Following up on
this post, the mission to rescue SpaceTug Two, along with Erbree Kerman, who are both stranded on the Mun, had finally occured! With only two major problems along the way, even.
The launch went fairly uneventfully, though the wobbles had at one point required turning off SAS and manually steering the rocket to prevent it from accidentally shearing off something important. Still, the pusher stage did its job admirably, and the refueling rover is Mun-bound, with just under half the lander stage's fuel remaining.
The transfer to the Mun and the landing process were in one part too uneventful for screenshots, and in the other part too exciting to remember to make them, but it went thus.
Approaching the Mun with a "fall-in" ballistic trajectory, the rover uses up its lander stage to kill most of the horizontal velocity, which leaves it with nothing but its own reserves of fuel, and six 24-77 engines. The control module is oriented forward, so killing the rest of the velocity and controlling the descent cannot be effectively done with just the navball - but thankfully the rover has decent allowances for drift at landing. In the ridiculously low Mun gravity, a vehicle that can manage an emergency powered landing on Kerbin, lands effortlessly, with just over two tanks of fuel used up - eating 25% of the fuel intended for the stranded tug. But no matter - it should be enough. And from here, it's all driving. The target is a mere 14 kilometers away.
And only at that point did I remember to make a screenshot.
So, everything looks nice, and the rover reaches the tug fine... but here comes the first problem. And it's a derp.
Did you know that if you put two KAS winches with grappling hooks on the front of your rover, and your rover accidentally bumps into something - say, the ground - with its nose, it will stick in? Now you do.
It could have been resolved from that point, perhaps by dragging the tug over with its own winch and helping the rover down, but I just tried using the RCS to help it land the right way down, and then released the hooks - the physics freaked out and the rover pirouetted onto its roof, breaking off the RCS tanks. Welp. Reload.
The quicksave puts me back on the descent trajectory, so I do a better job of it this time - keeping the rover's engines on low thrust and essentially "gliding" towards the rocket instead of driving there.
Ended up using up even more fuel though... no matter. It's barely a drive from here.
Erbree is happy... but the cost of yet another broken solar panel is going to be docked from his pay.
The fuel transfer goes easily enough. Two side tanks are full, and two more are about half full - more than enough for a return trip. The rover extends its panels and goes into standby mode - it's probably not going to see much use until someone else goes back here. Maybe to give it a lift.
The blue pearl of Kerbin shines tantalizingly into the cockpit's side window. Time to go.
The return is simple enough, again. Some fiddling with the entry angle, and SpaceTug Two is on an aerobraking trajectory passing quite near the KSC. The soothing blackness of space soon starts to get pretty hot.
With final bits of fuel, Erbree corrects the trajectory so that the aerobraking doesn't plunge him into the ocean - effectively rocket-skipping off the atmosphere for a little "hop" into space, and coming down again - safely over land.
Within an hour's drive from KSC, even. Now, as long as parachutes don't fail, everything should be just fine.
Um.
You know, this could have been much worse.
Still, though. Disregarding the fact that a pusher stage was left in orbit, necessitating another SpaceTug mission, and a rover has been left on the Mun without any science equipment... success! ^_^
(And true to Kerbal nature, five minutes later Erbree gets himself killed trying to ride the winch hook up to get at the lander's ladder so he can get in and turn off the landing lights.
Yeah. >_>
Oh well.)
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Topic: Kerbal Space Program: Now Hiring Optimistic Astronauts for Dangerous Munission (Read 1448805 times)