Crew

The primary Kerbal Space Program flight crew was chosen days before the agency was was split off from the Kerbal Transportation And Toy Safety Commission. Unfortunately, that crew was lost in the move to the KSP's new campus, leaving the backup flight crew to carry on.

Backup Flight Crew

Bob Kerman

Serves as Command Module Pilot, Yaw Class.

Throughout the entire training program, Bob was always a few points shy of washing out. His fortunes changed when a photocopying error in the Command Pod blueprints left several critical controls only reachable by a left-hander. A decade of hiring freezes, combined with unsafe vending machines, has left a desperate shortage of southpaws on the KSP campus. As the KSP's last remaining sinister-dexterous employee, Bob's placement in the program is assured.

Jebediah Kerman

Serves as Flight Commander.

Jebediah spent the first chapter of his working life in the financial sector, where his cool demeanor helped him ride out the wildly speculatory Kerbal markets. He readily climbed his way through the world of monetary intrigue, peaking at a chair on the Kerbal Debt Preservation Board. Three months after taking the position, he walked away from it. Jeb had grown fed up with that life, and spent the next eight grueling years reconditioning his body and mind for the job he always wanted, but never before felt he deserved.

A few insider trading secrets from Jeb helped the KSP double their meager operations budget. One of his most ingenious coups was to buy a defunkt rocket engine factory for one symbolic dollar and form the company "Jebediah Kerman's Junkayard and Spaceship Parts Co.". By supplying KSP, doing their recycling and being employed by them he exploits loopholes in over a dozen of Kerbals tax regulations. For his efforts the agency repaid the man with a spot on the backup flight crew.

Bill Kerman

Serves as Command Module Pilot, Pitch and Roll (Clockwise only*) Class.

The most mysterious of the team. His personnel files were lost in the same move that claimed the primary flight crew, but his swipe card still allows him full access to the program. Bill is even named in the project specifications, though it's hard to tell where exactly in KSP management such writing took place. It's equally impossible to figure out who exactly Bill reports to.

Rumor is, the management structure of KSP has grown so complex that there are some loops that can only be fired from within. Could Bill be one of this elite caste?

Bill is suffering from vertigo, fear of high speeds, fear of suffocation, severe claustrophobia, motion sickness and home sickness. He spends most missions constantly screaming in terror. This is considered one of his most useful traits, as it keeps the other crew members in a constant state of alertness. When asked why he volunteered as a kerbonaut, he answers that it was the explicit wish of his mother and that she is the only thing in the universe he considers more terrifying than space.

*If you must know, anticlockwise roll can only be commanded with the use of two keys, one held by the Flight Commander, the second by the serving Political Officer. This is necessitated by the severe risk of screws coming undone when the craft is spun the wrong way.

Follow-ups

There are countless applicants for basic kerbonaut training who did not quite make it into the active crew. But the Kerbal Space Program still keeps them on payrole for the unlikely event that members of the active crew crash down, get blown to pieces, suffocate, burn to death, strand in space for all eternity, murder each other or get eaten by a Deep Space Kraken. While all of their surnames are "Kerman", their first names are mostly auto-generated. A few Kerbals have more original first names, although these are only rarely seen.