Kerbipedia

Kerbipedia is a free encyclopedia hosted on a single LSI module and edited by anyone with thumbs and access to a Snack Server. It currently contains 6,184 articles in Kerbali, 12,008 since the Greening, and approximately 1,400 articles authored or substantially edited by a user named Bob_Kerman_42, who is widely believed to in fact be Bob Kerman.

The encyclopedia is funded by occasional, mild fundraising drives. The fundraising banner is the small amber rectangle in the sidebar. We will not put an enormous picture of the founder at the top of every page. We have, in writing, promised this.

What Kerbipedia is not

• An accurate source of orbital mechanics. (Use OMQ.)
• A primary source. (Wait for the Herald.)
• Neutral on the Pothole Question. (We have tried. We have failed.)

What Kerbipedia is

• The single most-cited reference on the planet whose claims have been independently verified the second-fewest of any major reference work.
• The only place the canonical seven causes are stable across editions.
• The reason any particular kerbal can tell you, on demand, that the Council Chamber roof has been "due for repair" for one hundred and forty years.

— the Kerbipedia Foundation, Year 411

Basic Station (also: Star Ship Station) was a small orbital outpost built by KerbalX as the first deployment of the Large Station Initiative. It is no longer in service.

During MSC-002, the crew of R-SLS2 attempted to dock with Basic Station and could not. The docking port had been built to a specification that did not match the standard KerbalX had submitted to NASA. Mission commander Valentina Kerman performed an unplanned EVA to manually deploy a stuck solar panel and verify the airlock interface, confirming the mismatch. The crew then re-boarded R-SLS2 and returned safely to Kerbin.

NASA decommissioned Basic Station shortly thereafter and directed KerbalX to build a replacement. The replacement, LSI 1, was launched with a corrected interface specification, verified prior to MSC-003.

The Basic Station incident is the most expensive single mistake in the MSC program to date. It is also the only mistake that has led to a published, program-wide spec re-verification standard. OMQ has used the phrase "a unit problem dressed as a vehicle problem" in three separate editorials.

Kerbals (q.v.) are indefinitely viable: in the absence of an external cause, a kerbal does not die. They do not develop cancer. They do not have heart attacks. They do not "go in their sleep." A kerbal who is left alone in a room with snacks and a window will, on present evidence, remain alive forever.

This is, on Kerbin, considered completely normal. The cultural framing is not "why don't we die" but "why do you." Visiting xenobiologists routinely report that asking a kerbal about natural causes of death is met with the same expression a kerbal would give if asked to describe the natural causes of Tuesday. There aren't any. Tuesday just happens. So does staying alive.

Kerbals do, however, die. Below is the canonical, Council-recognized list of causes of death in kerbalkind. There are seven. The list has not been amended since Year 318, when "Disagreement with the Mun" was added under unusual circumstances.

The Seven Recognized Causes

№	Cause	Definition	Annual rate (Y. 411)
1	Lithobraking id. terrain.impact	Unscheduled contact with a hard surface at a velocity greater than the kerbal in question can absorb. The most common cause of death in kerbals. Includes falls, vehicle accidents, dropped tools, and the entire history of recreational mountaineering.	~14,200 / yr
2	Unplanned rapid combustion id. fire.event	Combustion at a rate the affected kerbal had not planned for. Includes industrial accidents, kitchen accidents, and the complete inventory of Starship 3C recovery attempts.	~3,800 / yr
3	Vacuum exposure id. helmet.absent	Direct contact between a kerbal's biology and a vacuum. The vast majority of cases involve helmet failure. The remaining cases involve helmet absence and a series of decisions the deceased made between Tuesday and Wednesday.	~140 / yr
4	Drowning id. water.lower	Cessation of respiration via submersion. Rare among kerbals, who can hold their breath for approximately twelve minutes and who float in saltwater. Almost all documented cases involve boating convictions — a kerbal who is sufficiently certain that the boat will not sink.	~62 / yr
5	Snack famine id. snack.absent	Caloric absence beyond the photosynthetic floor (~9 days). The last documented mass case occurred prior to the Greening. Modern incidence is approximately zero, except in the Dricken Valley incident of Y. 408, which was eight kerbals who refused to eat a particular brand of snack on principle.	~8 / yr
6	Disagreement with the Mun id. mun.dispute	One (1) recorded case. The deceased, identified as Murray Kerman, repeatedly stated, in writing, that the Mun was a hologram. Cause of death is officially listed as "fall from cliff while pointing at sky." The Council has retained the entry under "out of an abundance of caution."	0–1 / decade
7	Volunteer status id. consent.signed	A procedural cause. Refers to deaths occurring during activities for which the deceased had filed a volunteer form in advance — most commonly test pilot work, recreational demolition, and the entire profession of mountaineer. Volunteer status does not change the actual mechanism of death; it changes the paperwork.	~110 / yr

There is no eighth cause. The Council has rejected proposals to add an eighth cause on twenty-three separate occasions, most recently in Year 410, when the proposed cause was "general embarrassment." The proposal was tabled.

Things that are not causes of death

The following are common questions from off-planet correspondents. None of them are causes of death in kerbals.

• Old age. Kerbals do not age past adulthood. Old Bill, the oldest documented kerbal, is approximately 540 years old and is currently consulting on the LSI Power Array contract.
• Heart failure. The kerbal heart does not fail spontaneously. It can be punctured. That is filed under (1).
• Cancer. Kerbal cells do not develop the relevant mutations. See Linus Kerman, who is working on why.
• Stress. Kerbals do experience stress. It does not kill them. Herschel Tomfry is, on this evidence, immortal.
• "Natural causes." Kerbal medicine does not recognize this category. The Council has formally requested visiting medical journals stop using it. The journals have not stopped.
• Sadness. Kerbals do not die of broken hearts. Several have, however, taken up mountaineering in connection with broken hearts. See (1) and (7).

Cultural framing

From the Kerbin perspective, the question is not "how do kerbals die" but "how does anyone die without trying." The standard kerbali response to learning that another species experiences natural mortality is a brief, sympathetic silence followed by the question "what is wrong with their cells." This is not intended as rude. It is offered, sincerely, as a research direction.

Implications for the space program

Kerbal indefinite viability has substantial implications for Melody Space Center mission planning. A kerbal in a sealed, well-stocked capsule with adequate snack reserves does not have a "duration limit" in the conventional sense. Long-duration Duna mission planning is not bounded by kerbal lifespan. It is bounded by volunteer fatigue, snack supply, and the structural integrity of the vehicle.

To date, MSC has lost zero kerbals. This is, by historical standards, unusual. The Council Statistician has noted, in print, that "this ends eventually." The press has not enjoyed this statement.

Huddin Kerman is a kerbal flight engineer, currently aboard LSI 1. She was the first kerbal to board the station, performing the systems checkout following MSC-003's docking. She later performed the MSC programme's second extravehicular activity, deploying RESTLESS's solar arrays as part of the module's integration sequence. The only prior EVA in programme history was Valentina Kerman's on MSC-002.

She is the subject of an updated KerbTab poll asking if she is "the new Valentina"; current results: 34% yes, 42% "that's still not how firsts work," 24% "she did WHAT now."

Jedidiah Kerman is a kerbal pilot. He flew MSC-003 as commander aboard R-SLS2, conducted the first successful docking in MSC history, and later returned to Kerbin alone — undocking from LSI 1 following RESTLESS integration and completing a solo reentry described by NASA as nominal. He is scheduled to pilot the upcoming adapter crew module for the station's first crew rotation.

Katdorf Kerman is a kerbal scientist, currently aboard LSI 1. She flew MSC-003 and activated the LSI 1 science module within hours of boarding, conducting the first active scientific operations of the MSC station program. The experiments are classified. OMQ has filed a data access request. The Kerbin First Daily has filed a complaint about the pothole.

KeedMartin is the smallest of the three major MSC contractors. It is best known for the VAJE air-augmenting jet engine, which currently flies on Starship Heavy 4, and more recently for two modules now docked to LSI 1: the RESTLESS habitation module and the OBSERVE observation cupola.

Until RESTLESS, KeedMartin's station programme presence was defined by a spec review of their planned Docking & Transfer Hub. The review, which had been ongoing since the Basic Station port-failure incident, attracted limited public attention and significant internal programme scrutiny. RESTLESS docked via an adapter bridging legacy port geometry to the corrected standard; this effectively answered the spec question on orbit rather than on paper. OBSERVE followed without controversy.

KeedMartin is now the only contractor with two modules on LSI 1. The Kerbin First Daily has asked whether the spec review formally concluded before the first module contract was awarded. MSC public affairs confirmed "interface compliance was verified prior to award." KFD considers this answer insufficient.

KeedMartin's marketing materials continue to advertise VAJE payload gains that exceed independently-measured figures by approximately 4 percentage points. OMQ has corrected the numbers in print three times. KeedMartin has not updated its brochures.

The kerbal (Kerbalis sapiens) is a small, four-limbed, predominantly green sapient species native to Kerbin. Adults stand approximately seventy-five centimetres tall, mass approximately forty-two kilograms, and exhibit a number of biological features that have been described, by visiting linguists, as "surprising on first contact and increasingly surprising thereafter."^[2]

The most widely-discussed feature of kerbal biology is that kerbals do not die of natural causes. They are, in formal medical terminology, indefinitely viable. A kerbal's organ systems do not appear to senesce on any measurable timescale; cellular telomeres regenerate; bones do not lose density; the cognitive substrate remains functionally identical from age four to age four hundred. Kerbals do, however, die — readily — from a small set of recognized causes, all of which involve mechanical trauma, vacuum, fire, or the absence of snacks.

Anatomy

Kerbals are bipedal with two arms, two legs, and one head, in standard configuration. The head is disproportionately large relative to the trunk and contains, by mass, more brain than skeletal material. The eyes are unusually wide, fixed forward, and capable of independent dilation, which gives kerbal expressions their characteristic earnestness even in routine situations such as filing taxes.

The greenness

Kerbal skin is green. The pigment responsible, kerbalin, is a chlorophyll-like compound that performs limited photosynthesis in surface skin layers — enough, on a sunny day, to offset roughly four percent of a resting kerbal's caloric needs.^[3] Kerbal nutrition is therefore overwhelmingly heterotrophic. Kerbals do not, despite a popular misconception, "live on sunlight." They live on snacks and small amounts of sunlight, in approximately a 96:4 ratio.

Brown kerbals (K. s. brunneus) are a rare northern subspecies whose skin contains a different photosynthetic compound and who, on average, eat slightly fewer snacks. They constitute approximately 0.6% of the population. The most famous brown kerbal in modern history is Geneva Kerman, who has held three Council seats and one fishing record.

Indefinite viability

Kerbals do not die of natural causes. This is not a euphemism. It is not a hopeful approximation. It is the most thoroughly catalogued fact in kerbal medicine, and it has held without exception for the entire recorded history of the species.

Mechanism (proposed)

The mechanism is not understood. The leading hypothesis, proposed by Linus Kerman in Year 402, is that kerbal cells maintain a "continuously corrected" genome — that errors accumulate at the same rate they do in any other organism, but that an unidentified subcellular mechanism patches them at approximately the same rate. Linus described this as "a small, polite copy editor inside every cell."

Linus has been working on the problem for thirty-eight years. Linus is sixty-one. He has stated, in print, that he expects to solve it.^[4]

Cultural consequences

The cultural consequences of indefinite viability are extensive and are discussed at length under demographics, funerary practices, and causes of death. In summary:

• Kerbals do not have a concept of "passing away peacefully." Death, when it occurs, is always an event. There is, accordingly, no kerbali word that maps cleanly onto the common-tongue word "peaceful" in this context.
• Funerals, when held, focus on the cause of death, the engineering response to it, and the question of whether the deceased had filed their volunteer form.
• Kerbals do not retire. They become consultants. The oldest known kerbal is generally agreed to be Old Bill, who has consulted on every Kerbin Council session since the Graeber administration and is widely believed to be approximately five hundred and forty years old.
• Insurance markets do not offer "life insurance" to kerbals. They offer "event insurance," which pays out only on a recognized cause and which has the highest fraud rate of any product in the kerbali financial system.^[5]

Snack metabolism

Kerbals derive approximately 96% of their caloric requirements from snacks, which is the formal taxonomic category for the eleven foodstuffs the kerbal digestive system is rated to process. The remaining 4% is photosynthetic. Kerbals can, in principle, survive on sunlight alone for between four and nine standard days, after which they enter a condition known as snack famine and exhibit symptoms ranging from irritability to mortality.

Sleep, helmets, and the cone reflex

Kerbals sleep in two non-consecutive shifts of approximately ninety minutes each per six-hour day. During sleep they exhibit the cone reflex, an involuntary contraction of the orbital ridge that causes the eyes to point sharply upward and inward. This is the reason kerbal helmets feature an internal cone-relief geometry: a standard EVA helmet without cone clearance is, mid-sleep, a small medical emergency.

KerbalX is one of three major MSC launch contractors. It builds the Starship family, including Starship Heavy 3 (which delivered SOLARCOM) and Starship Heavy 4 (which launched LSI 1). It is also the prime contractor for the LSI station program.

KerbalX's recent record is mixed. The company built and launched the Basic Station, whose docking port was found to be off-spec during MSC-002, leading to the station's decommissioning. The replacement, LSI 1, has since accepted its first crew via MSC-003 and is operating without incident. KerbalX has not yet flown a crewed vehicle to the LAS standard, which is a structural disadvantage in MunShot Phase 1 planning.

SH-4 remains the most technically complex vehicle in the program — methane/LOX, VAJE air-augmentation, and a 360° xenon ion stage — and is also the only vehicle currently certified to deliver pressurized station modules.

Kerbin is the third planet from Kerbol and the only known body in the Kerbol system to support a four-limbed, generally green civilization with a postal service. It is small (mean radius 600 km), wet (about seventy percent ocean), and surprisingly fast (one rotation every six hours). It has two natural satellites — the Mun, which is large and grey and the subject of approximately ten thousand songs, and Minmus, which is small and mint-coloured and not.

Kerbin is the home planet of kerbals, who have, as of Year 411, sent eight of their number into orbit and lost none of them. The orbital effort is centrally coordinated by Melody Space Center on behalf of the planet's nominally elected government, the Kerbin Council.

Etymology

The name Kerbin is from the proto-Kerbali root kerb-, meaning "green thing that is alive," and the locative suffix -in, meaning "place where there are several." It is therefore approximately translatable as place of the several green things who are alive. This is widely considered accurate.^[3]

The six-hour day

One full rotation of Kerbin takes six standard hours. It is universally agreed that this is not enough hours, and accordingly the Kerbin Council has, on three separate occasions, formally requested the planet rotate more slowly. These requests have been ignored.

The cultural consequences are substantial. Kerbals sleep in two non-consecutive shifts, eat between four and seven meals per cycle, and have a working vocabulary for "morning" that includes nine separate words^[4]. The phrase "I'll do it tomorrow" means, on Kerbin, between three and eleven hours from now, depending on context.

Inhabitants

Kerbin is home to approximately 9.3 billion kerbals, with smaller populations of doots (a kind of large, polite herbivore), snack trees, and one (1) large aquatic mammal who has been observed in the Dricken Bay since pre-history and who, when asked, has not provided a name.

Kerbals notably do not die of natural causes. The implications of this for population modeling are substantial and are discussed at length under demographics.

Spaceflight

Kerbin's Melody Space Center (MSC), the planet's primary orbital launch facility, has been operational since the early proving era. Eight kerbals have reached orbit; none have been lost. The current MSC roster includes Valentina Kerman, the first kerbal in space, and seven others whose biographical pages have been the subject of edit wars on Crewgram.

The Kerbol System is the planetary system to which Kerbin belongs. It contains one star (Kerbol), seven planets, two natural satellites of immediate interest, several smaller bodies, and one (1) unidentified object whose existence has been discussed in print exactly four times, three of which were polite non-denials.

Bodies, in order

Body	Type	Note
Moho	Innermost planet	Hot, fast, has a temper. Featured in three poems.
Eve	Inner planet	Purple. Atmosphere too thick to land twice.
Kerbin	Home planet	The good one. Wet, fast-rotating, full of kerbals.
Mun	Kerbin moon	Polite. Always watching. Subject of MunShot.
Minmus	Kerbin moon	Mint-coloured. Sweet but unreliable.
Duna	Outer planet	Red. The aspirational one. Subject of Marsproof.
Dres	Asteroid-class	Disputed planethood. Has a small fan club.
Jool	Gas giant	Green and large. Has five moons. Vibes uncertain.
Eeloo	Outer dwarf	Cold. Quiet. Speaks when spoken to.
The Object	Unknown	See main article. Discussed once, in print, by NASA, by accident.

Crewed visitation history

• Kerbin orbit. 8 kerbals. 0 lost.
• The Mun. 0 crewed landings. In planning.
• Everywhere else. 0 visits. Probes, partial; crews, no.

The SOLARCOM network of solar-orbit relay satellites is the first piece of infrastructure the Kerbol system has acquired beyond Kerbin's local neighbourhood. NASA has not specified what it is for. OMQ has run the orbital mechanics. The geometry is consistent with an intercept of the Object. Nobody, in print, has said this in those words.

KOEING is one of three major MSC launch contractors. It builds the SLS 2, SLS 3C, and R-SLS2 vehicles. Following the program-wide adoption of the Launch Abort System (a KOEING design), KOEING currently holds the program's only abort-equipped, multi-mission crew vehicle.

KOEING's standing in the MSC program is at a historic high. R-SLS2 has flown MSC-002 and MSC-003 with a 2/2 success record. The company is the leading bidder for MunShot Phase 1. Its public engineering philosophy — "don't reinvent what works" — has aged considerably better than that of some competitors during the same period.

KOEING has not, as of writing, published thermal margin data for the R-SLS2 reentry envelope. OMQ is still waiting.

The Launch Abort System (LAS) is a tower-mounted solid-rocket assembly capable of pulling the crew capsule away from a vehicle stack during in-atmosphere emergencies. The first MSC vehicle to fly the system was R-SLS2, designed and built by KOEING.

Following the successful demonstration on MSC-002, NASA mandated the LAS spec as the program-wide safety standard for all crewed vehicles operating within Kerbin's atmosphere. Any future MSC crewed vehicle — including all MunShot Phase 1 candidates — must meet or exceed the standard.

The mandate is widely considered KOEING's most consequential program contribution to date. KerbalX has not yet flown an LAS-compliant crewed vehicle.

LSI 1 is the first crewed orbital station of the MSC program. It was launched aboard Starship Heavy 4 with the command module and science module pre-attached, following the decommissioning of the Basic Station, whose docking port was found to be off-spec during MSC-002. The station has since been substantially expanded and now carries five docked modules.

Two kerbals are currently aboard: engineer Huddin Kerman and scientist Katdorf Kerman, both original MSC-003 crew remaining through the next rotation. Pilot Jedidiah Kerman returned to Kerbin solo following RESTLESS integration and is scheduled to fly the adapter crew module.

Configuration

LSI 1 launched with two modules (command, science) and has since received three additions: an electrical module delivered uncrewed by SLS 2, the RESTLESS habitation module (KeedMartin, launched on SH-4B), and the OBSERVE observation cupola and utility station (KeedMartin). One docking port remains free.

RESTLESS module

RESTLESS includes enlarged habitation quarters, hitchhiker storage, a KerbalNet high-speed uplink, and a survey scanner pending integration with the station's science module stack. It docks via an adapter that bridges legacy port geometry to the corrected standard established after the Basic Station incident. Huddin Kerman performed the program's second EVA to deploy RESTLESS's arrays.

OBSERVE module

OBSERVE provides an observation cupola, engineer utility station, and staged stores of spare solar panels, batteries, EVA repair kits, and jetpack reserves. The additional habitation volume enables extended crew stays and flexible rotation scheduling.

Reception

MSC-003's initial docking is widely considered the program's first unambiguously successful station operation. The subsequent expansion is less discussed in public briefings and more visible from orbit: LSI 1 now looks different, and the company that changed its shape is KeedMartin. The Kerbin First Daily has noted two KeedMartin contracts were awarded without an apparent public announcement of the spec review's conclusion.

Melody Space Center (MSC) is the planetary launch and mission-coordination facility of Kerbin. It is administered by NASA, contracted through KOEING, KerbalX, and KeedMartin, and is, by Council appropriation, "unlimited" in budget.

To date, MSC has placed 14 kerbals in orbit. None have been lost. Three are currently aboard LSI 1, the program's first crewed station. Active programs include the LSI buildout, SOLARCOM deep-space relay, and MunShot Phase 1.

The most senior public figure at MSC is Administrator Wernhardt Clane, who has not, on the record, taken a vacation in seven years. The reasons are discussed elsewhere.

Each MSC mission and major program receives a mission patch, designed in-house by the MSC Insignia Office and stitched in a small workshop in KSC City by Mrs. Kerblin Kerman, who has done this work since the program began and who, when asked, has declined to retire on six separate occasions.

The canonical inventory below is the version flown. Variant patches — prototype, training, contractor-internal, and the unofficial "wrong door" patch reportedly circulating in KerbalX hallways — are out of scope for this subpage and are catalogued separately under variant insignia.

MSC-002 was the second crewed flight of the MSC program and the first to attempt an orbital docking. The mission was launched aboard R-SLS2 with three crew: commander Valentina Kerman, scientist Madvis Kerman, and engineer Dogun Kerman.

On approach to the Basic Station, the crew found the station's docking port could not accept R-SLS2's standard interface. Valentina Kerman performed an unplanned EVA — the first in MSC history — manually deploying a stuck solar panel and confirming the spec mismatch. The crew re-boarded and returned safely on a Mach 3+ reentry.

NASA's official statement classified the mission outcome as a "successful EVA demonstration with attached station program review." This phrasing has been the subject of considerable Talk-page argument as to whether MSC-002 was a failure (lost docking, station decommissioned, vehicle stack on standby for hours) or a success (no crew loss, EVA achieved, spec failure detected). The Kerbin First Daily ran with "failure." Crewgram ran with "hero." Both can be partially correct.

The MSC-002 reentry remains the highest-Mach number reentry attempted by R-SLS2; OMQ has formally requested KOEING publish thermal margin data and is still waiting.

MSC-003 is the third crewed mission of the MSC program and the first to successfully dock at an MSC station. R-SLS2 launched with three crew, rendezvoused with LSI 1, and docked according to flight plan. Mission duration is open-ended.

Huddin Kerman was the first kerbal to board LSI 1, performing systems checkout. Katdorf Kerman activated the science module within hours of boarding. The mission script ran end-to-end without any of the unscheduled events that defined MSC-002.

The crew remains aboard. They will assist docking of the LSI Habitation Module from the station side when it arrives.

OBSERVE is an observation cupola and engineer utility station docked to LSI 1, manufactured by KeedMartin. It serves as a visual and EVA monitoring node and carries staged stores of spare solar panels, batteries, EVA repair kits, and jetpack reserves for station maintenance operations.

The additional habitation volume contributed by OBSERVE, combined with RESTLESS, gives LSI 1 a rated capacity of eight crew for extended stays, up from the original three-berth configuration.

Politics on Kerbin is governed by an institution called the Kerbin Council, which is, by design and by accident, indefinite. The Council has 412 seats. Seats are filled by election. Election occurs when, and only when, a sitting councillor either (a) resigns voluntarily, (b) dies via one of the seven recognized causes, or (c) is removed by a two-thirds vote of the other 411 councillors, which has happened, in the entire history of the Council, four times.

Several Council seats have therefore been held by the same kerbal for over four hundred years. The seat for the Dricken Valley district has been held continuously by Old Bill since the early Graeber administration. Old Bill is widely believed to be approximately 540 years old. Old Bill has not given a press conference since Year 380. Old Bill's office is staffed by a series of increasingly puzzled grandchildren.

The Council Indefinite

The Council is the planet's only legislative body. It was constituted in Year 188 with a fixed membership of 412 kerbals, one per geographic district. The original constitutional drafters, who were younger then, did not anticipate that any individual councillor would still be in office in Year 412. They were wrong about this.

As a consequence, the Council has, on average, the demographic profile of a small farming village that has spoken to no one new since the Graeber administration. New councillors — fresh seats opened by death or resignation — are referred to internally as "the children," regardless of age. The youngest currently sitting councillor is 84.

Major parties

Snack Coalition (181 seats)

The largest party. Pro-snack subsidies, pro-Mun, pro-status-quo, pro-existing-roof-on-the-Council-Chamber. Founded Year 240. Leader: Petra Halvorn (in office since Y. 312).

Engineering & Sky (114 seats)

Pro-space-program. Aligned with NASA's funding requests since the early proving era. Has the soft endorsement of Wernhardt Clane, who is technically nonpartisan and technically not allowed to endorse anyone. Currently leading the parliamentary push for a Phase 2 MunShot funding line.

The Greens-In-Practice (79 seats)

An environmentalist party. Distinct from "The Greens," which dissolved in Year 318 over a snack-related scandal. The current incarnation focuses on ocean health, snack-tree forestry, and a long-running effort to reclassify the Dricken Valley as a protected region. Coalition partner with the Snack Coalition on most votes.

Roads Party (1 seat)

The Roads Party has held one seat in the Council since Year 271. The seat is presently held by Mervin Tomfry, the uncle of Herschel Tomfry of Kerbin First Daily. Mervin has, in his entire career, voted "yes" on three motions and "no" on every other motion. The three motions all concerned road paving. The party platform is, in its entirety:

1. Pave the roads.
2. Pave more roads.
3. The space program is a distraction from road paving.

The Roads Party has a small but durable rural base, a single weekly newsletter (Asphalt Today, circulation 4,200), and a national share of approximately 0.4%. It has held its single seat through 19 consecutive elections, including three in which it was the only party that fielded a candidate in the relevant district.

The Pothole Question

See main article: Pothole Question.

The Pothole Question is the longest-running unresolved question in Kerbin politics. First raised in Council in Year 324 by then-councillor Tomek Tomfry (great-grandfather of Herschel and Mervin), the question is, in its modern form: "Why are the roads, in particular, like that." The Council has, in the 88 years since, passed 412 separate resolutions intended to address it. The road outside the Council Chamber has the same pothole it had in Year 324.

The Mun Question

A separate, also unresolved political question. Concerns whether the planetary government should fund a crewed Mun landing as a matter of priority, or whether the funds should be redirected to "things on the actual ground." The Roads Party has, predictably, a strong opinion on this. The Snack Coalition has historically been pro-Mun, on the grounds that Mun missions are popular and popularity is electorally inexpensive. Engineering & Sky is pro-Mun on the grounds that it is, according to engineers, time.

Famous Council moments

• The Treaty of Big Hill (Y. 311). Concluded the Big Hill Dispute after 14 years of debate. Signed during a snack break that was supposed to last 20 minutes and lasted four days. The third stripe of the modern flag was added during this snack break, by accident, and never removed.
• The Roof Question (Y. 271, ongoing). The Council Chamber has had a leaking roof since Year 271. Repair has been formally scheduled, voted, funded, defunded, refunded, and rescheduled 41 times. The roof leaks. The Council meets under buckets. See main article.
• The Snack Famine of Y. 408 (Dricken Valley incident). Eight kerbals refused to eat a particular brand of snack on principle and were lost to snack famine. The Council voted to subsidize the brand they had refused. The deceased did not respond to the subsidy.
• The First Snack-Bearer. Title of the head of state, ceremonial. The current First Snack-Bearer is Geneva Kerman, the most prominent brown kerbal in modern politics. She has, in office, said exactly forty-two words in public, all of which were "yes," "no," or "that is a matter for the Council."

Foreign policy (with whom?)

Kerbin has no foreign relations. Kerbin has been on Kerbin the entire time. The phrase "foreign policy" is, in formal Council usage, reserved for the Council's relationship with the Mun, which is treated, in policy documents, as a "potential foreign actor pending further data."

NASA's SOLARCOM network has been described, off the record, by a senior Kerbin Herald reporter, as "infrastructure for a foreign policy we don't have yet." The official Council position is that this characterization is "premature."

The Pothole Question is the longest-running unresolved political question in modern Kerbin politics. It was first raised in Council in Year 324 by Tomek Tomfry, the great-grandfather of Herschel Tomfry. The question, in modern form, is: "Why are the roads, in particular, like that."

The Council has passed 412 resolutions related to the Pothole Question. The road outside the Council Chamber has the same pothole it had in Year 324. The pothole has its own page on Kerbipedia. (See The Council Pothole.)

The Pothole Question is the foundational issue of the Roads Party, the Tomfry political dynasty, and the editorial identity of Kerbin First Daily. Herschel Tomfry mentions the Pothole Question, on average, in 92% of his published columns. (Source: word-frequency analysis, Kerbin Herald media desk, Y. 411.)

It is widely held, in KSC City, that the Pothole Question is not actually about potholes. It is, instead, the rhetorical container in which any frustration with the planetary government may be poured. "There is, again, a pothole," in modern usage, can mean any of: the budget is unfair, the roof is leaking, the space program is overfunded, or simply "I am tired."

R-SLS2 is a 3-kerbal crew variant of KOEING's SLS 2 launcher, currently the primary crew vehicle of the MSC program. It is the first MSC vehicle to fly with a tower-mounted Launch Abort System, which has since become a program-wide safety mandate.

R-SLS2 has flown two missions — MSC-002 and MSC-003 — with no anomalies attributable to the vehicle. KOEING's stated philosophy is that the vehicle exists to be "cheap, reliable, and unsurprising." Independent reviewers including OMQ have called it "the boring vehicle that keeps working," intended as a compliment.

The vehicle's clean record is the principal argument advanced for KOEING's MunShot Phase 1 bid.

RESTLESS is the habitation module of LSI 1, manufactured by KeedMartin and delivered by KerbalX's Starship Heavy 4B. It provides enlarged crew quarters, hitchhiker storage, a KerbalNet high-speed uplink, and a survey scanner for future integration with the station's science stack.

RESTLESS docks via an adapter that bridges legacy port geometry to the corrected docking standard established after the Basic Station incident. The original MSC-003 crew assisted the rendezvous and docking from the station side. Huddin Kerman performed an EVA to deploy RESTLESS's arrays, the second EVA in MSC programme history.

The Roads Party is the smallest continuously-represented political party in Kerbin Council. It has held one seat since Year 271, currently Mervin Tomfry (Dricken Valley North).

Its platform, in full, is reproduced under Politics of Kerbin. The party has won every election in its district for 19 consecutive cycles, including three in which it was the only party that filed a candidate. Mervin has voted "yes" three times in his career, all on road-paving motions.

Snacks is the formal taxonomic category for the eleven foodstuffs that the kerbal digestive system is rated to process. The category was canonized by the Kerbin Council in Year 240 and has not been revised since, despite seventeen separate proposals to add a twelfth.

Approximately 96% of a kerbal's caloric intake comes from snacks. The remainder is photosynthetic, via kerbalin. A kerbal deprived of snacks for more than approximately nine days enters snack famine, the only nutritional cause of death recognized by the Council.

The eleven canonical snacks

№	Snack	Form	Note
1	Greenwafer	flat, crisp, mildly herbaceous	National emergency reserve.
2	Snack-cake (round)	spherical, dense, sweet	The original. Year 188.
3	Snack-cake (square)	cubic, dense, savoury	Council-controversial in Y. 311.
4	Drink-snack	thick liquid in a tube	EVA-rated. The astronaut's snack.
5	Mintsnack	small, green, brittle	Cultivated only on Minmus-pattern soil.
6	Long-snack	elongated, chewy	Lasts. Trail rations.
7	Quick-snack	tiny, fast, vanishing	Eaten 6 at a time.
8	Hot-snack	warm, breaded	Vendor-dominant.
9	Cold-snack	cold, custard-like	Northern subspecies preferred.
10	Real-snack	untranslatable	Disputed. Some say there are 10.
11	The eleventh snack	unspecified	The Council has, on three occasions, declined to specify what this is.[1]

The identity of the eleventh canonical snack is the subject of a small but durable conspiracy literature. The most popular hypothesis is that the eleventh snack is "whichever snack the First Snack-Bearer is currently eating," a definition that is procedurally circular but operationally consistent.

Snack Famine

See causes of death. Snack famine is the only mortality cause arising from kerbal physiology rather than mechanical event. Documented modern cases are rare. The most-cited modern incident is the Dricken Valley incident of Y. 408, in which eight kerbals refused to eat a particular brand of snack on principle.

Strategic snack reserve

The Kerbin Council maintains a 90-day strategic snack reserve, located primarily under the Council Chamber (which is, accordingly, structurally heavier than the original architects intended; this contributes to the famous Roof Question). The reserve has been drawn upon twice in modern history, both times during regional snack-tree die-offs.

The Kerbin Council is the legislative body of Kerbin. It has 412 seats, indefinite terms, and a leaking roof. It convenes year-round in KSC City, except during the Y. 311 snack break, which is technically still in progress.

The Council's most consequential ongoing work is, depending on whom one asks, (a) coordinating the MSC contract structure, (b) the Pothole Question, or (c) the matter of the roof. The Council has a permanent bucket budget. The bucket budget is funded.

For party composition, indefinite terms, and famous moments, see Politics of Kerbin.

The Greening is the annual public holiday observed on 1 Snackuary. It commemorates the date in Year 311 on which, by Council resolution, every kerbal alive at that moment was declared to be "counted, accounted for, and presumed to remain so." It is the only Kerbin holiday that has, by formal Council position, an attendance requirement.

The Greening is, in practice, a brief outdoor ceremony in which kerbals stand in direct sunlight for approximately one minute. The ceremony's stated purpose is to "engage the photosynthetic floor." Its actual function is roll-call. A kerbal who is not present at the Greening, in person, in their district of registration, is presumed to have moved, resigned from the species, or — in 0.0006% of annual cases — died of one of the seven recognized causes in the preceding twelve months.

The roll-call function exists because kerbals do not die of natural causes, and the planetary census is therefore, in principle, monotonically increasing. The Greening is the planet's primary correction mechanism. It is the only day of the year on which the Kerbin Council Statistician's Office is, technically, more important than the Council itself.

The Mun is the larger and closer of Kerbin's two natural satellites, the other being the smaller, mint-coloured Minmus. The Mun is approximately 200 km in radius, has a surface gravity of 1.63 m/s², and is widely agreed to be "right there."

The Mun has been the subject of approximately ten thousand songs, four hundred films, and zero crewed landings. As of Year 411, this is, both internally and externally, considered "a problem we are about to fix."

Visibility

The Mun is visible from the surface of Kerbin during approximately 60% of any given six-hour day. Because Kerbin's day is so short, the Mun is observed to move noticeably across the sky during a single meal. Kerbal children commonly track its motion as a kind of clock. "The Mun is at the spire" is, in KSC City, an established way to say "approximately 4 PM."

Cultural significance

The Mun is the central body of kerbal folklore. It is variously described as a watching figure, a great grey friend, a benign relative, and (in a small minority of texts) "the one who is going to ask us where we have been." The dominant cultural framing, since at least the Graeber administration, is that the Mun is "polite."

This is in contrast to Minmus, which kerbal folklore describes as "sweet but unreliable."

The Mun follows you

It is widely observed by kerbal children, and reported in print as recently as Year 410, that the Mun appears to follow the observer when the observer walks. This has been formally investigated by the Kerbin Optics Society on three separate occasions, all of which concluded that the effect is a parallax illusion arising from the Mun's distance.

A six-month parliamentary inquiry, Y. 380, examined whether the Mun was actually following kerbals. The inquiry's final report concluded that "on present evidence, the Mun does not appear to be following kerbals deliberately, but the question is being kept open."^[1] The question has remained open.

The Mun hologram hypothesis

See main article: Mun hologram hypothesis.

A small group of kerbals have, since Year 318, maintained that the Mun is not a physical object but a stable atmospheric projection. The most prominent advocate of the hypothesis was Murray Kerman, whose advocacy ultimately resulted in the addition of "disagreement with the Mun" as a recognized cause of death. The hypothesis has not been mainstream since.

The MunShot program

See main article: MunShot.

The MunShot program is the active MSC contract intended to land kerbals on the Mun. Phase 1 (flyby and orbital) is in head-to-head planning between KOEING and KerbalX. Phase 2 (crewed surface landing) is locked, pending Phase 1 completion.

The Mun is a tidally locked body, and the same hemisphere always faces Kerbin. The proposed Phase 2 landing site is on the near side, within visual range of the major continent's evening telescopes, on the explicit Council-stated grounds that "if we are going to do this we would like to be able to see them."

The Unknown Object, internally designated UO-001, is an astronomical body or artefact first detected by NASA in Year 405 and first publicly referred to in Year 408, in a paragraph buried in a SOLARCOM programmatic justification document that was, by all accounts, supposed to be released without that paragraph.

NASA has subsequently declined, on six separate occasions, to specify what the Object is, where it is, where it is going, and what the SOLARCOM relay network is intended to communicate with at solar-orbit distances. The phrasing of the official non-denial has been remarkably consistent: "We are building infrastructure. What we build it for — that conversation is for another day."^[2]

What is publicly known

• Something was observed.
• That something motivated the entirety of the SOLARCOM contract, which was the largest single award in MSC history.
• The geometry of the SOLARCOM relay positions is consistent with an intercept communications architecture for a body in solar orbit. (See OMQ's independent analysis, Y. 410.)
• NASA has not named the body. NASA has not denied the body. NASA has, on one (1) occasion, used the definite article.
• The phrase "the Object" has, since Y. 408, occurred in 14 NASA documents, all marked for internal distribution, three of which have leaked.

What is publicly speculated

• That the Object is a comet of unusually long period.
• That the Object is a captured interstellar body, currently in a slow trajectory through the outer system.
• That the Object is artificial.
• That the Object is the reason Wernhardt Clane has not taken a vacation in seven years.

The first two of these are routinely discussed in OMQ. The third has been discussed exactly once, in OMQ Y. 411, in a footnote, and then immediately walked back. The fourth is the consensus view of the Kerbin Herald beat reporter who has covered NASA for fifteen years and who has stated, in print, "He hasn't taken a vacation. He used to take a vacation."

Why nobody has said it out loud

This is the subject of the longest section on the talk page. The most-cited explanation, attributed to a senior Kerbin Herald editor speaking off the record, is: "Once anyone says it out loud, the politics change. NASA has not said it. They have built a relay network for it. We are running on the assumption that the day NASA says the word out loud is also the day the budget request that follows is the largest budget request in the history of Kerbin. They are not ready to ask for that money. We are not ready to deny it. So we wait."

Valentina Kerman (born approximately Year 370) is a kerbal pilot, the first kerbal to reach orbit, and the first kerbal to perform an extravehicular activity. She commanded MSC-002 aboard R-SLS2, during which she manually deployed a stuck solar panel on the Basic Station and discovered the airlock interface mismatch that ended that program. She is currently the most-followed kerbal on Crewgram, with approximately 3,400,000 followers and 5 total posts.

Following MSC-002, Valentina is on the candidate roster for MunShot Phase 1. A KerbTab poll asking whether kerbin viewers want her on the Mun returned 94% "yes," 4% "absolutely yes," and 2% who appeared to have misread the question.

The houseplant question

Since Year 408, KerbTab has run, on average, one piece per quarter on the question of whether Valentina Kerman keeps houseplants. The current consensus is that there is, in the corner of the third photograph, possibly a fern. The fern now has 41,000 followers.