Project Overworld

'5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Ignition phase initiated. Everything seems under control for now.' Keith declaimed in his head. It has been a week since he started assembling Orbital Two, and he was finally ready for his second ever take off.

As he has been making a few adjustments here and there on his rocket's design, he did not know how it would react exactly. However just like during his first launch, he did not really sweat over it that much. He was mostly there to test out his improvements, and he would not lose much if he failed to get into Earth's orbit anyways.

In fact, as long as the rocket did not explode at launch he would still be able to make the required adjustments for another launch, analyzing how the structure reacted during the flight.

Regardless, even if he did land the rocket back on land, he would not really be able to recycle its materials as it would be taking more time than using fresh ores. Thus, his only motivation in successfully going into orbit and coming back home would be to flatter his own ego.

After letting the rocket heat up for a few seconds, Keith then proceeded to push the acceleration lever. Just like last time, the structure shook unbelievably hard when it got enough speed to start hovering off the ground.

'Orbital Two ready for take off, I'm starting to decouple the rocket from the launching pad's attachment pylons.'

The rocket continued to hover several meters away from the launching pad until Keith slowly increased the acceleration. He activated the automated balancing system and exited the spatial room from its open rooftop.

This time, no booster seemed to leak and the rocket effortlessly reached the forty miles of altitude mark. Keith got rid of these boosters in no time and started tilting the structure towards the East, hoping that the balancing system would not go against him this time around.

However, he seemed to have worried for little to no reason since the rocket successfully inclined towards a thirty degree angle.

Keith was really glad he did not need to make trajectory adjustments by himself. Last time, he has had a really hard time trying to correct every tremor in the structure with manual inputs.

Upon reaching the thermosphere, Keith tilted the structure to a greater angle.

'Well, looks like the few adjustments I made on Orbital Two are really fruitful. I've got a whole lot of fuel left in the tanks.'

Slowly adjusting the trajectory towards a ninety degree angle, Keith successfully reached several hundreds of miles up in the skies. He got rid of another stage of the rocket and started accelerating with his last engine. As the tank supplying this engine was still full, Keith was in a much better shape than last time.

After half an hour of acceleration, he realized that his altitude sensor was not changing value by much anymore. He then decided to turn off the engine, in hope that he did actually reach an orbit.

Keith waited several hours in his c.o.c.kpit, noting the different values on a sheet of paper every ten minutes or so. Although those values were sometimes decreasing, he quickly noticed that they stabilized around certain limits.

The superior limit seemed to be around seven hundred miles of altitude, while the inferior one was about six hundred miles away from land.

'I did it!' Keith rhapsodized. 'I achieved an orbit! I can't wait to land on the moon and pronounce the most famous quote of all time. Well that'd be for another time, though, I've got some satellites to launch into orbit too.'

Although serious most of the time, Keith could not hold back from feeling excited. Even the speeches he thought about upon launching the rocket were literally unnecessary, but he found it cool nonetheless.

However, the hardest part was now facing Keith.

He really wanted to try and land the rocket back near his base. However, for that purpose, he needed to slow down the vehicle at the right distance so its curve would reach the intended point.

Fortunately, he has had the presence of mind of noting the exact altitude he reached when he started making the last few adjustments to get into orbit.

Thanks to this value, he estimated the distance he had already traveled and determined an approximate point at which he should start doing the necessary inputs to get close to his base.

After a few more hours of getting preparation for the landing, Keith finally started slowing down the vehicle.

'Okay, it should be enough for now.' Keith calculated.

He then proceeded to tilt the rocket, following the curve taken by the vehicle to limit friction with the air.

Re-entry into low atmosphere could be problematic since the speed of a spatial object was so high. If Keith was not careful, the rocket could literally explode due to the air friction. Even more so since he transported a few hundred pounds of explosives on board.

The altitude meter was going down like crazy. However, he intended to let the air slow down his rocket before turning on the engine again.

At around thirty miles away from land, he started thrusting hard against gravity to try and slow down as much as possible. Minutes felt like hours to him, especially since he saw the altitude sensor stabilize at a steady one thousand yards per minute.

At this point, there was not even much fuel left in the rocket's tank so Keith decided to decouple everything unnecessary, keeping only the c.o.c.kpit. He then activated the parachute, hoping that it would not break appart as soon as it was opened.

Fortunately, although the structure shook violently from the sudden deceleration, everything seemed to go as planned. However, he was still about four miles away from land while he estimated his speed to be around ten miles per hour.

This meant that he would have to wait for this c.o.c.kpit to land for nearly half an hour.

'Argh, this is taking too long.' Keith complained. Even though this whole flight lasted for several hours, only taking a few breaks to eat something in real life, there was now nothing he could do except for waiting. This was the worst sensation, hoping that everything would be fine while not being able to control anything.

Keith almost fell asleep when he was suddenly woken up by a loud thud. He suddenly realized that there was not any more jerking around caused by the wind.

'Have I landed?' Was his first thought. And sure enough, after pressing a button to unlock the c.o.c.kpit door, the light of the sun welcomed him in all its splendor. He seemed to have landed on a pretty large open area, only seeing some trees in the distance.

He immediately recognized the singular trees that only populated the continent he has settled on.

After making sure the engine did not land far away from the c.o.c.kpit, albeit really damaged, Keith decided that he needed to first find where the ocean was. This was not really a difficult task since he knew the ocean from where he came from was situated at the southern-east part of the continent.

He located himself thanks to the Sun and soon enough, he spotted a familiar sandy beach. After a few more hours of walking around, he finally caught a glimpse out of his large ship in the distance.

'Yes! I'm saved! I could have respawned at my bed but I wouldn't be knowing where the remains of my rocket landed. Regardless, this was such a successful test! Orbital Two, you will always be remembered as the first shuttle to ever reach orbit!'

After getting back home, Keith immediately took out his favorite rover 'Rober' and attached a trailer on its back. He also took a few tools with him and headed towards the landing area of both his c.o.c.kpit and its engine.

He dismantled them both, not wanting to leave any clue for another player visiting this continent.

Keith was really tired at the end of this, both physically and mentally.

The awarness needed for a take off was highly demanding on his brain, not to mention that he skipped a whole night of sleep just to finish off everything cleanly. Fortunately, he still had a full day to relax himself since it was only sunday in the morning.

Still, his job was not finished yet as he needed to take notes on what he would need to adjust for his next big project. In fact, everything he has done until now was only some testing in the grand scheme of his spatial installations.

Next up, Keith wanted to create a rocket almost double the size of 'Orbital Two', as well as designing a small but efficient satellite. With that, he could start monitoring the planet from afar and get to another level of security. In fact, this would only be the first step in his project of space colonization, he may even start controlling everything from space.

With a long yawn, Keith took a last glance out of the notes he had posted on his base's computer before pressing the button to disconnect himself from Project Overworld.