So after a really long delay, the crew of the Iron Hill Discovery finally lifted off on their return to Earth.
The four crew remaining in the base suited up
After Tacolev & SamuelEdwards ingressed Discovery, me and Solarliner dragged all of the equipment out from under Discovery to avoid the hover engines blast on takeoff.
Lights left waiting by the main airlock for any future travellers.
And liftoff!!!
I got my biggest scare of the entire project right before that picture was taken, as Discovery roared out of Chao-meng-fu only meters above the crater wall.
After that, the orbital insertion went quite well, and I plotted the TEI burn of 16 kps. Naturally, the burn came at about 1 am local time :facepalm:, but I soldiered on until the burn was done. Our current trajectory will pass Earth at about 1.2 Gigameters on November 14th of this year. We appear have plenty of fuel remaining for any course corrections.
![Hailprobe :hailprobe: :hailprobe:](https://www.orbiter-forum.com/custom_smilies/Hailprobev2.gif)