Episode 2 of the GopherCraft Great Space Race picks up where Episode 1 stopped: Basket 6 is next, and Bob, Anton and Matgan are the kerbals left. Basket opens on the save's game clock, "Year 1, Day 1 - 0h, 33m," and says that is the time the racers will go by to decide who gets there first. By the end two more kerbals are gone, a game crash has cost some unrecorded flights, and the craft list runs to Basket 12. There is still no orbit.
Basket 6 gets high, but not around
Basket puts a second, smaller engine on top, to "adjust my orbit and stuff and then eventually get back in." Bob Kerman flies it. Basket is unsure about the gravity turn ("So I'll just kind of experiment"), and the fuel runs low on the climb. The map view shows a Kerbin apoapsis of 145,639 m, but the path bends back down. "I don't want to strand Bob in space," Basket says, and brings it home. The Flight Results read "Catastrophic Failure!": the parachute and the Mystery Goo unit broke away, the pod splashed down hard, and Bob Kerman was killed.
Basket 7, a big unstable rocket
"So now our original three guys are all gone." Basket tries boosters on the sides, cannot get them to sit right, and goes to "Plan B": more fuel in the main stack, "a really big unstable rocket." Anton Kerman takes the pod of Basket 7. At zero it sits on the pad ("Oh no, it didn't go. It's too heavy"), then lifts off over the coast. Basket files a crew report, drops the spent part and opens the parachute. The pod comes down on grass, and Anton climbs out beside it.
![Kerbal Space Program: a kerbal in a white spacesuit standing on dark green grass beside a landed command pod, with the prompt "[F] Board" below](https://www.basketmc.com/images/6496/conversions/kerbal-space-program-a-kerbal-in-a-white-spacesuit-standing--961812f3-content-image.webp)
The game crashes
The next shot is a different rocket, already in black sky. The game had crashed and the recording had not started again, so the flights since then are missing. "So this is like Basket 12." Matgan Kerman is aboard. Basket keeps hitting the space bar when meaning to throttle, which stages the rocket early. For a while it seems to work: "It looks to me like I'm falling, but I guess that's what an orbit is." Then: "Oh no, I'm falling right now. I'm doing a re-entry." The parachute opens and Basket speeds time up for the landing. The Flight Results read "Catastrophic Failure!" again: the parachute and the pod hit the surface, and Matgan Kerman was killed. "Maybe it just doesn't like being sped up during a landing."
Where it ends
Back in the VAB, the load list runs to Basket 12. Basket 11 was similar, with extra parachutes that blocked the hatch: "I couldn't get out the door." The R&D screen shows Survivability, researched while the recording was off, with 12 science left. The episode ends in the VAB with Basket 12, and the end card wishes Gopherboy, Scoti Garbidis and Pikerize good luck. The last kerbal seen alive is Anton, standing beside Basket 7's pod before the crash.