Help with contract

[khlobbia]

I tried doing my first "rescue contract," where you rescue a kerbal from somewhere else. My contract told me to rescue a kerbal that was in low kerbin orbit (ap 88km, pe 83km), so I built a rocket that could get there and back. After trying to rendezvous for a long time, I was finally able to get close to the kerbal. Very close. But here's where the problem appeared. The kerbal that was stranded was inside a 'star' utility module. I was able to switch to the kerbal, but she couldn't go EVA (no hatch). There were also no docking ports on it (I didn't have one either), so I couldn't just dock and transfer crew. Can anybody help me on what to do? I'm relatively new to the game (got it about 3 months ago), so I don't really know what to do. Thanks in advance!

[Vanamonde]

30 minutes ago, khlobbia said:

I tried doing my first "rescue contract," where you rescue a kerbal from somewhere else. My contract told me to rescue a kerbal that was in low kerbin orbit (ap 88km, pe 83km), so I built a rocket that could get there and back. After trying to rendezvous for a long time, I was finally able to get close to the kerbal. Very close. But here's where the problem appeared. The kerbal that was stranded was inside a 'star' utility module. I was able to switch to the kerbal, but she couldn't go EVA (no hatch). There were also no docking ports on it (I didn't have one either), so I couldn't just dock and transfer crew. Can anybody help me on what to do? I'm relatively new to the game (got it about 3 months ago), so I don't really know what to do. Thanks in advance!

That is a bad stroke of luck. At this point the only thing you can do is grab the target ship with a Claw part (if you have them) and transfer the Kerbal to the rescue ship. Or you can try to land with the target clutched by the Claw, but that is unlikely to go well. 

[bewing]

There is a second kind of "recovery" contract, that applies here. Sometimes you are asked to recover a part from somewhere, and to land it safely on Kerbin.

You can use a klaw, a decoupler, a couple parachutes, and some structural parts. You use the klaw to dock to the part you want to recover, activate the parachutes, lower your Pe until everything will enter the atmosphere, then decouple the thing, then maybe recircularize your parent craft, then switch to the other craft and watch it reenter and land safely. This will complete your kerbal rescue contract.

As Vanamonde said, you can also forget the decoupler, and try to land the whole mess -- that's significantly harder.

 

[Superfluous J]

There is a 3rd option. It requires a bit of save file hacking. If you can find the craft in the list of VESSELs (It shouldn't be too hard, it's the only one with a single part after all) and change that part to a Mk1 command pod, your Kerbal can then get out of it. This allows you to still complete the spirit of the contract, as Squad never meant you to have to bring the part down when they wrote it.

As always when save file hacking, make a backup first! I'd hate you to lose your entire save because of an error while trying to fix a minor contract.

[Spricigo]

 

All stock parts with crew space have a hatch, so the game just s´pawn the Kerbal inside any crew part. Problem is, as you notice, some modded crew part don't have hatches making the contract much harder than its supposed to be. Rescue pod validator may prevent it to happen again.

How you will deal with the current contract? Well, that is up to you to decide, there is several option available. 

• Let the Kerbal wait while you decide what to do. You probably have years before the contract deadline.
• Complete the contract anyway, using the Advanced Grabing Unit.
• Complete the harder contract using KIS  to attach a parachute to the star module and pushing it to deorbit. Or attach everything that is missing in the craft.
• Cancel the contract and accept he penality.
• Open the debug menu and use the [set position] command to land the stranded Kerbal.*
• Open the debug menu, find the contract and complete it.*

 

*yeah, some people call it "cheating" but I'd argue that you did what was supposed to do to complete the contract, so it should be completed. Finding a part with no hatch is a conflict with a modded part and how the contact is generated, a glitch.

 

[jimmymcgoochie]

I always complete those missions using the same klaw-equipped vessel that I use to recover parts. An oversized heat shield and some ballast (a 1.875-0.625 fuel tank with feed disabled) make it pretty stable during re-entry even when grappled to some fairly heavy objects, the Kerbals are recovered safely and you get the funds from their pods too.

From top to bottom, it looks a bit like this:

• mini klaw (from Restock+, however 1.10 added a stock version of this and the regular klaw would probably work just as well);
• probe core HECS with 3x RCS thrusters, 3x mini RCS fuel tanks (I think those are from Making History, one of the non-DLC small tanks would do the same job) and 3x radial parachutes (important!);
• small reaction wheel with 3x solar panels and 3x Z-100 batteries;
• FL-A151S fuel tank (1.875m to 0.625m, MH DLC required- a flat Rockomax adapter might do here along with some heavy parts like fuel or ore tanks for ballast) with 3x RCS thrusters;
• 2.5m heat shield;
• decoupler followed by deorbiting engine.

Low cost, relatively low on the tech tree and most of the cost gets recovered (if you land near the KSC of course) and so far I’ve recovered payloads in excess of 10 tons without any trouble; I recommend MOAR parachutes if you want to bring down heavier payloads though.

Or you could do it the boring, mainstream way and stick a klaw on top of a Mk1 pod to let you transfer the crew that way