Project Overworld

During the last few months, Keith as been exclusively working on his rocket prototype. It was only around thirty feet tall, as he did not need much more for a first launch, but the overall shape was definitive. In fact, the excess size he would be giving to the final version would only be useful to transport other structures up to space.

His goal was to ultimately build a space station, as well as a few satellites. It would be useful for him to check other players' progress through his satellites' lenses instead of checking by himself. Moreover, he would never fear that another player may accidentally come across one of these structures. In fact, he could observe everything from space and try to defend his station by taking down other people's rocket, if it ever comes down to it.

Regardless, the work Keith has been putting in this project was finally bearing fruits. He was currently checking whether everything was perfect for the lift off.

He began his inspection by igniting the main engine, checking if it worked as intended. Afterwards, he tested the smaller engines on the sides of the rocket which would help him balance the vehicle. Finally, he did a final tour to check whether every junction was well tightened up and the whole structure was perfectly symmetrical.

As for the different stages of the rocket, he could not simply activate them manually. Decouplers were one-use mechanisms and he would have to check during the flight whether they would accomplish their job or not. He had already tested several of these on simplified parts of the rocket, but he was worried that the strong pressure of the wind as well as the weight of the whole structure would hinder their efficiency.

'Well, there's no reason to worry. This first flight is a test to see what I could improve in my design.' Keith suddenly shook himself. He was not there to unnecessarily fear that every single part of the rocket would fail him. In fact, in the worst case scenario, he would only lose a few weeks of work since he had already built several of each part of the rocket. The only problem would be if the rocket crashed into his base, but he was fairly certain that it would not break down to this extent. Plus he had installed a self-destruction mecanism for that purpose.

'What's up with my tendency to explode everything?' Keith sighed.

Keith finally decided to climb onto his c.o.c.kpit and start off the ignition phase. This part was necessarly long as it allowed him stabilize the flow at which the fuel was brought to the combustion chamber according to the data that was sent to his screen. The engine would also heat up to a certain degree, getting ready for the take off phase.

Keith slowly increased the fuel supply of the engine until the rocket started trembling violently. Nothing to sweat about, though, as he knew this only meant the thrust reached its equilibrium state. If he increased it by only a bit, the rocket would start flying off. Thus, he pressed a button to decouple the rocket from the launching pad's attachment pylons and pushed a lever forward.

The smoke that slowly acc.u.mulated around the rocket suddenly doubled in volume along with large flames coming out of the main engine. The rocket took off, albeit slow, reaching the top of the room in several seconds. Keith did not want to work on an automatically-opening ceiling for now since he would not be gone for long, so he left it open. He wanted to see if he could reach the mesosphere, or even higher, beforehand.

As for this last part, he had made a barometric pressure sensor a few months ago in anticipation of his first flight. Such sensor could determine the altitude by computing changes in the atmospheric pressure. As he did not test it any further than by climbing on top of a small montain in the surroundings, he could not tell how precise it was. However, the different layers of the atmosphere were several dozen miles - nay hundreds of miles - away from each other and an approximation would be completely sufficient to tell apart which layer he did reach with his rocket.

Anyways, for now, Keith was entirely focus on the various data he received through his screen. Each engine seemed to be fully operational and the rate at which the fuel was being used was well within his calculations.

'Everything seems in order, let's push forward Orbital One.' Keith always made it an habit to name his important creations. It made it easier to remember the steps he had followed to reach his current progress.

'Huggy' was the first ever vehicle he had made which helped him leave his first base. It was a buggy made out of first-hand materials. It did travel at a few dozen miles per hour but it was really limited in its uses. It used wood as its fuel. The name was supposed to be a joke since its pronounciation was pretty close to 'Ugly' and 'Buggy' at the same time.

Next up was 'North-Express' which was some sort of a train made out of various carts. It helped him transport the resources of his second base to a more frendly place. It also used wood as its fuel. Its name was a reference to one of the most popular train made in humanity's history, with a small private joke since he went up to the north side of the continent instead of the Orient.

Just as he reached the ocean with the 'North-Express', Keith took a few months to make a ship he then called 'Santa Maria'. With this boat, like Christopher Colombus did back in the fifteenth century, Keith managed to discover another continent on which he decided to settle.

Then has been the era of 'Rober', his famous rover that led him throughout the continents. It proved especially useful for the contruction of an electrical train connecting his mining area to his base. Besides, this train was named after the Scottish inventor of the first electric locomotive, 'Davidson'. Albeit this train had not always been electrical, that is what Keith had decided to remember.

Finally, he recently made a motorbike which used refined petroleum as its fuel. He named this vehicle 'Sleipnir' after the name of a famous horse in the nordic mythology. Since players had named their first city 'Midgard', he found that this name fitted right since its purpose has mostly been to lead Keith to this city. He had also made a bicycle which had a similar purpose but he thought that it was quite strange to name a wooden bike he designed in only a few hours.

Currently, Keith was traveling onto 'Orbital One', a name pretty self-explanatory since he hoped to reach orbit with this rocket. He knew there would be several iterations of rockets he would be making, that was why he decided to put a 'One' after its name. It was not the first time he left land, since he had traveled by ship a few times in the past, but it was his first journey which destination was set upon space.

Keith was now several thousands feets above the land. The automated balancing process activated the various engines on the side of the rockets alternately. It seemed to work great since the trajectory was pretty stable. In fact, he had installed a gyroscope in his rocket to help this balancing system figuring out what engine it should be activating. As a side project, Keith used it to program a simple visualizer on his screen, displaying the current tilt of the structure.

It was the only reason he did not go crazy since he had not installed any windows or cameras on the outside of the rocket. He thought that it would bring too much instability to the structure but he now realized he really needed it to check the trajectory with his own two eyes.

Once the barometric pressure sensor displayed on the screen that the rocket had reached about forty miles of altitude, Keith slowly started tilting the structure towards a thirty degree angle. Unfortunately he had to deactivate the balancing system for a bit since it was automatically correcting the inputs Keith was giving to the side engines. After the rocket reached the d.e.s.i.r.ed angle, Keith tried reactivating the balancing system but the same problem occured.

'Hmm, it doesn't seem to compute the change in trajectory. I may have forgotten something in that code. Well, doesn't matter for now I'll do the adjustments myself.' Keith concluded. However, adjusting the trajectory manually proved to be much more difficult than was he had initially expected. Either he corrected the trajectory too much and he had to activate the opposites engines to counterbalance, or he did not correct enough and had to jerkily do it again.

Once he got used to it however, he noticed he had already reached eighty miles of altitude, meaning he was right in the thermosphere.

'Well, I've got a quite some fuel left in the containers. Let's go reach the orbit now!' On that note, Keith did another round of adjustment to bring his rocket to a forty five degree angle. His test has been quite successful until now, although there were several parts to be improved. However he did plan for more fuel than his rocket would actually need to reach orbit. Of course, all of this was to counterbalance a potential loss in efficiency along some parts of the rocket.

But this also meant that he had a chance to make it into an orbit at the thermosphere. His motivation soared in an instant and Keith could not wait to get there.

'Let's hope nothing major happens to this rocket. After all, this would certainly be the first time someone ever reaches space in Project Overworld. A step of giant for my future projects.'