Green Origen

The Crew

The following day last preperations were made, the training continued and the postman had to carry three big bags of mail into the administration building. There, Walt and his team had a ton of things to do. It seemed as if every tv network wanted an interview with either Gene or Bob. He couldn't really decide whether this was good or bad, as it gave them a wonderful reputation but also meant working through the third night in a row. Mortimer was gone by plane, talking to investors all over Kerbin. Nobody had seen Wernher and Linus ever since the canisters had been delivered to the lab. Even Bob only went to eat and shower before joining them. Meanwhile, Valentina was at the training ground, waiting for the big centrifuge to warm up, as Jebediah joined her. They were both going to fly the next day: Val on board the SR_02 to space and Jeb on the SR_03 for the first flight with a liquid fuel second stage. 'So, are you excited for tomorrow?' Jeb asked. 'Well, it is a big moment I guess. I mean, I'll be the first woman to leave the atmosphere. Great how equal rights are finally catching up, isn't it?' 'It sure is.', Jeb replied smiling. 'Do you know where Bob went?', he asked. 'I had a snack with him right after the debriefing. Afterwards he just said something about needing to go and that the goo couldn't wait. You know him.' That was true.

It had been one year since Gene had approached Jeb. He was a test pilot in the airforce, normally stationed at an aircraft carrier. It was his holiday, and he had visited his family and friends in a town on the countryside. The third evening, whilst sitting in the bar and having a drink with his friends, Gene came in. It was very funny: There he stood, in a fine suit, amongst farmers, carpenters and shopkeepers wearing their casual clothes, saying 'Hello. I'm looking for Jebediah Kerman.' Jeb of course thought that man could only be from the military and saluted, which made Gene smile. 'Don't worry, I'm nobody you need to salute. I want to make you an offer.' Jeb soon couldn't believe his ears. Him? An Astronaut? But Gene had him convinced by the end of the night. Jeb continued work at the military for a few months, and what followed was a series of meeting people, training and sitting around. During that time he also met the other crewmembers: Valentina also came from the military and Bob and Bill were roommates at university.

Bill was the type of guy who builds submarines in his spare time and Bob always had the best exams of his year. Gene offered them a job the second they were done studying, and both gladly accepted. They started developing the first equipment alone, but soon Linus and, as time passed, many more engineers and scientists joined the team. The first tests with small rockets had been very succesfull, and after some time the RT-5 had been developed. It was a small booster, which powered the SR_01. The RT-10 and the massive RT-15 soon follewed, and now it was time to develop further parts. O.M.B. Demolition Enterprises supplied them with a powerful radial decoupler, and C7 Aerospace provided them with some leftover wingtips, which they used as fins for stability.

Mortimer had organized all those. He was a true genius when it came to making money and getting stuff for free, however he could easily get carried away and start doing barely legal stuff. He knew the borders and how to balance on them. When he and Walt were together, they started arguing pretty fast, as Walt always tried to set the company in good light and not get huge scandals which could cost them more than they could gain through these dubious actions.

Gus didn't really care about these things. Or he didn't have time to. He was after all the operations manager, so he had to manage basicly everything. He had gotten all of their equipment and the crews for the manual stuff: Construction and recovery teams, the assembly crew, the trainig staff and even the cleaning crews. Additionally he had to monitor the buildings. They didn't have much money at the start, and it seemed as if the least of it went into them. There always was some problem with them, and each time he would be called to inspect it. It was exhausting, but he just had to think about their dream and everything would be twice as easy.