Cortez comes home again; Muskrat leaves it's mark

[Randazzo]

With the first stage of the Cortez recovery complete, the crew was prepared to depart Tylo's surface. The Cortez lander would have to rendezvous twice at very low altitudes, once with the Dominguez transfer stage to take on it's remaining fuel, and then dock with it's own transfer stage. Once the Cortez was complete again, the fuel situation would be assessed and a determination made whether or not abandoning the main core would be necessary. The Cortez would transfer to Duna instead of returning back to Kerbin if the core could be salvaged, so that it could be recovered for future operations. Fuel recovery from Dominguez went smoothly and after docking and strutting was complete on Cortez, there proved to be sufficient fuel for returning the entire vessel to Duna.

My now standard orbit over Jool at 30000 Km was established, safely between Laythe and Vall. Transfer to Duna was scheduled in 45 days. Arriving there, aerobraking was performed and orbit easily established. To "make room" (read: help cut down on Keplers lag), Tarantula was sent down from Kepler to the surface of Ike. Cortez then made the transfer to Ike and established orbit at 75 Km with 40 seconds of fuel to spare, more than enough. This was transferred to the lander module, and the transfer engines were left to be refueled and recovered by Kepler at a later time. Cortez lander docked with Kepler to take on enough fuel for return to Kerbin. No parts snapped off, nothing exploded, and all fuels lines functioned. A slow day at the office.

The Kerbin encounter also went well, aerobraking was performed and orbit established at 72 Km before landing at KSC. The entire crew reached level 5, giving the program it's second set of veterans. Though there is no more use for it at this point, a significant amount of Science! was gathered as well.

With everything gone right, it was terribly boring.

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Meanwhile...

Secret project "Muskrat" was underway to test an experimental new module (and complete two contracts for Moolah). A rookie pilot was chosen for the task, and Muskrat launched just ahead of the Eve transfer window. Launch and transfer went smoothly, data was gathered from space around Eve, and the Muskrat transferred to it's intended destination, Gilly. Once there, the package was deployed to the surface and the Gilly contract completed. A high speed chase (at .1 m/s) was required on the surface of Gilly before recovery could commence.

Execution of package recovery was an exercise in ridiculousness, see below for details.

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