Project Overworld

'Damn, that's kind of annoying.' Keith thought while looking at his phone. He had received a few messages coming from Amber while he was playing to Project Overworld and only witnessed them now.

She was telling him that people may start establishing onto other continents and islands. He was half-expecting this after she asked him to find a name for the continent so he was not that surprised.

Though, he should have some time before people started invading his home. Indeed, she told him that she would be making this announcement after the next Inventopia, which would take place in two weeks from now, and that Shyram would not be their first priority to develop onto.

All in all, he should have at least a month and a half of delay before a city developed on his continent. Even then, there was a strong chance that this city would be established quite far from his base so that players should not be coming across it accidentally.

Regardless, during the past few weeks he has been able to launch two other modules into orbit. His spatial base was now only missing a few modules for the purpose of a potential Moon landing, and some more for his future conveniance.

He still needed to develop a space shuttle, though, as well as launching fuel tanks into his station so he would have enough for a round trip to the Earth's only natural satellite.

'Well, seems like I have to speed things up a bit.' Keith realized. He needed to go unnoticed for the time being because of his plans for the Moon landing. If he was to be discovered now, his fun would be quite spoiled.

With that being said, he resumed working on his space shuttle so he would be able to finish it by the end of the delay that was being given to him.

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- "Okay, nice job!" Eric exclaimed while inspecting the latest rocket they have been working on. It was the third edition of their 'Apollo' series and it was even bigger than the first one was. 'Apollo 1' did end up as a failure but the Starise group learnt a lot thanks to it.

The second one was not really that perfect but they managed to make it into the thermosphere at around a hundred miles away from land. Because they were able to go so high into the skies, their progress was exponential. The higher they got, the less the atmosphere and the gravity affected their rocket.

If it continued like that, the Starise group would be able to land on the Moon by their seventh or eighth edition of 'Apollo'.

Because of Eric's stubbornness, they have had to improve their c.o.c.kpit so it could contain four people while having a really clean design. They were currently building their rockets at a rate of one per ten days, albeit the designing phase took at least as much time by itself.

- "This time around, we're going with Larsen, Leyla and Ashley." Eric ordered. They were currently six working on the rocket but since there was only four places within the c.o.c.kpit they had to take turns to fly onto it. Though, the only constant was Eric because he was actually streaming the event.

One time, he had tried to livestream from the ground, showing off the rocket going up into the skies, but it seemed like his viewers were not having as much thrill as the other times.

Before climbing onto the rocket, he started livestreaming and introduced their new rocket design to his viewers. Thanks to last time, they were much more infatuated and were all waiting to see them reach yet another milestone. Eric installed himself tightly with the seatbelts and presented the various improvements of the c.o.c.kpit.

In no time, the main engine of the rocket ignited while the side boosters were put on hold for the actual take off. The usual vibrations made them dizzy but the rocket slowly acc.u.mulated enough power to lift itself up into the air.

- "Alright, let's decouple the pylons and activate those boosters. Today, we may even reach those three hundred miles of altitude." He proclaimed.

Leyla, listening to him from the frontseats, shook her head in spite.

'What he wouldn't be doing for his livestream. We were originally doing this for ourselves as friends, but I feel like we don't even matter in his eyes anymore. Regardless, we may actually reach three hundred miles of altitude today, although it would be kind of a stretch.' She motivated herself. Like every time she was part of the flight, she started checking the values displayed on screen and made some adjustements in the supplying of the main engine based on that.

It was not that necessary as a program integrated into the rocket's hardware was already accomplishing this job. However, since it had a deadzone so it would not be trying to adjust the flow all the time, she felt like it was not really that optimized as is.

Regardless, she was the most knowledgable concerning the main engine and some of the other staged engines so she would not blindly trust a shitty program she did not even understand.

'Alright, this should be enough for now. We should try a maneuver to place ourselves into orbit this time around. I'm sure Eric would agree to it as well since it would be quite spectacular for his livestream.' Leyla concluded.

Just before reaching the mesosphere, she suggested her plan to Eric to which he agreed in an instant.

Fortunately, the programers of their group already implemented such functionality into the rocket in case they reached a high enough altitude to place themselves into orbit. To be fair, everyone more or less expected to reach orbit this time around, but they did not know if they had enough fuel to make it or not.

It would be such a disgrace to Eric and his livestream if failed to do so. However, if even the main engineer of their engines asked them if they would like to go into orbit, they could only accept blindly.

Sometimes relying on the rocket's program, sometimes manually taking control of the structure, Leyla kept them ab.r.e.a.s.t of what was going on exactly: "Initiation of the rotation maneuvers ... Ten degrees ... Twenty degrees ... Thirty degrees. We're good for now, the next maneuvers should start in T minus ten minutes."

They were now entering the thermosphere, at around sixty to seventy miles of altitude. Once they reached this point, Leyla made some more adjustments to make sure they would reach a stable orbit.

The rocket was now tilted towards the east at a forty-five degree angle. It was only a matter of time before they reached a high enough altitude. To Leyla's calculations, they should be able to make it by the hundred to hundred and fifty miles away from land.

Along the way, she was constantly checking the various levels of fuel left in the tanks as well as the current inclination of the rocket. She wanted to make sure its program would not be affecting it negatively. By the time they reached eighty miles of altitude, she made another round of changes in their trajectory and continued until they reached the hundred miles mark.

On board of the c.o.c.kpit, the rest of them joyfully celebrated their feats. It was the second ever time they went this high into the skies, although they had much more fuel left this time around.

'Please shut up...' Leyla was thinking. She was trying to focus all of her attention onto the various data displayed on her screen but Eric was keeping his chat entertained by talking round the clock.

The rocket slowly reached a perpendicular trajectory relatively to the ground and Leyla put on the power output of their engine to its highest.

- "Alright, that should be enough." She explained. "The only thing left to do is to pray that we don't run out of gas before actually reaching somewhat of approximate orbit."

The others religiously listened to her while trying to keep their hopes on hold for now. They may actually make it into orbit, after all, but had to keep a high profile for Eric's livestream.

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'Oh!' Keith exclaimed. He decided to take a small break from Project Overworld to drink some water and do some exercices to maintain his body. Just as he was scrolling through his phone, he received a notification that 'Ericality' was currently streaming. He joined the stream while it was half an hour into it, but found out that they were trying to reach orbit with their 'Apollo 3' rocket.

He was really interested in how things would be going, he thus kept on watching for another couple dozen of minutes while exercising. Just as he was getting bored and wanted to go back to his own projects, he witnessed their final maneuvers to reach orbit.

'Mhh... Yeah they might actually do it. I don't see the tank gauges very well from there, but I guess they should have enough.' He concluded. 'Alright, I have my own matters to attend to. This space shuttle isn't gonna build itself after all.'

In fact, he just finished the general design of the shuttle and wanted to start assembling it so he would be able to test and improve its structure before the final launch.

'I'm not gonna give them an easy win in that Moon race, although they don't know they are racing against me yet.' He thought while a wry smile stretched his lips.