hen3ry

My craziest was during a simple milk run to Mun, testing an old design I'd used in 0.15, rebuilt into 0.16. The main stage had six stacks symmetrically around a central one, with fuel feeding towards the center. Well, I'm sitting in Kerbal orbit, with just vapors in 6 tank stacks, waiting for Munrise at 0 throttle. Munrise occurs, and I punch the throttle, and sure enough, not 3 seconds later, I'm officially carrying 6 deadweight engines. No matter, the central engine will get me and the landing stage to the Mun, so I stage seperate. Except, my central engine was in the wrong stage, and I watch bemusedly as the stacks I just ejected split off, at almost zero relative velocity. Well, being the clever pilot I am, I decide to turn on my RCS, get a dozen meters clear of the debris, then resume my Munar burn. Except, I hit "d" instead of "e", and bam, right into the very debris I'm trying to avoid.

0.00456 m/s? Heck, I think my rocket on the launch pad is moving faster than that!

It's not really Kerbal style. It's not as if they just patched together a bunch of scrap pieces and launched it just to see if it would work. Although, it would certainly have been a ride Jeb would have approved of.

Wait... are you asking how to get a corpse into a command pod? I don't think you'd be able to fly the ship anyway, since a corpse doesn't seem like it would qualify the pod as "manned" (unless there's a survivor in the pod also, of course)

Well, here's my entry http://imgur.com/a/3s2C3 Burnout altitude 178,350 km Burnout velocity 4543.7 m/s Fancy Math (if I'm doin this correctly: used Google for 0.5*(4.5437)^2-(3530.461/(600+178.35)) = 5.78678 MJ/kg.

My default strategy for Minmus is what I call the collision course method - it\'s not really the 'right way' to do it, but it works. Launch to a projected Apo of 46,400km (-ish) fully vertical. This will put you in a suborbital trajectory, unless (1) you\'re very lucky and happened to launch at just the right time to hit Minmus (rare) or (2) you\'re going to be thrown off by the Mun (also rare, but slightly more likely to occur). At approximately 2,000km (you can do it anywhere along the path really) altitude, using the map, I make my initial North-South adjustment burns. I burn about 5%-10% throttle, pointed to either 0 or 180 bearing on the navball, along the horizon. This will adjust the projected apo north or south without greatly altering its projected altitude. The target is to put the Apo directly on Minmus\' orbital path. A series of fine adjustments is needed. (RCS burns would work too here, but I seldom bother with RCS). Once apo is aligned, I burn again prograde or retrograde to put my apo at 46,400km (ish) (the north-south burns can throw it off). If necessary, I repeat the adjustments until it\'s 'good enough' Now, timewarp to near the apo. Using this method, your relative velocity will be almost nil, due to the suborbital nature of your trajectory. Turn the ship to exactly 270 degrees, on the horizon, and full burn until your velocity is 274.1 m/s (ish). If you were perfect, you should be on a direct collision course with Minmus. More likely, however, you will be on a course to enter Minmus\' zone of influence, from where a properly timed retro burn pulls you into a stable orbit. The downside to the method is, naturally, you will be entering Minmus\' ZOI with a velocity of about 548 m/s relative to Minmus. Still, I\'ve almost never had a problem performing the required retrograde burn to enter Minmus orbit. Why do I say this is a wrong method? Ideally, realistically, one would perform the adjustments while in Kerbal orbit, and time a transfer burn to Minmus from there, similar to the Munrise method. The reason would be, if there was a failure, it would be far easier to recover your kerbonauts from near Kerbal orbit, than it would be at 46,400 km away. (and if you miss your adjustments, you don\'t have a second orbit to try again, since you spend much of the trip sub-orbital). I suspect its also a bit inefficient with the delta V, since you\'re making essentially two correction burns - one in the polar direction to get the eccentricity, then one to set the collision course. One could use the same method to reach Mun (the eccentricity adjustment being skipped as unnecessary), but you would need to Apo at 11,400 km, and then do a 270 burn to 542.5 m/s - and your velocity relative to Mun would therefore be nearly 1100 m/s. I prefer the Munrise method for Mun, but I haven\'t found a good equivalent for Minmus. Summary: There are better ways to do it, efficiency-wise, I\'m sure. But that would require doing rocket sciency math. xD