Crew

Crew Interface

Crew is one of the three editing modes available in either the VAB or the SPH. Selecting the Crew icon at the top of the screen replaces the top left menu items from either the Parts or Action group menus with the Crew interface.

The Crew interface is divided into two panes. Parts with crew capacity and Available crew.

Parts with crew capacity

The Parts with crew capacity pane will display each part with crew seating individually, such as command modules and lander cans, automatically adding crew to fill the first compartment on the list. Additional seats are initially empty. The available menu options are:

• Fill - Fills all remaining seats from the available crew pane. If there are more seats than crew, those seats remain empty.
• Clear - Removes all crew and places them in the Available crew pane.
• Reset - undoes any changes, and repopulates the initial crew compartment.

Available Crew

The Available Crew pane simply shows the list of possible crew members available for a mission, by name and showing their Courage and Stupidity stats. The only available menu option is:

• Go to Astronaut Complex - takes the user to the Astronaut Complex interface. Exiting the Astronaut Complex returns to the Crew menu.

Users can add crew to the vehicle from the Available crew pane by hovering the mouse over the crew member and clicking the green check mark that appears. The crew member moves to the next available seat. To move the crew member to another seat, click and drag the crew member to any of the other empty seats. To remove a crew member from the vehicle, hover over the crew member and click the red X that appears, returning the crew member to the Available crew pane. Clicking an empty seat has no action.

Trivia

The primary Kerbal Space Program flight crew was chosen days before the agency, and 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 Lunar Module Pilot.

Known as the "Smart Member" of the backup crew, Bob Kerman often finds himself talking Jebediah out of stupid risks. However, his lack of speaking skills and general dislike of Jebediah leads to his talks to usually failing and Jebediah getting injured. As a play-it-by-the-books type of Kerbal, he has often been chastised by the crew for his refusal to take risks, but because of this, he has only exploded his rocket on five occasions (and was the second Kerbal to ever enter the void of space). Bob is known to be aggravated by any mention of the planet Dres, due to the fact that he believes it to serve no purpose and to be worthy of only eradication. This belief complex led to the Dres explosion of 1342 (which killed every Kerbal in the Dres colony) causing its largest crater. There were no major repercussions dealt to Bob, excepting that he was forced to apologize to the families of the Dres colonists.

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 Junkyard 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.

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 payroll 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, cannibalize one another, 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.