 7 (Massive-scale urban complexes and advanced weather prediction. Kerbal spacecraft benefit from surprisingly effective life-support systems with extensive recycling.)

History

First contact with the Van Saar Federation occurred in October of 2015 when one of the Kerbal's failed space attempts resulted in Kerbal cosmo-NOTS separating their command pod from the main rocket body and drifting away. The rocket failed to achieve escape velocity and was pulled back into the planet's gravity well. The Kerbal cosmonauts’ command pod soon afterwards smacked into the hull of a Carrack-class armed freighter (the "Morimoto's Downfall," which was outfitted as an Explorator). All three Kerbals survived, radioed mission control, and amazingly figured out how to get inside where they attempted to claim the ship for all Kerbaldom.

Did we just get boarded by the Far Out Space Nuts?!

Much hilarity ensued when they realized that not only was the ship occupied, but that they'd inadvertently discovered that they weren't alone in the universe, whereas they proceeded to try and explore every inch of the ship while still broadcasting back to everyone on Kerbin.

Facing complete public disclosure of their existence and with no way to discredit the incident (especially when it became apparent that the Kerbals were enthusiastically welcoming of their alien visitors), the Federation Assembly voted in favor of permitting the Kerbals entry into the Federation as a protectorate species. This was done partly in recognition of the Kerbal's building skills (which were viewed as very valuable) but also because of the discovery of ruins of non-native design at the heart of an ancient impact crater that xenologists wanted access to.

[Explorator report - The ruins are extremely ancient, perhaps pre-dating the evolution of the Kerbal species themselves; they are obviously not the builders. The structures were subjected to orbital bombardment long ago. The fact that anything remains is a testament to the strength of the materials used and the builder's skill. Few artifacts of value remain.

One object of note is a shattered basalt obelisk interwoven with psy-reactive crystal throughout its structure with intricate xenos pictographs on its broken surface. Faint traces of telepathic emanations were found, but the device has long since ceased to operate in any meaningful fashion.

Xenolinguistics have translated the inscriptions as "Evolution through chaos." Report ends.]

Report transcript intercepted. Ordo Xenos authorization acknowledged. Inquisitor [REDACTED] message as follows - "Harry, take your entourage and meet with Inquisitors Ruby and Serbius to investigate Kerbin more thoroughly. I doubt that "chaos" means Chaos, but we need to be sure. I'll stay here at Sol with Tsubaki to monitor the situation here."

Current Situation

So far the Kerbal's integration into the Federation has been almost alarmingly simple. The Kerbals themselves view the Van Saar as great engineers and very wise and have already begun serving as laborers, construction workers, and engineers on any project that doesn't involve anything that can actually explode. With proper supervision and oversight the Kerbals are surprisingly superb builders. Left to their own devices anything that's propelled by jets, thrusters, or rockets invariably disintegrates in the most unexpected, inopportune, and spectacular ways possible.

Nothing proved the necessity of Federation guidance more than the hellishly destructive failed launches of the rocket ships dubbed by onlookers as "the Drill to Pierce the Heavens" and the "Crashy McSplodey."

Noteworthy Examples of Kerbal Engineering (or "Failure is always an option.")

Ravenspear Mark-3 - A turbo-ramjet atmospheric aircraft that's comparable to the Terran SR-71 Blackbird. While it's capable of speeds of over Mach 3, turning is almost impossible at any speed. The fastest speed ever recorded is nearly Mach 4, during which the heat caused by air friction made the hull glow red and the plane disintegrated soon afterwards. This aircraft is also famous for the spectacular demise of Mikdun Kermen who attempted to eject when the hull began to ignite, opened the canopy, and was instantly incinerated while the plane kept going for several more kilometers before disintegrating.

Ravenspear Mark-2 - Another turbo-ramjet aircraft able to hit speeds of over Mach 2. While its maneuverability is terrible due to inadequate control surfaces, it's structurally durable and research is currently underway to modify the design for use as a cheap interceptor.

Stearwing A300 - A medium-sized cargo transport similar to a C-5 Galaxy, except that it's propelled by turbo-ramjets capable of breaking the sound barrier. Unfortunately the Kerbals never realized that turbo-ramjet engines only have two settings: "off" and "ultra-fast". At top speed the Stearwing ran out of fuel in just five minutes. The airframe is remarkably durable as the one test-flight performed by Federation pilots managed to glide unpowered a distance of over ten miles to an airstrip, overshot the runway, and still succeeded in making a dead stick landing in a grassy field with only minimal damage and no explosions.

The Kerbals have also begun experimenting with variations of the Stearwing mounting booster rockets to the wings with detachable clamps, originally as JATO jets, but some demented engineers (eyewitnesses described them as looking like Jamie Hynemann and Adam Savage from MythBusters) discovered that firing the rockets THEN detaching them from their hardpoints resulted in the rockets streaking away in corkscrew spirals to eventually explode on contact with whatever object they collided with.

Stearwing D45 Strafe-bomber - This was originally a forward-swept winged atmospheric craft utilizing two-stage engines: turbo-ramjets and conventional jet turbines connected to jettisonable external fuel tanks. After studying a Marauder bomber the Kerbals decided to use that as a template for their strafe-bomber.

Taking the D45 design, engineers replaced the original engines with improved models for greater thrust, additional canards for better handling, and swapped out the passenger bay for additional fuel. Numerous tests have shown the strafe-bomber to not only be fairly survivable (a majority of pilots have actually successfully landed the craft, and some of the crashes have actually resulted in the cockpit breaking away and remaining intact), but successfully able to drop a pair of highly volatile bomb-like fuel tanks with some degree of accuracy. Admittedly this is a halfway decent design.

Dynawing - A multi-stage aerospace craft similar in many aspects to the Space Shuttle. It's also a complete, utter failure as a trans-atmospheric craft because its detachable rocket boosters don't have enough endurance to reach orbit, the shuttle's jet engines aren't powerful enough, and the massive fuel tank mounted underneath the shuttle adds more weight than the craft can handle. Every test of this craft has been a disaster, with several instances of the shuttle losing control during flight, the hull breaking apart during tight turns, a free-fall where the shuttle could not gain any atmospheric control, and one case where the shuttle safely landed in the water yet one of its engines continued to fire for several minutes before running out of fuel.

All further production of the Dynawing has been halted by direct order of the Governor-Militant after one test flight nearly crashed into a Leviathan-class troop lander.