Gael Industries - Stories from a new Kerbal Homeworld (Updated 17/2/17)

[SpaceColonist]

Looking at those many good stories, I needed to start one myself.

(maybe, at some point, even with a picture here)

 

Anyway, here's the prologue(somehow we must justify the new home planet, right?)

 

A new Home

 

117 years before the Gaea Space Program

 

Jeb looked around for one more time. The Jesca II was fully fueled and ready to go into space. It would be the last time he and the others would see Kerbin. Twenty-three Kerbals, eleven male and twelve female ones, had been chosen for the Mission. His wife, Valentina, a pilot like him, was also onboard. Kerbin had been undergoing a dramatic change. Sea Level had been going lower constantly since the planetoid Saphen had passed Kerbin two years ago. Mun and Minmus were on their Way into the Sun, and the year was almost twenty days shorter than it used to be. “Commander Jebediah Kerman to Control Tower. Please report Sea level”. “Sea Level at negative two hundred and eighty, repeat, negative two hundred and eighty. You can’t anymore rely on an emergency watering”. Jeb knew that. By now, Kerbin’s shore was too far away to guarantee that safety. Jesca III would bring the other about fifty employees with the left familys, altogether only a hundred and twenty-one Kerbals. Expectations were that from the 70 million Kerbals about 10 000 had survived. One and a half years, and Eve, which had a much bigger problem, as Saphen had been intersecting at two Megametres, or less than three Eve radii from center to center, would further mess things up, estimately setting perikerbol at about four Gigametres, intersecting Eve’s and possibly even Moho’s Orbit. He had been around for so long, had seen the days of the Great Unity a hundred years ago. “Ready for Lift-off.” “Initiating Launch Sequence, Lift-off in two minutes.” “Copy that.”

 

Ten minutes later Jeb swapped places with Valentina, to be able to concentrate on other things. ‘All Kerbal civilization has been will be lost’, he thought. But the command had a plan. The two ships met at the Dairea, which had been fully fueled for the Mission. The Target: the Ciro System, seven light years away. Their Astronomers had detected periodic anomalous gravitational influences, the System had three known planets, one of them possibly habitable. Boarding on that ship, featuring seats for about two hundred Kerbals, was without any problems. Jeb took over Command again, as chief Officer he chose Bill, a reliable Engineer and friend from back at University. The ship was piloted by Desmond and Malcolm Kerman, both known as skilled from various Duna and Jool Missions. “Altitude, Desmond?” “Point four two Megametres. Apokerbin at point eight five.” “Set Target to Ciro. And Activate as we reach point seven.”

 

Soon the Drive was activated and the Dairea flew out of Kerbin’s Sphere of Influence. Jeb noted: Year 6651 after the first manned flight. The last Kerbals destined to live are now on their way to a new home. Hopefully successful. Kerbals may live long, but not forever. Minutes later Malcolm took over control of the Drive and shot out of the Kerbol System at full throttle. It would be a matter of two hours to manage to fly into the System of Ciro. Hopefully they could land on a planet there. Hopefully they’d be able to build up a new civilization.

 

After days of an empiric search(they had luckily brought telescopes, three in total), they found a candidate. Apart from the three known Gas Giants, known to Kerbalkind as Nero, Otho and Gauss, there seemed to be a fourth planet. The Image was surprisingly similar to what they had as a faraway photo of Kerbin, and Life was expected there too. They flew to the position, and indeed, there was a planet, and they called it Gael. It was a planet younger than Kerbin, but had the same Rotational and Orbital Periods as their former home planet. Of course, as the Star, Ciro, was smaller and lighter, so Gael was farther away. The last thing he saw before he got unconscious was the Spacecraft lighting the upper Atmosphere up because of the incredible Speed they still had. It was like a direct Aerobraking on Kerbin from a Moho Mission. at about five Kilometres per Second the four inflatable Heat Shields tried to keep up with the Reentry, but ultimately, the Mission seemed to end in Disaster. But Malcolm, as he had done quite a bit of Atmospheric Entry training, piloted the Ship safely downwards anyway, paying close attention to the Retrograde Marker. He knew about the responsibility he had. But he knew how to handle the Situation very well too. As he switched Instruments to Landing Mode to deploy the parachutes when Safe, he was confident that the Mission would go to Plan. And he was right about this. "Five thousand Metres. Parachute Deployment", the mechanical voice sounded through the cockpit of the Dairea. They soon had safely Landed and walked away to build homes. The Space Program was not that important for now. They could rebuild it later. But they would do. They had always rebuilt things when something got wrong.

Spoiler

Mod list in no paricular Order:

  GPP(This mod is awesome Work! By Galileo) (x1 Scale)
  OPT(great Spaceplane parts. That Lab is crazy!(totally hadn't a one-hour research cycle when Data full on that)By K.Yeon)
  DMagic Science(glorious Science instruments. Check it out, too! By DMagic)
  PlayYourWay(No contracts, this time!Another one by Galileo)
  TRP-Hire(Custom setup, so you can actually choose what you need! By TheReadPanda)
  NF-Electrical/Solar(POWAH! By Nertea)
  FlexoDocking(will make Rover docking easier. And in space, with my skills. By DMagic)
  RPM(Better Internals! By MOARdV)
  SCANSat(So you can actually map your planet. By DMagic)
  Extraplanetary Launchpads(Because you never know when you feel the urge to build a giant Rocket on Leto. By taniwha)
  Community Tech Tree(Those mods I use give an incredible Amount of new parts... And one small Tellumo Mission shouldn't be able to get     ALL  the parts. By Nertea)
  KIS/KAS(We will need it at some time. for something. Originally by KospY and Winn75, now maintained by IgorZ)
  ModuleManager(How would this Game even work without?By Sarbian)
  Kopernicus(Planet packs need this nowadays. By Thomas P.)
  TCA(Vital for VTOL Planes! By allista)
  Kerbulator(Doing my own Math can be fun sometimes By wmvanvliet)
  Kerbal Engineer(I need Delta-V readings. Still need to setup my HUD though. By cybutek)
  From the USI Suite(by RoverDude)
          Karbonite/K+
          FTT
          Sounding Rockets
          Alcubierre Drive
          Asteroid Recycling Technologies
          MKS/OKS

 

Actually, I have a website for this! I'll still post updates here, thoughStory link

 

---

Edited February 17, 2017 by SpaceColonist

[JadeOfMaar]

Well, well, what have we here? A good read? Apparently so!
 

Spoiler

Click the "eye" icon in the comment toolbar to make a spoiler.

You have OPM (Outer Planets) confused with OPT (spaceplane parts). Looking forward to seeing your OPT designs by the way.

 

[SpaceColonist]

First things first, for the convenience of mobile users, I won't post pictures here for now.

But I've gone ahead and will do a website version of it (with pictures!)

 

First Steps

 

15 days before the first Launch

 

“As you all know, we have none of the plans for rocket parts we once had. Before we escaped from Kerbin, we all would have turned away from this challenge. But we have no option to do this if we want to achieve once more what our species has achieved on Kerbin. This time we do a different approach however. Our ancestors might have strapped themselves in Rockets, demonstrating a ‘safety is irrelevant’ attitude. I have done this too, over and over. As of now, the problem here is: we are less than two hundred Kerbals currently. We would need a thousand years or even more to be even able to do that again. This time however, safety is important. Our first launch will, because of those reasons, not be manned. We have developed “Sounding Rockets”, small, solid-fuel-boosted probes automatically controlled. We think it is safer that way. Safer for Kerbalkind. For Kerbalkind! For science! For progress!” Jeb looked at Bill, the current lead engineer. “What’s the matter?” “We’ve got another problem. We haven’t got big enough facilities to build what we are used to.” “Are you able to build small atmospheric probes? The engines we have aren’t big enough for orbit. And we only have very limited control over our probe once it has launched. Staging is the only thing we’ll be able to do anyway.” Bill smiled at those words. Kerbals liked to build those massive spaceships, but they could build small too. In fact, they had been mastering the art of building small a good while ago.

 

The first Launch

 

“three,two,one,Lift-off! We have Lift-off!” The Sound of Gene, Director of Rocketry and Aerospace Missions, was heard by everyone in the room. They had launched what Bob had called a ‘Sounding Rocket’ in his speech to the public. Those were small, relatively cheap rockets designed to gather some data. The Gael Atmospheric Probe I (GAP I) in particular had got a simplistic and very kerbal design. Static fins simply strapped on the outer booster shell, solid-fuel boosters with built-in decouplers to lift the payload off the ground and no control but staging. This was due to the fact that they neither had other fuels nor engines for those. It had got some, albeit limited battery storage stored in standard AA Batteries. The Parachute was, at best, a roundish thing designed for ‘emergency’ plane droppings (or fearless plane jumpers, e.g. Jeb).

 

As the rocket shot into the sky(and I cannot speak of ‘launching’ anymore when the Launch TWR is >5, might have overdone it), the Staff at Mission control looked closely to their monitors. Luckily, the data they got on that was fairly accurate. Staging got done pretty well, and the rocket, despite the lack of steering, eventually reached Apogael at about 13 km. This was the time the probe was told to log the science data found in the probes. Landing, albeit criticized later as unsafe by some, was done perfectly too. On purpose, the full-open Altitude had been set to a hundred metres above ground only, as the probe would, by then, be slow enough to not need 300 metres for full opening. 

 

Everyone in the viewing room clapped their hands when splashdown happened. Recovery was smooth too, and so, the mission delivered the first science data for the space program. But nothing was ready yet, and so more GAP Missions would follow.

 

 

[SpaceColonist]

Unknown Heights

 

After the success of GAP I, the GAP II Satellite, later renamed to GSOP I (Gael Sub-Orbital Probe I), and Desmond’s crazy plan for GSOP II, were launched quickly. While GSOP I was reaching impressive heights, again stabilized in atmosphere by its spin, GSOP II overshot the target by quite a bit.

 

GSOP I,  built upon GAP I, had a carefully tuned thrust to be much more efficient than the first launch.

The probe had the same Scientific Instrument Modules(SIM Configuration) as GAP I, but an additional lower .625m SRB Stage. “How much?” “fifty thousand, maybe sixty.” Desmond disagreed with this. “I bet a hundred and fifty.” The probe would be well above even Desmond’s bet, being just short of 200 kilometres.

Desmond then told the Mission Planning Department:“I’ve got another probe. This one has the other Sounding Science Instruments and definitely won’t be short of a million metres. You should set the parachute to deploy when safe before roll-out.” “That is luckily default here.”

GSOP II was launched minutes after the landing of GSOP I. With a core out of 13 XL-Types, instead of 16 in a former attempt of Desmond, this was the heaviest rocket ever launched off Gael, despite not for long. The core led to a massive increase in Apogael height while keeping the Part Count low. Meanwhile they had done an upgrade of the Launchpad to accomodate for future missions.

"I said he is crazy.” “He may be, but this is true Kerbal beauty. Jeb would approve.” “As always, what is the height bet, guys?” Jeb: “five hundred kilometres, maybe six at best.” Bill: “That’s two thousand at least!” Desmond, not as optimistic as Bill, but also not as pessimistic as Jeb, gave a bet of one thousand.

 

After the Recovery of GSOP II, Mission Operator Darkin came to the conference. “We have recorded your bets, and I have good as well as bad news. The bad ones: you were all way off. the good ones: we had Apogael at over five thousand kilometres.”

Real science happened in the Manned Flight Category though. It was a real pain to get Bill’s approval. He wanted to have the rocket as safe as possible while having enough ΔV to get into low Gael Orbit. In the End, they agreed on a payload with a command pod, a parachute, a heat shield and a service bay with SIM 4-Goo-4-Temp (4 Goo instruments as well as 4 temperature readings), altogether twelve parts with a mass of 1.56 tons. The final launcher had three Hammer-Types fine-tuned to fifty percent thrust, a Thumper-Type on full thrust to go up, and a LF/O Stage with a LV-T45 to insert into Orbit and to initiate Re-Entry.

 

The Craft, named Gael I, and flown by Jebediah, known to have flown various Duna and Jool missions, and even, by now four hundred years ago, attempted a Grand tour, slowly made its way up into the sky.

 

“Thumper flameout. Separating Boosters.” “Separation confirmed.” The Thumper-type got separated without problems, but despite the low Apogael of about 32.5 km he waited until half a minute before Apogael before firing the Swivel horizontally. The ship kept burning fuel in that direction until he was safe to get out of the Atmosphere. The red glow of the ship made him rather laugh than be terrified. “What do you laugh?” “Red hot Air!” “Wait, already in reentry? That was fast!” Desmond tipped at the back of Darkin. “What’s up?” “Erm… he’s ascending into space at more than two kilometres per second total speed.” Darkin was shocked, but Jeb liked it. he had been flying that fast for hundreds of years. He knew what to do and eventually inserted into an orbit of about 91 km x 306 km to collect space science. Half an Orbit later he burnt just a little bit of his reserves to lower the Periapsis to 45 km. this would bring him down, especially as he fired the Engine once again at forty-eight kilometres, getting a sub-orbit of 80 km x 20 km. ‘Red hot air, once again. I like it’, he thought. As the ship had a natural tendency to point retrograde, he did a shutdown on the SAS controls, looking at the screens rather amused.

 

Meanwhile at KSC, Bob looked at the screen, terrified by the red hot Air burning through the ablative materials at the back of the ship. He took a deep breath and was glad Jeb had made it out once again.

 

Inside the Gael I, Jeb reported to the Mission control: “Seven thousand. Deploying Parachutes.” “Deployment confirmed. Do the remaining experiments. Should be two left.” “Copy that, doing the last two Experiments.” A few minutes later, he landed in one of the Oceans. After recovery, he would give a report about the mission to get everyone happy and get into the Piloting Area again. There would be more missions to fly. Bigger ones.

 

[JadeOfMaar]

Finally got around to reading. This is a wonderful new chapter. Keep on sounding trucking.

[SpaceColonist]

Kerbals don't stay on the ground forever. Especially not when the science is in the sky.

Iota Dreams

 

“We’ve got to prepare a Iota Mission, so we’ve designed a lander.” At a mass below four tons, the one-man Iota lander had much from the Mun landers in the early days. Due to being wider than tall, it was able to land on much steeper slopes than conventional tall-body landing systems, but less aerodynamic. The outriggers, working as the lander engines as well as the legs, would be decoupled shortly after launch, falling back to Iota.

 

Final mass would be around the four ton margin they had set themselves. “Having one problem, still. We don’t have the complexity upgrades for our Rocket builder.” The Rocket builder was a giant machine almost filling the core building. Several machines around it delivered it with parts. This was the true reason they had built an underground power plant lighting the village north of the island. “I’ll do another science mission. Should be able to get everything prepared then. We’ve got those Material Bays to test. Gael II is on the way.”

 

Minutes later Jeb sat in his capsule again, waiting for launch. The Science Storage concept would be tested for viability. ‘One last Gael Orbit mission, and I’ll be on the way to Iota. And a bit of burning, of course. Fried Capsule!’ “Three, two, one, Lift-off!” Jeb’s Mission was just to get into a 100x350 km Orbit, get his science, and reenter.

 

Whilst waiting for Apoapsis to get the high-orbital science data, he watched the sunset through his capsule’s cameras. Shortly after getting his science, he burned retrograde, got the data into the Storage Unit, and waited once again. Inside the Atmosphere,the ‘Red hot Air’ phenomenon occurred. He landed, again, safely, with all the precious science contained in a small part. Craft analysis showed the true power of this part: they could store experiments even on unmanned missions. This would allow for large-scale Missions to Gauss, Nero and even a Ciro multi-planetary Mission (Maybe a Hox-Leto one in the future?).

[SpaceColonist]

Talk about the noodle syndrome. Quick teaser for my Iota mission.

 

The Rocket

[SpaceColonist]

I'm not using a noodle. Did not lift off from the ground. But the sky is waiting with more science...

 

The Moonshine Mission

 

The Rocket had been built and put on the Launchpad. Not that 35-metre-triple noodle they had used before, but another design, still about twenty-three metres long, but way more powerful. Featuring three Thuds and a Swivel on each of the outer tank stacks, this design was powerful enough to lift the one hundred and twenty ton rocket into the air. This design was inspired by early Mun rockets to land on a possible steeper slope without tipping over. This was crucial, as one oculd not determine the height and steepness of Iota. Additionaly, the ignition TWR were, with an exception to the last stage,having an ignition TWR of 1.97, pretty consistent at about 1.4 to 1.5.

They had, however, chosen a launch time a bit more carefully than with the other missions to eliminate the need for a maneuver they called 'plane alignment', as the spacecraft, called Iota I, at least according to plan, would cross Iota's Sphere of Influence, circularize, land, and then hurry away to Kerbin with the delicious Science. The already tested Sciece Collecion Device was on-board this time too.

 

Jeb sat in the cockpit waiting for launch. He had been sitting in there for nearly an hour now, simply doing nothing. He once again looked at the Navball reading to look for Iota's position. "Iota is now past the zenith and moving to the horizon. There won't be a better time for Launch." "Leave as you wish. Good Luck." "Igniting the first Stage." The audience clapped loud as the whole rocket slowly but steadily picked up speed. The Thud Engines, although not having the best ISP, had impressive eight degrees of Gimbal.

As planned, Jeb turned a bit pretty early on. Despite not having any fins, the craft was, due to the Thuds' large gimbal range, quite stable even over larger turns. Stage separation, planned above ten kilometres, was initiated at about 17 km. As Iota I picked up more speed with the second stage, consisting of another three Thuds and three Swivels, it headed constantly prograde to get as much horizontal speed as possible while not wasting too much to steering losses. The third stage lit it's engines at no less than 30 km. After topping out at an Apoapsis of eighty kilometres, he waited until twenty seconds before that before firing the engines again. Six hundred kilonewtons pushing him into orbit. 

He waited once again, this time for the Ascending Node, if everything was to plan, he would intersect Iota near the Descending Node to get into the Sphere of Influence of the moon.

 

After this burn he realized that the engineers had severely overbuilt the Rocket. The Moon had a Low Orbital Speed of barely two hundered m/s so he wouldn't have any problem to land there. He got to sleep for a few days.

 

--Six days later--

Jeb woke up the moment his lander entered Iota's gravity sphere. He got the science from the first 'landing leg', which was a tank strapped onto an engine with some science at the top and all that bound together with some Jeb's Junkyard Space Duct Tape. He followed the protocol and burned a bit of fuel to get from a hyperbolic trajectory to an orit with periiota at just more than two thousand metres. Unforunately, while preparing for the next wait, he forgot to turn of the magnetometer and lost all his electricity. At least he was able to steer with a little bit of thrust. He collected his low orbit science and deorbited. The landing was smooth despite the lack of power. After collecting the surface science he burned, still with plenty fuel left in the landing legs, but quite some snacks science in the container. Landing at Gael was despite the need for multiple aerobrakes because Jeb had a too high periapsis pretty smooth. Everyone congratulated him as he walked back into the Astronaut complex after more than thirty days. He had to prepare for Ceti though. But then he would fly with Bob and Bill.

 

Mission Statistics:

• Duration: ~30 Days
• Science: ~625

 

[JadeOfMaar]

Fabulous posts. Unfortunately I just ran out of likes to give today.

Huge GPP update was yesterday. Click my signature and get rolling.  

[SpaceColonist]

Did an update run yesterday. And I won't do an orbital insertion with the 'Ant' again. That was painful.

 

Whilst preparing for the next big mission, set to Ceti, the Engineering department was shocked when it became obvious that there was one critical thing missing for a flight that length. Jeb already had landed on Iota without any electrical turning systems available because of the lacking power (empty). To combat this, Catarina and Malcolm quickly set up another mission, the "Gael Manned Craft II", basically an awkward-looking rocket out of some droptanks, three Thuds, because they were the only Engine justifying such a design, and a quite standard central core. Aditionally they prepared the first artificial satellite orbiting Gael permanently, the Gael Mapper. 

Jeb, sitting again in the Cockpit, waited for the Launch command once again. But he only needed to wait a short time, and he could race up  into the sky once again. Except he didn't race. The amount of thrust he had wasn't allowing him to do so, but he was happy anyways to sit in another spacecraft. A few minutes of controlling it, and he was in Orbit once again. With his second stage halfway filled, so he decided to go to Iota. He was at the right angle anyways.

After getting some Telescope and EVA Science, he managed to get a quite close Iota encounter, just about seven kilometres in periapsis. That was what he used to get even more science. After a Iota Capture Burn and, after one Orbit, an escape burn, he managed to get back to Kerbin without any issues, even without a heat shield. But, before going to Ceti, another mission was on the schedule: A Mapper, about eight point eight tons with the launcher.

It was a low resolution Gael mapping mission, steered by a low-tech probe compared to what they had achieved on Kerbin, the first stage being three Sounding-XL Boosters, followed by a lifting core out of four Spark engines and a total of seventeen 'Oscar-B' Tanks, after that four Sounding-S Boosters sequentially fired, and for the final Insertion and Orbital Maneuvers the 'Ant'. Two kilonewtons of thrust on the upper stage at an ISP of 315, but the total cost of the rocket, includuing payload, was with 12,611 funds low. Most of that was the Mapper (2,500) and the antennae (1,800for three of them), so the launcher itself was really cheap. It still managed to get the eight hundred kilograms of payload into a sub-orbital trajectory, even enogh to get into orbit with a really weak engine. Soon it was in a 492x499 km Orbit. And they could prepare for Ceti. And the following interplanetary missions...

 

Science Gained: ~75

Edited January 27, 2017 by SpaceColonist

[SpaceColonist]

The Second Moon

"Jeb will definitely fly to another moon. He won't miss out on an adventure like this. Ever." Thiakin Kerman, a young designer, who had been designing the probe payload now mapping Kerbin, had been coming up with a small one-crew Mission orbiting Ceti. "But not that small. I'll need Bob and Bill this time, and we'll probably need some more scientists to fly to Iota. We should definitely be prepared for long-term Missions, and I plan with eight to ten crew members all at least with a bit of Experience. A second Iota Mission with the rest should help." "Bill isn't able to go on a mission for now", Desmond told Jeb, "he's busy with testing Runway Materials on the continent. But we've got a second scientist already. Gemet Kerman is only forty-one, and has been doing Material Science for ten years. She will be a great addition to the roster." "I'll take her and Bob to Ceti. They will get to walk on a distant, barren moon."

 

Some time later Thiakin came back with an adjusted Payload design. Fitting three Kerbals in separated cabins, where they would be able to spacewalk and collect delicious Science(and actually make them reusable on-site). In the meantime, while being in contact with Thiakin, Desmond created a Launcher for the Project.

And so, as the calculated plane got the least inlination to Ceti's Orbit, Jeb fired the Engines, leaving the Launch Pad behind. The Ceti I Mission was planned to be launched eastward, into a low Orbit, to then fly to Ceti. While flying into space, they detached the outer Liquid Boosters in stacks of two to keep empty ballast as low as possible. Soon they began rollover, and by the time they got into Orbit, the rocket ran only on a single central "Skipper" Engine, which had fired all the way up here. Now they began transfer planning: they set up a node to bring them to a low encounter with Ceti. While firing the main Engine burned its last fuel, needing to switch to the landing Engines, three LV-909 sixty-kilonewton vacuum Engines. Now they needed to wait multiple Days.

 

"Mission Control here. Where are you?" "We just passed eleven thousand kilometres. We'll lose connection soon." Jeb gave a few not-so-nice words to the Engineering team for not supplying an antenna. He was able to fly this craft himself though, thanks to his piloting skills.

 

Four days later, Mission control

 

"No connection for four days now, Sir. We have to declare them Missing in Action.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jebediah Kerman, age 2174, Bob Kerman, age 2153 and Gemet Kerman, age 41, haven't been in connection with GSC for more than four days and are thereby declared Missing in Action. If they return to GSC or recover contact with it, this document is rendered invalid and any returning kerbonauts can return to business following Protocol 2, Section IIIa "Contact Re-Aquiring".

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Jeb, Bob and Gemet meanwile waited for Ceti Insertion. "They should've declared us MIA by now. Not a problem however, as we'll be recovering contact about a day before we return.", Jeb said into his microphone.

 

Jeb spotted Ceti on the map first. Having piloted more than one thousand flights outside the atmosphere, and countless hours inside it, he really knew what he was doing. As they got close to Periapsis, he burned retrograde to capture in orbit. After capture Gemel got out to collect the science and then restore the Experiments. Then Jeb began the Descent Burn. And got into a problem: The Ceti lander had too much descent speed. No problem for Jeb though, who simply switched to manual control and pitched the vessel up a bit. After a short time they had landed on Ceti.

Standing on the ground, everyone got out for a group photo with flag. Bob collected the Science for this Mission before returning into his capsule with his crewmates. They launched quickly from that moon, heading directly eastward into Orbit. After Orbital Insertion, they just had to wait until they were about between Ceti and Gael to then burn until Perigael dropped below 70 kilometres. They then waited until they could gain back communication.

"Sir! Ceti I is back on screen!" "Good. Call them and ask what they did the last days." "Mission Control here. We have got communication with you. Can you confirm?" "Confirmed. We'll be back in about a day. Damn Engineers. Not even an Antenna they'd got spare. But we can talk when I've landed this thing. Still got a crapload of Fuel left."  The second time they tried to get a communication Jeb was in the middle of Re-Entry. But they landed safely, even if they landed far from the GSC.

 

Science Earned: 783