Bay 12 Games Forum

Alright. I believe we were doing a Minmal flight?
Anyways. Yeah, here's the rocket:


_{Possibly the biggest rocket I've ever made. Not counting the ones that were too big to reach orbit and/or not fall apart.
...KW Rocketry, that's the mod I forgot!}

The bottom stage is a single massive "Poodle" engine, with eight smaller boosters (LV-T30's) which also put extra fuel in the main tank. Efficiency! This will give us more than enough Δv to land on Minmus and return, with science gathered. Whoo! Jeb is, of course, flying this mission.
I almost forget any kind of power thingy, but then I remember. I hope they don't fall off or something.

That bottom stage gives tons of thrust! I engage in the typical tug-o-throttle between "slowing down" and "exceeding the sound barrier". The boosters run out at ~11,000 meters; the Poodle alone isn't strong enough to keep my speed up...until some fuel burns off, and we're good by 14,000 meters. Next time, though, we probably shouldn't have the fuel lines going in like that...
Okay, I notice something bad. We're picking up speed, but losing altitude. Okay...yeah, reverting. Deleting fuel lines. Relaunching.

That isn't enough. I replace the Poodle with a stronger Skipper.
We take off fast, with a TWR of nearly three. Even with half throttle, we're increasing speed rapidly. By 5,000 meters, I can reduce it to a third of full thrust while still (slowly) gaining velocity. I'm doing so, by the way, to avoid wasting Δv fighting against Kerbin's thick lower atmosphere--a useful little trick.


_{A so-far-successful flight...and it looks like it'll continue to be that way!}

I discover around 15 kilometers altitude (five after my gravity turn) makes the craft roll and hard to control. Does the Skipper have no gimbal?


_{I seem to be able to control my craft (clumsily), so it must have some...}

I push the apoapsis up to 76 kilometers before the Skipper runs out of fuel. I set up a quick maneuver node, and am surprised to see a time guesser. I am less surprised to see it jump from 0:18 to 2:23 when I actually turn on the engine, thankfully a bit before the node, unthankfully only forty-odd seconds. Prograde burn, watching the periapsis tick up. We start falling, but the periapsis is only a few dozen kilometers underground. Then we start rising?!? Weird. I shut off the engines with periapsis at 75k, apoapsis 88k. 1% eccentricity, pretty circular. Seven and a half minutes to LKO, now to Minmus.


_{But first, a pretty picture.}

We are just about at the right point for a good Minmal approach, so we'll need to orbit once to get there. As always, the maneuver nodes throw up some amusing intermediate stages.


_{Ooh, a Munar grav-assist!}

I use MechJeb's maneuver node editor tool once I prograded close, and quickly get an encounter.


_{Yes! Go MechJeb!}

I add little shifts to radial-out and normal, then prepare for the burn, predicted to take...about three minutes. On a side note, Kerbal Alarm Clock is doing well.


<sub>Pictures are always nice.

Pictures of rockets maneuvering? Nice, and rare too.

Mid-maneuver orbital stuff? Even rarer.</sub>

Those last couple dozen m/s are some of the most important, perhaps unsurprisingly. Anyways, less than 40 minutes into the mission, Jeb is looking at just over a nine-day wait to reach Minmal influence.


_{The second half is the slowest.
...Pay no attention to the flag!}

Anyways, we set up a capture maneuver once we get there.


<sub>Shouldn't take long;, two seconds is the predicted burn time.

The two moons of Kerbin.</sub>

I forget to turn towards the node until right beforehand. I decide to ignore the node, turn retrograde (which I am almost exactly the exact wrong way for), and watch the Orbit Information window for when we get fully captured. It's painfully slow; I should have added some reaction wheels. As it happens, I put the maneuver node before periapsis, so overall it's not too terrible.
I turn on the throttle as we approach the right angle, letting gimbal help. Before long, we have an orbit! It's 1.85 by 1.1 megameters, and apoapsis is in an hour or two. We burn to reduce periapsis to under 15 kilometers above the surface.
We burn. There are two odd things that come up.


_{Three, if you count Ike smugly sitting in the corner there.}

One: I overshoot a little and end up suborbital. Basically, I'm falling at Minmus. Two: We're getting a radio signal from the location noted by the flag icon.

Nomowb! Nomowb! Nepboman, nepboman! Mhe hyxeh cnacehne!

Clearly, something worth investigating. But...should we?