Jebi Dreams of Eeloo (A Better Day)

Jeb found himself stepping out of his training sim and saw Bill standing there. The space centre felt familiar, yet vaguely different. Bill had a strange smile on his face...

"Hey Jeb!" he shouted, "How's the training going?"

​Jeb snorted. He felt as if he'd been through the Minmus landing sim a hundred times. He felt ready to fly, if only the space program's scientists and engineers would finish up with the crewed lander hardware.

"I've got a little something to show you, Jeb. Well, actually, there's nothing 'little' about it!"

Jeb followed Bill down the hallway, which seemed wider and taller than he remembered. And a little... more expensive. When they reached the spaceplane hangar, Jeb couldn't believe his eyes. It was easily twice as big as he remembered.

"What do you think?", Bill asked.

Jeb said it looked great, but he's always been more interested in rockets than planes.

"Look over there," Bill continued.

 Jeb stopped dead in his tracks. There, in the middle of the hangar, was a ship larger than he'd ever seen before. He realized it must just be a wooden mockup, as there was no way something that big could actually fly.

"Well, Jeb, what are you waiting for? Get your flightsuit on and let's go!", Bill shouted.

Jeb couldn't believe the feeling when he ignited the engines and the plane began roaring down the runway. He pulled back on the stick and the bird lumbered into the air.

Even though Jeb hadn't trained for flying a spaceplane, he instinctively knew the proper ascent profile and quickly reached orbit.

Once in space, the ship flew just like any other rocket, and he easily performed a transfer to Minmus.

The landing procedure wasn't exactly what Jeb had been training for, but it was manageable enough in the weak gravity of Minmus.

"Watch this!", said Bill, as he deployed the ship's surface drill and began mining under the ice for ore.

Refuelling the ship felt like it took ages at first, but before Jeb knew it, the ship was fully refuelled.

​​"Jeb, Is there anywhere you've always dreamed of visiting, yet seemed just beyond your reach?", Bill asked.

Jeb immediately thought of the icy dwarf planet Eeloo.

Jeb reignited the engines and they were quickly in orbit, with more fuel than they knew what to do with.

The next thing Jeb knew, it was time to perform a manoeuvre so crazy he had never even considered trying it in the sim. He would leave Minmus on a near-return trajectory to Kerbin, but instead of re-entering and landing, he'd use Kerbin as a slingshot. 

Just as the ship was reaching Kerbin, Jeb fired the engines again and they said goodbye to their home.

After a quick correction burn, mission control confirmed they were on an encounter trajectory with Eeloo.

They could just barely make out Duna's moon Ike as they header into the outer solar system.

Another correction burn gave them a more reasonable encounter.

At their apoapsis, Jeb went for a spacewalk before quickly realizing how cold it was.

At a distance of over 90,000,000,000m away from the sun, Jeb realized their ship had more than enough fuel to zero out its 2,000m/s of orbital velocity.

​What felt like moments later, they got their first glimpse of their icy new home. At least Bill insisted it was there, somewhere.

After one final course correction, Jeb and Bill prepared for their capture burn.

Jeb calmly settled their ship down on the icy surface. He instinctively knew just what not to do, and it felt almost as if this wasn't his first attempt here.

The crew got out for a quick meet-and-greet before heading back inside for hot chocolate.

Bill and Jeb went back into cryo-sleep while their ship slowly refuelled.

It felt like only minutes passed before he was awoken by an awful sound. He looked around in astonishment. He was back in the training sim, and had just crashed into Minmus.

He asked his mission commander Valentina if Bill was still on Eeloo.

"What are you talking about, Jeb?", Val said. "Bill's still in the VAB working on our Minmus lander.

Jeb looked around and the space centre was back how he remembered it, without any of the new buildings or expansions, and realized he wasn't the first Kerbal to step foot on Eeloo.

​Yet.