Bay 12 Games Forum

We stack another stage, some spare slender solid rocket boosters, and of course struts on the Minmushot X...crap I saved over the old one. Ah well.

Let's launch. At night, when we can't see anything. I AM A GENIUS.
The sheer number of rocket boosters (six Rockomax ones and twelve Globe ones) seems to give my computer worry for a second, then we take off and wobble some. Should I have added more struts? After 20 seconds, the smaller boosters run out, cutting down on the noise and thrust. By then, we're going over 200 m/s, which means that we start slowing down once we're left with the big solids. Eh. It doesn't take long (we lose a few m/s over a few s) before we start accelerating again.
There are strange white circles coming down from the sky as we fly past. Why does this happen? It's...strange. Disconcerting.
The game briefly freezes as we discard the boosters, travelling nearly 400 m/s. I wait about 15 seconds before burning to avoid wasting fuel in the lower atmosphere, but we still slow a lot. We're still slowing even with the engine burning (not to self: Heavy upper stages mean multi-engine lower stages). I decide to eject the lower stage for nowand  burn the upper rocket stage, see where that gets me. Then I reconsider and redesign. A rather drastic one.


_{The Meleny lander, on top of one rocket, with three identical rockets strapped to the sides, with two solid rocket boosters each strapped to each of those. The bottom stages have close to six kilometers per second of Δv. The upper stages have over two more. This baby is read to rock and roll.}

Takeoff, however dark, goes well. Nothing falls off or apart. We don't start spinning into the ground (once I add winglets). The game is running fairly swiftly and smoothly (green a lot!)). I'm...suspicious. Sure, it's taken an hour of loading, pausing, launching, fiddling, changing my mind, and forgetting to change the pilot to reach here, but...can this really be the flight?
The solid boosters run dry* at 6,000 meters, leaving us with about 200 m/s of velocity. Even at full throttle with three engines, we can't keep this up; we end up balancing out around 130 m/s. We turn, and between less air and less mass (hence greater acceleration), we begin to increase our speed.
*Yes, yes, I know, they're already dry.
Forty-thousand meters. Apoapsis almost 50. We drop the liquid boosters and turn on the main engine. I still have about 2/3 of the fuel 16 km of altitude later, when I get the apoapsis above 75 kilometers. I add a maneuver node, not just an orbital insertion but also a minor bit of plane correction to make the Minmus transfer easier.
The final orbit is a bit elliptical, 221 at apoapsis and 73 at periapsis. Ah well. I set up a nice little plane correction maneuver at the approaching ascending node. I try to reduce it to zero, but with some fiddling and being unable to determine at any time if I was 0.1 degrees above or below, I decided to guesstimate the best point and let things lie.
Time to burn. And the sun's up!


_{Outer space is awake, so I'm awake, so I've got to burn.
...That is actually kinda creepy, when I think about it for a second.}

Now for the tricky part.


_{Fun fact: If I manage this, it will be my first successful rendezvous. More or less.}

I manage to get the closest approach down to just above 28 meg with that maneuver node there. Another brings it to 25.5. Between getting to within a couple minutes of the first node and having the third node add an extra apoapsis when I try to add it, I decide to hold it there for now.


_{Burn, baby, burn! Kerbal inferno!
Please not literally.}

The rocket's fuel runs out right at the end. Thankfully, the lander has plenty of fuel.
As I adjust the third trimming node, I do something amusing on accident.


_{Maybe later, Mun.}
(Remind me to fix that image later. The Lightshot website isn't cooperating.)

Indeed, it looks like I'm very close to overshooting Minmus and hitting the Mun. Sadly, I botch moving the node, in that I move it and can't move it back. Or delete it. Or change it in any way. I quicksave and reload, and find that both maneuver nodes are gone! I make a new one, tweak it, and accidentally delete it by dragging it off the orbit.

...Screw it, that's enough maneuver node screwery for one night.