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Narrative[]

"Gusbro Kerman had long since lost count of the days he'd spent in the Astronaut Complex, studying manuals, training on simulators, and generally trying to look competent whenever Gene Kerman walked by. Just when he was about to give up hope, Gene finally selected him to fly the new Ice Cream Station module, codenamed Hot Fudge, and handle its deployment! Gusbro quickly settled his affairs and headed to the launch pad.

Safety always being priority number one, the launch configuration featured a capsule at the top and a launch escape system (untested), just like a rocket famous in a dimension other than Gusbro's. The first booster stage was discarded before circularization and fell harmlessly back to the planet (he assumed). The second stage was used to circularize into a 0.0 km encounter with "Free space tugs do whatever you want with 'em," after which it de-orbited itself with Sepratrons. The payload was then docked with the larger of the free space tugs. After a routine status check to make sure the tug was in working order, Gusbro performed a 5-minute burn to a retrograde orbit around Minmus. His mission plan binder said his next task was to do nothing for a full week, so Gusbro kept himself busy by moving the command pods to the docking ports where they would serve as emergency pods for the crew of the station, with enough delta V to return from Minmus to Kerbin independently. Then he settled in at the station's science computer for a marathon session of his favorite game, Human Space Program.

Once inside Minmus's SOI, Gusbro executed a capture burn that led to another close encounter, this time with the diminutive Ice Cream Station, his destination. He sighed with relief when he saw he would be approaching at only 4 m/s; let Jeb handle those dangerous high speed maneuvers that he likes to brag about so much. After coasting close and zeroing out relative velocity, Gusbro disengaged the dock with the tug and brought his Hot Fudge craft to a gentle contact with the core of Ice Cream Station, then remotely docked the tug at the other side to prevent it from drifting loose and causing havoc.

Then the real work started; Gusbro once again boarded the command pod, undocked it, and used a few careful puffs of monopropellant to place its docking port next to that of one of the radial girder assemblies. There wasn't room to dock fully with the center of the station in the way, so once he could feel the pull of the magnets, he signaled to the station's computer to release the assembly, which drifted out and clamped onto the pod. (Simulations had shown that the girder would spin unmanageably if it was allowed to drift freely.) Then it was a routine matter to position the girder at its forever home at the station core and extend the solar panels. (Engaging the decoupler while the docking port magnets were already pulling seemed to jam the docking ports together, but an urgent call to Misson Control traced the problem to software, and Gusbro was able to fix it by editing the incorrect value "Acquire" to "Docked" in a few places in his pod's persistence system.) Gusbro patiently installed the other three girders in the same way and returned the pod to its designated emergency service location, and Ice Cream Station was ready for action! Gusbro Kerman logged back in to the station's computer to send a notification to the crew of the nearby Quasarrminer 1 that they were welcome to visit anytime. Not bad for ten days' flying, Gusbro thought."

Album can be found here: http://imgur.com/a/fSe2g#URb80gN

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