A Low-Tech Multi-Rescue Mission

[Geschosskopf]

Having decided all I'd done in 1.0.2 was trashed by 1.0.4, I started some new games to explore the new stuff. Early in this career game (with heat turned down to 10%), I had 3 rescue contracts I dediced to do in 1 go. It worked great so I decided to post this in case anybody finds it useful.

First off, the ship used looked like this:

The salient feature is the use of a 2.5m adaptor and box girders to create a homemade "quad-coupler". I had not yet unlocked any stock multi-couplers. I used a similar kludge in a previous 1.0.4 game (with 100% heat) to make a big booster for a multi-seat Mun lander and it had no trouble getting up through the air even with some flames, so I'm pretty sure it would work on reentry as well (assuming the OTHER problems with 1.0.4 heat don't kill you).

Anyway, all 3 rescue targets were conveniently lined up close together at about 90km so I went up to 150km and let them catch up with me. The plan was to take them from front to rear. Here's the set-up for the 1st rendezvous.

And the 1st customer, Jeb's cousin Jedming:

Don't know why this pic displays so small. Click on it if you want to see it bigger.

Now I had to drop back about 100km in essentially the same orbit I was already in. I did this by first burning slightly radial outwards, then a touch of prograde to get just a hair of orbital separation, then set up a node to intercept the 2nd target.

This soon brought me up to Virlian.

One of the few good things about 1.0.4 is that the re-revised Mk1 inline cockpit now has internal lighting like the Mk2 pods. So I had Jedming turn his light on so Virlian wouldn't try to get in that pod. Very helpful.

Given the name Virlian, which I presume to be a Frenchified corruption of the Latin "virilem" (manly), I was surprised when Virlian turned out to be a girl. Hmmm.

Anyway, a similar bit of orbital tweaking as before dropped me back another 120 or so clicks to the 3rd target.

And this one had a great Kerbal name, Mungas. I suppose this is the actual Old Kerbish word for "Kethane" . Virlian turned on her light to show Mungas which pods were still empty.

And then it was time to land. After the deorbit burn, I ditched the OMS stage, exposing heat shields on all 4 of the lower pods.

The newly pressganged Kerbals all smiled joyfully during the flaming part of reentry, but lost their composure when the G-forces of the transition to subsonic speeds hit. Alas, no BadS Kerbals here.

In terms of profit and loss, the mission was pretty good, about $300K and 132 rep.

And contrary to reports elsewhere, I continue to get a pretty even mix of classes and genders in rescue missions, in this case 1 of each class.

Jedming has very Jeb-like stats so that's OK and Engineers are the only really useful Kerbals anyway. A keeper.

Virlian must have graduated last in her class at the School of Science and is afraid of her own shadow. I'm thinking she wasn't stuck in orbit by accident but in a deliberate attempt by her former owner to get rid of her .

Mungas' brain is really wasted as a pilot--he should be the scientist. I wish I could cross-train him, especially because I no longer need pilots at all thanks to having unlocked the basic OKTO probe core with SAS. I'm really not a fan of the Kerbal class system and wish it was a "pick-whatever-skill-you-want" thing like in most RPGs these days.

But whatever, it was still a successful, if simple, mission.

[Scotius]

Very ingenious craft. And Mungas...LOL.

[Geschosskopf]

Very ingenious craft. And Mungas...LOL.

Thanks. Sometimes, after wrestling with complicated things at distant planets, it's nice to get back to basics.

I really like how Porkjet's pods have internal lights and am a bit disappointed they didn't add this to the pointy Mk1 cockpit when they revised it recently. This should be part of everything with windows, for both looks and practical stuff like in this mission. Sadly, though, it's not something you can do yourself with ModuleManager because it's an animation of the 3D model.