Stranded short on fuel

[MPDerksen]

My lander picked up a stranded Kerbal at the pole of the Mun.  They are happily playing cards in the lander that only has 500m/s of fuel left.  Not enough to get into a stable orbit for docking an pick up.  

1.  No way to Amazon Prime them some additional fuel?
2.  There are 2 of them, so should I make 2 trips and retrieve them?  Or is there a configuration that I can grab them both in a single shot?
3.  How do I make sure to get the science out of the lander and bring it home?  It’s currently stored in the lander (retrieved from a Goo, etc. and surface samples).  I don’t want to leave 300 science behind.

[RizzoTheRat]

Depends how far through the tech tree you are, a Mk1-3 pod has 3 seats so a pilot and the 2 shipwrecked crew.  If you're not that far through, a triple stack of Mk1 pods, with the middle one upside down, is stable on re-entry so you could build a lander with that configuration.

Alternatively if you have the Klaw you could drop a rover near them and use the klaw to latch on and transfer fuel

If you want to use a mod KAS/KIS lets you install additional parts and use pipes, so you could land a craft next to them (within 20m or so I think), install a connector on their ship, and hook the two together and transfer some fuel.

You can right click on your kerbal when he's standing next to the lander and take the science from the lander for him to bring home in another vessel.

Edited March 17, 2019 by RizzoTheRat

[swjr-swis]

36 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

My lander picked up a stranded Kerbal at the pole of the Mun.  They are happily playing cards in the lander that only has 500m/s of fuel left.  Not enough to get into a stable orbit for docking an pick up.

500 m/s is very close to getting into a minimum altitude orbit around Mun. You could blast away all your lander fuel into suborbital, then get out and push...

[Superfluous J]

48 minutes ago, swjr-swis said:

500 m/s is very close to getting into a minimum altitude orbit around Mun. You could blast away all your lander fuel into suborbital, then get out and push...

Or hop each kerbal out and have them use their jetpacks to get into orbit.

It's pretty likely going to be easier to do 2 orbital rendezvous maneuvers to pick them up, than a precision landing with a large and possibly unwieldy craft.

[bewing]

1) The only way to add fuel to the lander as it sits is to dock with it. Which you can do using a Klaw, but it's not worth the effort. You could also take the Kerbals out of the lander by docking with a Klaw, but that's not worth it either.

2) Yes, you can easily build ships that can take on two (or three, or more) Kerbals for transporting back to Kerbin. It is actually very wasteful to only pick them up one at a time.

As 5thHorseman said, the smartest thing to do is to get your lander almost to orbit until it is out of fuel, then EVA each Kerbal from the lander and give them 20 or 30 seconds of prograde thrust from their RCS jetpacks to get them into orbit by themselves. I don't think they have enough thrust for "get out and push" to work for getting the entire capsule to orbit.

3) Yes, when you EVA from the lander (and you are still hanging on the hatch), open the Part Action Menu for the lander. There will be a button there that says "Take Data". When you click that button, all the experiments that are currently stored in the lander will be transferred to the Kerbal's pockets.

 

Edited March 17, 2019 by bewing

[Grogs]

2 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Or hop each kerbal out and have them use their jetpacks to get into orbit.

It's pretty likely going to be easier to do 2 orbital rendezvous maneuvers to pick them up, than a precision landing with a large and possibly unwieldy craft.

Don't forget RCS thrusters either, if you have them. For a light craft like a munar lander, they can deliver a surprisingly large amount of dV from just a couple dozen units of monoprop. So I would try regular engines -> RCS thrusters -> EVA jetpacks to see if you can get them into orbit.

[Kryxal]

Better to use RCS early than late, if you have any available ... it's lower ISP.

[MPDerksen]

You guys are awesome.  Thanks.  I was planning to try the RCS (turns out it wasn’t enough, but helped), but had completely forgotten about the EVA packs.  I had drained them getting the stranded Kerbal to my lander (I was 3K away!!!).  turns out, when she got onboard it refueled to the full 5.00.  I had them abandon ship one at a time, near the Ap, and was able to position both in orbit with a Pe just over 20K.  That’s enough, I hope.  I need to reserve a little to get to the rescue ship when it arrives.  From here it should all be pretty basic.  I’ll make sure to do at least 1 EVA report in case I can get a last little bit of science.

[Aegolius13]

42 minutes ago, MPDerksen said:

 I had them abandon ship one at a time, near the Ap, and was able to position both in orbit with a Pe just over 20K.   That’s enough, I hope.

Yeah, that should be a perfectly safe altitude as long as you don't do any extremely aggressive burns on your rendezvous.  I like to work at that altitude so each orbit is relatively short in in-game time.