DBT85

I set about rescuing Valentina from her orbit around Minmus so that I could get all her science. I then used that science to make myself some half decent geostationary relays and successfully launched all 3 on one vehicle in the traditional, get a 4 hour orbit, release, orbit, release, orbit, release fashion. I'd never constructed anything that could do that, and never attempted this before. Frankly I think my final design might have been crude, but I was quite pleased and it all worked out well! Couldn't think of another way to get all 3 relays connected to the ship other than this. I even managed to return the big orange tank to LKO to serve as the start of something bigger. It has limited fuel left but that can easily be rectified.

Took on a Rescue contract which has the stranded Kerbal out in an elliptical orbit out near Mun. Got out there and performed a perfect rescue only to realise that, true to form, I didn't have enough fuel to complete my retrograde burn to get back down to Kerbin. So in a first for myself, I plotted 2 manoeuvres that gave me an intercept with Mun which in turn threw me back toward Kerbin. I was then left with 25m/s to spare. Mission saved!!

Yeah, that would be fine.

I've never quite understood why some basic info isn't included in the text for the parts. Even just "Mk16 - Capable of safely landing a 1,000kg vessel on Kerbin" would help a bit.

I got Valentina stuck in orbit around Minmus AGAIN. I got greedy, landed on the surface, got a ton of science and then flew across and got more from another spot. Leaving me not enough to get back off the surface and back home. So she's sitting in a weird orbit with about 600 science and I now have to try to go and get her. Except that I don't have great relay satellites yet so while I can do probe things in LKO, I can't do anything as far away as Mun let alone Minmus until I install new relays. So the mission tonight is to upgrade my relays so that I can then get a probe out to Valentina. Grrrrr.

My save corrupted on my PC the other day with a crash. I found that there was a backup folder in there that was keeping saves in that just needed copying and renaming. Don't think I have a mod that was doing it so have a look.

Yeah, It was a bad morning lol. I've logged several hundred hours but its been a while so I'm still making some weird mistakes. In the end, I saved Jeb with a cunningly flown RCS proble controlled rescue capsule. Made more difficult by the fact that I had to launch 5 relay sats first (lost one because I forgot to extend the antenna before the probe lose comms with KSC). I also launched a similar ship to rescue Valentina and then realised when it was some 10Mm away that the comms were dead. So I'll have to fix that before going to get her. I did managed to get Jeb to Minmus and come back with some science though, so now I have a bunch to spend and a healthier balance to do things with.

Stage 1 of my recovery mission is compete, 4 relay sats are in a 1000km orbit spaced 90ish degrees apart all with a 1h 52m 52 sec orbit. At least now I can send probes up to do this. I have 11,000 credits lol. EDIT: Took a rescue mission to generate some funds and then successfully managed to rescue Jeb with the same craft, though modified to include RCS for the fine tuning needed to present him with a ladder in the right place. Hurrah! Valentina is still flying around Minmus and that's too far for my relay satelites which only have dual HG-5s on. So It's either a manned mission or wait for more tech. Of course, I realised this AFTER sending a ship out to get her... lol

Oh yeah, I'm probably 200-300 hours in, but I've not played for a while so I'm making weird mistakes lol. Rescue 1 sent up to save Jeb ran out of electricity because I didn't put any solar panels on so couldn't move it without the engine running! I'm about to attempt a recuse of Jeb and once complete I'll go and get Valentina. I have enough dV to get her out of a Minmus orbit but not enough to get her into a low enough Kerbin orbit, so I figured I'd leave her there for now where she's a little easier to get to! All to be done with Red Dwarf on in the background. My go to background show (along with Blacadder) for some 17 yerars!

This morning I got Jeb stuck in orbit with no RCS fuel left in his suit 10m away from the ship that was sent to rescue him ran out of electricity. Also I got Valentina stuck in orbit around Minmus. Totally an expert at this.

Ha, thanks for all the suggestions folks! Despite having a lot of hours in KSP I also managed to get Valentina stuck around Minmus last night. All part of the challenge. Of course, the fact that I've disabled all the other ground stations and as yet don't have a relay network up is also hindering my recovery efforts with an unkerballed vessel. I'll let you know how I get on!

I got Jeb stuck in orbit with no RCS fuel left in his suit. I was about 10m away from his rescue with Rescue 1 when his RCS gave out. My question now is, is the only way to capture him going to be using some kind of Shuttle or something that I can open bay doors with? Or maybe, just maybe, a perfectly positioned capsule within his arms reach. Halp.

I put my first 2 relay satellites in Geostationary orbit. Probably played for 200 hours and never done that. One to go.

Gadzooks you're right. Sorry about that. New file going up now. Just installed fine on mine. Apologies for that.

CC-CP-SCANsat 0.6.0 is now up on KerbalStuff and ckan for your enjoyment. Changelog Changed some contract wording and specific parameters Added a new contract for Biome scans on Eve and Duna Rebalanced all contract rewards (they were a bit silly) Updated to be valid for 1.0.5 and beyond (in case I get distracted) At this time I can't disable the built in contracts that come with SCANsat, so it you want to turn them off until you've finished these missions then you'll need to do it in the menu that Contract Configurator provides in the top right toolbar. You might want to turn it back on since this pack only covers your early missions for all Biome and Lo Res Altimetry scans. I'm not going to be able to make any changes for a couple of weeks, but I promise to check back in the meantime to check up on you!