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Module recovery from surface of the Mun underrated


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I got a contract to recover a module from the surface of the Mun. I accepted it because it looked like a nice challenge, and finally managed to complete it after lots of trying and quickloading.

Either I did something wrong, or this is WAAAY more difficult than, say, planting a flag on Minmus which yielded more money and reputation. I think the reward for this recovery contract should probably be a lot higher.

Recover a module from the surface of the Mun: advance 81,237, completion 185,595, and 16 reputation stars

Simply planting a flag on Minmus (anywhere at all): advance 79,875, completion 199,375 and 16 stars as well.

When you start out, you don't even know what you will be recovering, you have to fly over and look. It turned out to be a Swivel engine standing upright in the middle of nowhere. So I flew there with a rocket that had a last stage consisting of a brown fuel tank, eight thuds near the top (to avoid blowing away the module), a claw at the bottom, and RCS thrusters. I first had to navigate to the precise location, come down, hover in the vicinity of the module, with the nose perfectly up (without mods like Mechjeb's SmartASS), then used RCS to move over the module. Positioning had to be extremely precise, this is much harder than docking because of the gravity. I viewed the rocket from such an angle that I could see the left/right position and height directly, and used the shadow on the ground to judge forward/aft. If I wasn't precisely above the thing before trying to pick it up, the claw wouldn't engage and the module would just fall over. In fact I almost gave up because I thought the claw would never pick up such an item. But finally it latched on after dozens of quickloads.

Then I had just enough fuel left over to make it into Mun orbit, so I launched a refueling mission to dock with the first one to refuel. Fortunately I had thought of including a docking port. Then I had to get the module back to Kerbin without burning it up on reentry. Used a very shallow reentry with retrograde burning keeping things just below overheat until I could deploy the chutes. I guess I could have transfered the engine to a different craft with the claw at the top and a heat shield at the bottom, or I could have started out with a heat shield at the top of my initial rocket, but anyway, I made it down in one piece.

It's certainly doable, but the reward should have been way higher than for a simple Minmus landing which I normally get right on the first try. Picking up that Swivel engine took dozens of attempts.

Or is there some sort of easier method that I missed?

Michel

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1 hour ago, michelcolman said:

Or is there some sort of easier method that I missed?

I would have done the exact same thing pretty much.  The only thing I'd change is probably the size, your craft sounds huge and overkill-y.

(Also, the person offering the contract should really just buy a new swivel for 1.2k instead of wasting 200k getting a used one heh)

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Its fairly easy to make a rover that can achieve Mun-orbit.

Action group some 24-77s radial engines facing down just in front of the claw (the contract should tell you the mass of the item). Us those to lift the front of the rover-rocket up... then light the main engines... No need to claw it while hovering right over it.

Also, when you say brown tank, I'm guessing you are referring to the Rocko-max jumbo 64, which most people on these forums call an orange tank. It is an especially beloved tank... it was the largest tank prior to 0.23.5, and was a benchmark payload... still is actually. I've even see people on the forums use it as a standard for measuring fuel/fuel capacity... ie "Orange Tank Equivalents" or OTE. (so the largest kerbodyne tank is 2 OTEs, and the rockomax x200-16 is 0.25 OTE)

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That's another way of doing it, indeed, but still a whole lot more work than landing on Minmus at a location of your choice and planting a flag. And if you're picking up the module using a rover, that rover will have to dock to some bigger ship to make it back to Kerbin and survive reentry.

So no matter how you do it, the reward is way too low.

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I did a mission like this a few weeks ago, to retrieve a Mk3 monoprop tank.  In addition to the difficulty of positioning a hovering claw above something, it was complicated by the fact that sometimes when I'd get within physics range, the part would suddenly fall through the ground.  :huh:

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14 hours ago, Wyzard said:

I did a mission like this a few weeks ago, to retrieve a Mk3 monoprop tank.  In addition to the difficulty of positioning a hovering claw above something, it was complicated by the fact that sometimes when I'd get within physics range, the part would suddenly fall through the ground.  :huh:

That is the reason I added this type of contract to my 'not doing that type of contract any more' list.

 

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There are some types of contracts that are just horrible :D

I had the mission "Recover Rosta Kerman from orbit of the sun".

I thought "pfff easy peasy" and accepted. Then I checked her orbit and realized it was clockwise. 180° "inclination" Around the sun. This is a 1-star mission and it was one of the first 20 missions I accepted. It's 5 years later now and I'm about to reach her in 145 days. Took me 15.000 m/s ΔV so far.

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3 hours ago, Broco said:

There are some types of contracts that are just horrible :D

I had the mission "Recover Rosta Kerman from orbit of the sun".

I thought "pfff easy peasy" and accepted. Then I checked her orbit and realized it was clockwise. 180° "inclination" Around the sun. This is a 1-star mission and it was one of the first 20 missions I accepted. It's 5 years later now and I'm about to reach her in 145 days. Took me 15.000 m/s ΔV so far.

That really is an interesting mission. I wonder what would be the most efficient way of accomplishing it. Slingshot way out to somewhere around Eelo so you don't need so much delta-v to get to a standstill, plummet towards the sun and slingshot around one of the inner planets to a retrograde orbit? Then you're still nowhere near the stranded astronaut of course, but at least it will give you a big chunk of the required delta-v.

In any case, you are completely right that this should not be a one star mission :-)

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2 hours ago, michelcolman said:

That really is an interesting mission. I wonder what would be the most efficient way of accomplishing it. Slingshot way out to somewhere around Eelo so you don't need so much delta-v to get to a standstill, plummet towards the sun and slingshot around one of the inner planets to a retrograde orbit? Then you're still nowhere near the stranded astronaut of course, but at least it will give you a big chunk of the required delta-v.

In any case, you are completely right that this should not be a one star mission :-)

Well I guess using some gravity assists to lift your orbit helps to save a bit of fuel. Yet again the timing window of the mission was pretty slim (~20 years) which seems like a lot but again, the orbit is very high and timing a gravity assist AND reach the ships orbit for the retrograde burn is very difficult:

20160423132213_1.jpg

I basically just built a very big rocket :D

No fancy science, just more explosives. This is the Kerbal way.

 

I dont' need to mention that this mission is absolutely not cost efficient, you have to invest WAY more than you get out of it but on the other hand you get a Kerbal and hiring these little buggers gets more expensive with every Kerbal you get.

Edited by Broco
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