Contract for retrieving surface wreckage

[jpatterson]

Going through a mostly-stock 1.0 playthrough, I've done most contract types, but I've just now pretty much hit a wall. I got a contract to rescue a kerbal *and the wreckage of her spacecraft* from the surface of Minmus. Picking her up is simple, but her wreckage is a cupola module, and I'm really stumped as to how to get that. I know it's going to have to involve a grabbing unit. My first attempt was a ship with a grabber on the bottom and a few radial-mount engines, and after an hour or so of futzing around with that, I've come to the conclusion that sub-3-meter precision landings are not something I'm capable of. The other possibilities I can think of are more rover-based:

1) build a rover with a claw on the front, a small rocket on the back (to get it to stand up), and two radial rockets on the sides facing front-wards to switch to once it's standing up. This seems unlikely to work.

2) build a giant rover that can actually crawl over it, but without mods like Infernal Robotics or Kerbal Attachment, I can't think of a way to get the grabber to actually *hit* the cupola and attach.

3) build several (at least 2-3) rovers that can attach around the perimeter, each with their own rockets. Once they're all attached, light it up and fly away. This seems like my most promising idea so far.

My question is, has anyone else done missions like this? Am I missing something obvious, or are they really just a huge pain in the rear?

[Val]

I used a rover with landing gear for wheels. Landed near and used RCS to roll into position. Retract gear to get the grabber to hit.

[Orbital Vagabond]

It's Minmus so it'll take almost no fuel to hover. Build a skycrane, grab the cupola, and get it back up into orbit.

Edited June 17, 2015 by TestPilotTheta

[capi3101]

If you're not adverse to mods, I might recommend KIS in this case. Take an engineer out there with some connector ports, and connect a docking port somewhere on the craft. Have the engineer's craft up there with a number of winches equal to the number of connector ports. Hook up the winches and set them to a good length - five to ten meters, maybe. You oughta be able to take off then and haul it up to orbit that way, and then dock it to something that could take it back to Kerbin without having to futz too much about getting past re-entry heat. I'd say "go put a heat shield on it", but at 1.3 tonnes a 2.5 meter head shield would be a little more than a single Engineer would be able to handle.

For the landing and approach, I might recommend Trajectories. And a craft with excess delta-V. You'd still have to have some precision with the winch approach, but they would afford you a little more in terms of margin for error.

[ender1337otron]

Use RCS controls to fine tune your landings.