I need a little help

[DoctorDanny]

Hello fellow kerbonauts,

 

I've gotten JEb in a bit of a predicament and I need some advice on how to proceed.

Last night I've landed my refinery on Minmus. Since I tried to keep things light and compact things have gotten a bit cramped.

Both exits of my cupola module now appear to be blocked by struts leading to solar panels on one side and thermal vanes on the other side.

I've decided I best get rid of the side with the thermal vanes, so I've been attempting to somehow 'remove' them.

I'm a bit hesitant to edit my saves so I've been trying in game methods.

Knocking them off with another spaceship has so far resulted in bumper cars in space.

Tonight I'm goin to try to scrape off the thermal vanes by running into the ground (not looking forward to that).

 

I've been thinking about landing a rover with some extra thrusters on them to try to burn off the blocking struts.

I'm not sure this will work though (as my rover will probably move all over the place and the struts have thermal vanes on them to dissipate the heat).

 

So, my question is: How best to remove the struts blocking my exit?

[Goody1981]

Have you tried object thrower in the alt-F12 menu? Leave the menu open, change "unarmed" to "armed", then middle-mouse your way to cleaner lines on your ship

(maybe practice first haha)

[Draalo]

A picture of your vessel would be helpfull.

Allways test functionallity on the launchpad/runway. Drills working? Ladders connected? Hatch accessible? etc.

Any dockingport there? Use it to dock another pod/cabin with a working hatch if so.

[Razorforce7]

Pictures please. That way we will be better able to help.

You can't destroy struts. You can only destroy struts by destroying the part to which it is attached to.
And that specifically means the part that you first attached the strut to (not the part you dragged the strut towards)
This could be the Cupola module. That means you need to destroy the Cupola module to destroy the strut, which defeats all purpose.

What do you mean by "thermal vanes"? Radiators I guess? Whatever you mean it is generally easier to crash parts of your craft then to burn them due to the hassle of pointing your engine in the right direction.

 

[bewing]

If you are refining with this ship, surely you must be expecting to be able to dock with it. Any time you dock with it, you can transfer Jeb to the other ship -- as long as it has a crew module.

 

[Razorforce7]

That^

[DoctorDanny]

Thanks for the replies guys. I might be able to post a picture when I get home tonight.

I think it won't be necessary though as the ship does indeed have two docking ports for the refueling shuttles.

I'll dock up an extra module and transfer the crew through that one, hadn't thought of that option at all

Might be a good opportunity to add some extra drills, energy and thermal stuff anyway.

 

...Object thrower sounds like fun though ^^

 

 

[Aegolius13]

The Kerbal Assembly System mod might work.   An engineer with a screwdriver can remove parts, so that might let you ditch the solar panel or radiator. 

[Snark]

12 minutes ago, Aegolius13 said:

The Kerbal Assembly System mod might work.   An engineer with a screwdriver can remove parts, so that might let you ditch the solar panel or radiator. 

Small correction:  The mod you're talking about is Kerbal Attachment System, not "Assembly"... and also, that's not the mod you want-- you want Kerbal Inventory System (a closely related but separate mod).

And yes, that would do the trick.  An engineer with a tool can go and remove the strut manually.  Though that would require sending up another ship with the fixer-upper kerbal, since your current one's stuck inside. 

 

[Vanamonde]

This sort of thing is why I always test each stage of a new design before adding the next stage, and certainly before flying it anywhere. 

[DoctorDanny]

True, that^

 

Then again it's also fun to launch a rescue/salvage mission to jury rig things on the surface of a moon.

It feels like a very 'Kerbal' thing to do.

[DoctorDanny]

For those who like a happy ending, here's what ultimately happened....

So I took Draalo's advice and connected a module to one of the docking ports. This allowed me to get Jeb out of the refinery and made my Engineer enter it.

At that point I had three pilots on Minmus so I figured it was time to organize a return trip.

 

The first attempt at returning my crew failed, because I didn't listen to vanamonde and didn't test my staging.

As a result I now had 4 pilots stranded on Minmus.

 

The second attempt worked though and my 5 crew vessel (a new record!) safely splashed down in the waters of Kerbin!

Thanks again for all the advice guys.