How We Got Here

Some time ago, the U.E.S. Unfettered Ambition went out on an interstellar exploration mission. Finding the Kaywell system first, and already low on supplies and morale due to budget cuts, they frantically searched for a place to set up shop.

Only problem was, well... The U.E.S. team had failed to account for just how big the universe really is.

All of their rocket designs had been designed for worlds 5-10 times smaller than what they are here! The Kerbin they knew was around 1,500 kilometers in size.

Shol and Tyepolbynar, gas giants, lacked a surface to live on. Neither had habitable moons.

Mesbin, the next planet out, was a dense, airless rock, and though one of its moons, Kerbmun, had a breathable atmosphere and comfortable gravity, it was just too big to reasonably inhabit!

Derbin, Mesbin's far-out binary partner, was also too large, and had uncomfortably high gravity.

On and on the UES team searched, hoping to find a world that was hospitable, but not huge.

They glossed over Egad for lacking water, Reander for being too far out, and the Gemmemma system, due to it possibly being a flare star.

In between Mesbin-Derbin and Egad, there was Valyr, a massive ocean world, where they found themselves orbiting.

With the windows closed for cleaning, the kerbals onboard discussed where they would end up staying.

One camp, for Kerbmun, had gathered in the aft section of the ship. The other camp, wanting to keep searching, was in the fore section.

Fatigued after several long months of searching, the crew had neglected to check where their orbit would take them.

The ground proximity alarms started going off, and they felt a sudden, strengthening atmospheric force upon their ship, before...

CRASH!!!

The lucky ones who survived took stock of what had happened. Smashing into the ice at 5 kilometers per second, most of the ship and more than half the crew were obliterated.

Propulsion was gone, habitation was damaged, power was barely salvageable. Much of the onboard data banks were able to be recovered, as well as a copy of the mainframe computer.

Looking out of the windows, some cracked, others bent out of place, these plucky voyagers found themselves on a foreign world.

Oshan was not the world they needed, but the one they deserved- I mean, could make work.

With 0.3 gees, and 0.03 atmospheres of pressure, its surface left a lot to be desired. The ice and oceans underneath, however, were protected from Kaywell's harsh rays. Doing their best to preserve the under-ice ecosystems, they built habitats, helped each other out, and slowly, surely, started to thrive once more.

It has been quite a few Kerbin years since that fateful crash, enough for generations to live and die, and for groups to form, split apart, and come together again.

With the kerbals of Oshan united under a loose coalition of unions, parties, and cooperatives, the Union of Oshanian Syndicates has the green-light to look skyward once more.

The space centers of Kerbin had a peculiar shape, seemingly imprinted into our minds, and near the city of New Briztol, the main planetary space center would be built, surface installations supported on algae-based concrete and supplied by settlements below the ice.

Crafted by the best available minds and brought out by pressure-suited union folks, the Vertibird is ready to make that first hop towards the stars above.

==> Part 2