Island Dynamics started out as a perfectly innocuous money laundering operation meant to enrich its founder, Kevin Kerman. Mr. Kerman made the critical mistake of hiring a bright-eyed aerospace engineer by the name of Jedediah Kerman (no relation to himself nor the famous and daring astronaut, Jebediah Kerman). Jed, blissfully unaware that his salary, laboratory, and field testing budgets were all deliberately underfunded, promptly set to work adapting a previous, failed, unmanned fighter aircraft into a compelling SSTO that weighed just over twelve and a half tons, could deliver four crew to a station in orbit, and was rapidly reusable. The market clamored for spaceships, and Mr. Kerman found himself forced into legitimate business.