First Steps

Lore & Background

In the world of KSP, the Kerbal space agency exists as a scrappy, underfunded outfit operating out of a single launch complex on Kerbin. The four founding kerbals—Bill, Jebediah, Bob, and Valentina—have spent years in training, watching the stars from the observation deck, waiting for the day a contract finally gives them permission to fly. First Steps is that day. It is not a grand interplanetary expedition; it is a short hop, a suborbital or low-orbital flight, a controlled descent. But for a program that has never put a living kerbal past the atmosphere, it is everything. The community has come to treat this contract as a rite of passage: the first time you hear the engine roar, the first time you watch the altimeter climb, the first time a kerbal's face appears in the small window of the capsule as the ground falls away.

In Their Own Story

The pad was quiet in the way only pre-dawn Kerbin mornings are quiet—wind threading through the gantry, the faint orange glow of the floodlights still humming after the night shift. Jebediah sat in the capsule, boots strapped in, reading the checklist for the third time. Through the tiny porthole he could see the KSC tower, the fuel trucks parked in their neat row, the flat expanse of the launch field stretching to the treeline. Bill was on the comms, voice calm, counting the final checks. Jebediah exhaled, felt the vibration of the engine spooling up through the seat, and thought: *this is it. This is the first step.* The world tilted. The sky went from blue to black in eleven seconds. And somewhere below, in a small control room with too many coffee cups, Valentina was watching the telemetry and smiling like she'd already won.

Reader's Guide

OBJECTIVE: Launch a crewed vessel, reach the surface of Kerbin, and complete the contract. In practice this means a suborbital arc or a brief low orbit followed by a controlled descent. The kerbal must survive; the vessel does not necessarily need to be recovered intact, though a clean splashdown earns the community's respect.

DIFFICULTY TIER: Beginner. This is the contract the game expects you to attempt within minutes of starting Career mode. No Mun, no Minmus, no interplanetary transfer. Just Kerbin, a small rocket, and gravity.

KEY DECISIONS: The player must choose which of the four starting kerbals to fly (a small but meaningful roleplay choice), design or select a rocket capable of reaching at least a few kilometers of altitude, and manage the descent—either a ballistic reentry with a parachute or a powered landing. Most first-timers go with the parachute approach: get up, coast over, drop the chute, splash down.

OUTCOME: Success unlocks the next tier of contracts and the agency's science/research economy. Failure—explosions, kerbal loss—resets the contract but costs nothing permanent. The community's collective memory is full of first Steps that ended in fireballs, and that is half the charm.

WHY IT MATTERS: First Steps is the narrative seed. Every grand KSP story—Mun bases, Jool flybys, the long haul to the outer planets—begins with this single, small, green-faced pilot strapped into a wobbly rocket, looking up at a sky that is about to become a career.

Did You Know?

• The four starting kerbals in Career mode—Bill, Jebediah, Bob, and Valentina—are the only crew available for First Steps, making the choice of who flies first a small but cherished roleplay moment for many players.
• First Steps is the contract that gates the entire Career progression tree; no subsequent mission (Mun, Minmus, or beyond) can be accepted until it is completed.
• The KSP community has a long-running tradition of naming their first successful First Steps flight after the kerbal who went up, treating it as the 'founding flight' of their personal space program.
• Because the contract only requires a surface landing and not a return to KSC, many players opt for a simple ballistic arc with a parachute rather than a full orbital insertion, keeping the rocket design intentionally sma