KAS & TAC - No docking port?

[Lerlik]

Hello fellow rocket scientists (if there is such a thing in the land of the Kerbals...)

Jeb has obviously been drinking the evening before the launch again and has forgotten to pack the cheese cake sandwiches freshly prepared by Valentina. As a result, Bill and Jeb are now finding themselves in orbit over Kerbin, with 9 days of food and supplies when their mission stipulated that they should be staying up there for a grand total of 12 days...

Enough with the intro, I am basically trying to figure out a contingency plan to bring more supplies to Jeb and Bill, in the shortest amount of time. I play with TAC, KAS and KIS (quite new to those two) and am trying to figure out whether it is possible to transfer fuel and/or supplies without a docking port on the capsule?

Any ideas, or suggestions on how to get those two poor souls (or soon to be) out of their predicament?

Thanks in advance,

Edited November 9, 2015 by Lerlik

[Pecan]

KAS and KIS will certainly let you connect fuel-transfer lines, if you rendezvous the vehicles closely enough (pretend you're docking).

For "TAC" I take it you mean, TAC Life Support (there being others) and for that, IIRC, you should be able to ferry-over a food/whatever container with a Kerbal on EVA then attach it to the other ship (courtesy of KIS/KAS)

[magnemoe]

You can use the winch, note that it require an connector on the other ship.

If not an enginer with an drill or wrench can move one. Yes this require an drill or wrench so you might have to send that in an container.

Else you can move parts within 3 meter even from ship to ship.

[cantab]

Rendezvous the ships close together, put a KIS connector port on both of them, and link with a pipe. That makes them one ship and you can transfer resources as normal.

It *might* be possible to transfer supplies by EVAing Kerbals between the ships, and locking and unlocking containers so they go one way with nothing and then return with stuff, no KIS needed.

[mabarry3]

Another option besides the one that Pecan mentioned is:

Set up your rescue ship and, if you're going to send an engineer Kerbal along, right click the pod the Kerbal is in and click "<Kerbal's Name>'s Inventory" or "Seat#'s Inventory" and add in a wrench and drill. Attach your life support supplies wherever, and when you get to the ship, send the kerbal on EVA and equip the drill or wrench, hold "G" and grab the life support supplies, and then move over to the other ship and attach it using X.

Alternatively, since Bob is an engineer (I think Bob is the engineer and Bill is the scientist, right? I always get those two mixed up...), you can also just make it a probe, pack a drill and whatever other supplies you need him to have in a KIS container on the ship, and have him grab them directly out of the KIS container and put it on his own ship, or you can just have a drill/wrench there and have him grab the drill/wrench and then manually detach the life support supplies or whatnot from the other ship.

[Snark]

For that matter, you could install a docking port on the ship that's out there. Send up a rescue ship with a docking port mounted on it, the supplies, and an engineer with a drill. Include a spare docking port as cargo, or even mounted to the ship. Rendezvous, then unpack the spare port from cargo (or dismount one from the rescue ship), mount it to the vessel, then dock them and you can transfer the supplies the way you could do any resource transfer.

[Lerlik]

Thanks for the help guys,

I got confused with the whole Bob/Bill thing : it is definitely Bill the engineer on-board the capsule, so this should make things a little bit easier.

I will look into sending some tools and supplies up there next time I get a chance to play it, hoping that I can build and launch the probe in time (using Construction time also to add to the challenge).

I will post some screenshots if I can get to them.

[Stoney3K]

Why bother with containers? Kerbals can carry quite a bit so if your life support supplies are small enough to carry, just get out on EVA, pick up the supplies and stash them in your command pod.

A drill, er, screwdriver is pretty useful in any situation where you have an engineer, so you may want to send one up (along with a small docking port) while you're on the subject of hauling supply boxes.

[Vanamonde]

Modding question moved to the modding subforum.