After a few days of time-accelerated flight, we're under a hundred thousand meters above Minmus and about ten minutes from impact (assuming no changes).
I quicksaved.You may notice that the target isn't near the flag anymore. I plan a maneuver to bring us into a real orbit.
No more crashing!It's predicted to take about two seconds, but--of course--we're facing the wrong way. (Just once, I'd like to be pointing the right way for these burns in low-torque vehicles.) I cave and give a little thrust for gimbal, hoping that doesn't screw this up too much and thankful that I quicksaved. Eventually, as we turn, the estimated burn time goes down. I head to map view, to check out our expected trajectory. For a while, we're on a suborbital hyperbolic orbit, not a combination you hear often.
As we approach the node's orientation, I increase throttle. Once we're there, having managed about half of the estimated burn, I turn off the engine, planning to do the rest at the node's time. I don't even let us get much past periapsis before we head for the place.
I realized I should have probably burned AT periapsis right after I got that perfect. Screw it, we've got...two kilometers per second of Δv.I wait, letting the Smart A.S.S. do its magic, when with horror I check the resources...no electric charge. Didn't I put solar panels on this?
No. No, I did not. Stupid mistake...Plan: Wait for us to point at the node, then time-accelerate. Hell if I know how the landing will work, though...
Not that I have much time to worry about it.The burn takes several times longer than predicted, so I'm not expecting our path to be...ideal in any way.
It could be worse. Probably.Seven minutes to impact. One quicksave.
I burn a little to gimbal more towards retrograde, because I'm an idiot who forgot his solar panels. This will screw up our approach in some direction. I don't terribly care.
We're still a few minutes out. I deploy the three landing legs I put on this thing, because...well...no reason not to, eh?
I start burning a few kilometers up. Of course, retrograde and down moved, so I'm burning a little to gimbal towards what I hope is the right way. Around 1.7 kilometers above the ground, we're above the horizon and falling down at 50 m/s (and sideways at 116), so I start increasing throttle, hoping to accelerate spinning and slow falling. It's...working as well as one could hope. Which isn't well. Retrograde is moving away faster than I can gimbal towards it, which means that sooner or later I'm going to be speeding up my movement! Already, I'm increasing my horizontal speed (though decreasing my vertical).
We're 141 meters up, falling at 35 m/s, moving sideways at 50. Still burning, trying to reduce my velocity.
I was pointing about 90 degrees from the right direction. Brilliant!Well, that's what quicksaves are for.
This time, I think I'll I'll try burning the whole way down, trying to point towards retrograde. For most of it, at least. I re-quicksave a couple minutes later, about 9.5 kilometers above the ground.
I get an idea. I have the SASS start pointing us towards up...then turn it off, then turn off the engines. We're still spinning. I do the same with retrograde once we're pointing more up than down. 3.6 kilometers up, I throttle up and turn the SASS back on. It's...working pretty well, actually. (I do, however, note with amusement that we're burning just about exactly away from our target.)
Seriously, look at that!Once our horizontal speed is down to 5 m/s, it goes back up to 7 before I cut power. Crap, I hadn't meant to post this, just wait.
