This stream on GopherCraft's multiplayer server leaves the kerbals at home. Viewers had suggested two things: a rocket shaped more like a dart, and practice launches with no crew, reverting whenever a launch goes wrong. So Basket builds a probe, a viewer suggests a name, and the VAB title bar soon reads The Rooty Scooty Junior I. After about forty minutes of crashes and redesigns, one copy reaches orbit around Kerbin, and by the end a second one is orbiting the Sun, sending science home.
Practice launches
The Rooty Scooty Junior I is a single tall stack: a probe core instead of a pod, a Science Jr., Mystery Goo, thermometers, batteries, an antenna, four fins and one engine that can gimbal. "Can I still do science stuff if I happen to get up in space?" The first launch spins out. Then, in the commentary's words, "oh no the game broke," and Basket reconnects to the server before trying again.
What follows is trial and error. Basket tries holding the climb to about 100 meters per second, then tilting toward 90 on the navball. It climbs steadily, then loses control as soon as it speeds up. Each failure ends with a revert to the launchpad, and with no crew aboard, nobody is lost. A viewer suggests putting more weight low on the ship, and big winglets go on next. They do not stop the spin: "I've very calmly lost control."
Bigger is not better
Next the wings come off and more rockets go on. By The Rooty Scooty Junior III the VAB holds a craft with long tanks mounted sideways in an X. One heavy version barely moves off the pad: "if you have too much weight even with four engines they can't go." On another, the commentary watches the side tanks: "Oh, that's interesting, those ones actually took off." The rest of the rocket did not: "it fell and broke."
Next come solid rocket boosters. The plan is to go "super duper fast" off the pad and fix the angle once they burn out. The first try has the staging wrong; the next one roars off the pad. "Woah, we're so fast! We're spinning!"
Orbit around Kerbin
This time it works. With the boosters gone, Basket leans the probe over slowly and plans a maneuver node. "We're in orbit everybody," though the orbit is too small, and the map shows it about to dip back down. A second burn fixes it, and the map, now focused on The Rooty Scooty Junior V, shows a Kerbin Apoapsis of 364,576m. "We have an orbit and a tiny bit of fuel." Since nobody is aboard, it never has to come back.
Without a crew, every result has to be transmitted, and the game reports data received for a Materials Study high over Kerbin. With the last of the fuel, Basket tries a burn toward the Mun. It does not get there, and the probe stays in orbit around Kerbin. "Made it into space in a weird orbit. Ta-da!"
A second probe, to the Sun
Back at the VAB Basket changes nothing and launches the same design again, this time into a dark sky. The boosters do the hard part again, the probe settles into orbit, and then it burns out of Kerbin's reach entirely. After a long time warp the commentary announces "We're orbiting the Sun," and the probe logs the goo and the temperature out there.
Basket spends the rest of the fuel trying to reach another planet, dragging maneuver nodes around and setting targets on the map. Nothing lines up. "Dear red planet, why don't you want to interact with me?" One last burn uses up the fuel, and the probe stays on its path around the Sun.
Where it ends
The final science is a Materials Study "while in space high over the Sun," worth +17.5 Science to transmit, and Basket sends it. The mission clock reads 70 days. "I've successfully orbited the Sun with an unmanned guy," and the plan for next time is to put kerbals in basically the same ship. The video ends with the probe drifting past the Sun, then the end cards.
