Forgotten Space Program

[waterlubber]

On 7/28/2016 at 2:28 AM, Cydonian Monk said:

"Welcome to the Forgotten Space Program."

And then the lights went out.

Roll credits.

 

Of course, the entire time I had this playing in my head

[Andem]

13 minutes ago, waterlubber said:

Roll credits.

If you are making the reference I think you are,

 

*Ding!*

[Geschosskopf]

17 hours ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Thanks. That was by far the easiest spinning dock I've done. Tools help.

It also helped that the station's axis of rotation was essentially the same as the docking port's axis

BTW, reading the part where the crew was climbing outwards on the spoke reminded me when Clarke's crew was doing the same for the 1st time on the original Rama.  In that book, the astronauts eventually had to switch ends and just as I was beginning to wonder if you'd mention that, you did

It's a good thing Kerbals don't have ears, or at least not human-style inner ears.  As I understand things, to make enough fake gravity to have a meaningful health benefit while avoiding constant barfing from auricular inertial cross-coupling, a human station would need an inconveniently huge diameter.  The Edge of Infinity is a big structure for KSP, but it's nowhere near big enough for humans to feel comfortable.

 

11 hours ago, DMSP said:

Do you have any tips on how to fly it?

Isn't that the one where CM posted half a page of instructions, each sentence of which included "you will die" ?

[Cydonian Monk]

29 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

BTW, reading the part where the crew was climbing outwards on the spoke reminded me when Clarke's crew was doing the same for the 1st time on the original Rama.  In that book, the astronauts eventually had to switch ends and just as I was beginning to wonder if you'd mention that, you did

It just seems natural to climb _into_ a ladder well like that, at least until you realize how terribly wrong you were and have to turn around. I don't recall that specific scenario from Rama (it's been 20 years and a few billion words since I read it), but I can imagine most spacenewbs doing it.

Quote

It's a good thing Kerbals don't have ears, or at least not human-style inner ears....

Right. It's tough on us mucus-filled sacks of barely balanced instability. I do wonder if those of us that already have messed-up inner ears and little to no terrestrial sense of balance (in my case from endless ear/sinus infections...) would be better off or worse off in such anti-centripital "gravity".

I've given some thought to Kerbal ears and Kerbal hearing, and have decided to leave it undecided. 

Quote

Isn't that the one where CM posted half a page of instructions, each sentence of which included "you will die" ?

That was the Titanium. The Aluminium X-4B has a few dozen fewer ways to end up as kerbal paste. 

Edited July 29, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[waterlubber]

14 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Right. It's tough on us mucus-filled sacks of barely balanced instability. I do wonder if those of us that already have messed-up inner ears and little to no terrestrial sense of balance (in my case from endless ear/sinus infections...) would be better off or worse off in such anti-centripital "gravity".

I've given some thought to Kerbal ears and Kerbal hearing, and have decided to leave it undecided. 

Kerbals probably have frog-like membranes that detect sound. 

Good work so far, keep it up!

[Geschosskopf]

21 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

It just seems natural to climb _into_ a ladder well like that, at least until you realize how terribly wrong you were and have to turn around. I don't recall that specific scenario from Rama (it's been 20 years and a few billion words since I read it), but I can imagine most spacenewbs doing it.

Being a fireman, I spend a fair amount of time on ladders.  It's ALWAYS "terribly wrong" because a ladder in normal gravity is an inverted pendulum where things get worse the higher you climb.  I've had some very bad experiences with ladders.  But those ladders weren't firmly riveted to the wall, which does make a lot of difference.  Still, I much prefer to dangle from a rope, which is a normal, inherently stable pendulum, no matter how deep the abyss below is.

 

21 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Right. It's tough on us mucus-filled sacks of barely balanced instability. I do wonder if those of us that already have messed-up inner ears and little to no terrestrial sense of balance (in my case from endless ear/sinus infections...) would be better off or worse off in such anti-centripital "gravity".

Try using the Mythbuster's "vomit chair" and see.  You can make this at home fairly easily

 

21 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

I've given some thought to Kerbal ears and Kerbal hearing, and have decided to leave it undecided. 

I think they hear with their eyes.  The huge, protruding eyes are easily damaged so are maladaptive unless they serve some overriding beneficial purpose.  Such as being a sounding board

 

21 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

That was the Titanium. The Aluminium X-4B has a few dozen fewer ways to end up as kerbal paste. 

I bet the fine print of the warning labels still fills most of a page, though

 

[Torgo]

16 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I bet the fine print of the warning labels still fills most of a page, though

Ship's actual cost, √ 99
Actual purchase price, including lawyers, legal fees, other fees and interpretive dance to explain the fine print,  √ 54,893,122

[Cydonian Monk]

On July 29, 2016 at 3:54 AM, DMSP said:

Aluminum 4X-B ....

Do you have any tips on how to fly it?

Also, is there any chance you have a stock version of the craftfile lying around?

First, an updated version of the craft for 1.1.3. 100% stock.

https://kerbalx.com/CydonianMonk/Aluminium-X-4C

This aircraft is indeed insanely maneuverable. So much so that the X-4B design is no longer stable. I pulled the wings back by some centimeters to rebalance the center of lift against the center of mass, and adjusted the wheels accordingly. The ailerons have been set to 50% authority, which helps with the over-roll tendancies. I've not tested atmospheric (re)entry with the X-4C variant, but it handles well as an aircraft. 

The small landing gear this craft uses are at the very limits of their capabilities. Set the craft down gently or you will shred the rear landing gear and die. Action Group 4 is set to reverse the thrust of the engines. This will help complement the brakes, which behave more like ice skates. If you apply the brakes while going more than 100m/s on the surface, the craft will spin out of control (on the ground), and you will die.

The craft will take off easilly around 60m/s. You may need to forcefully wobble it left and right to get the landing gear to break their attraction to the runway, but don't overdo it or you'll clip a wing or destroy a wheel and die.

Generally this is a safe craft. Kerbal Engineer lies about the Δv that's available, so don't trust it.

Enjoy!

Edited July 30, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[DMSP]

Yes! Downloaded now.

[ruiluth]

I like this so much, I literally ran out of likes. I was browsing the forums last night waiting for my KSP to load, and I stumbled across this thread. Well, the VAB is open on the other monitor with nothing in it and it's afternoon the next day... If that's not praise I don't know what is

[Cydonian Monk]

3 minutes ago, ruiluth said:

I like this so much, I literally ran out of likes. 

I was wondering if you had hit your limit or not when I checked the forum this morning and saw 25 notifications.  

Thanks for the very kind words (and the magic internet points). 

Edited July 30, 2016 by Cydonian Monk

[ElJugador]

note: What sort of EVE setup are you using? Looks amazing.

[Cydonian Monk]

7 hours ago, ElJugador said:

note: What sort of EVE setup are you using? Looks amazing.

Thanks. It's mostly just the default EVE textures, but I've adjusted colors here and there and occasionally change which cloud texture Kerbin and/or Laythe are using. I'm also using a different texture for Jool that tweaks the base color a bit. I should upload the config at some point.... Just not right now. Scatterer is also in the mix. 

[ElJugador]

On 07/29/2016 at 5:07 PM, Geschosskopf said:

It also helped that the station's axis of rotation was essentially the same as the docking port's axis

BTW, reading the part where the crew was climbing outwards on the spoke reminded me when Clarke's crew was doing the same for the 1st time on the original Rama.  In that book, the astronauts eventually had to switch ends and just as I was beginning to wonder if you'd mention that, you did

It's a good thing Kerbals don't have ears, or at least not human-style inner ears.  As I understand things, to make enough fake gravity to have a meaningful health benefit while avoiding constant barfing from auricular inertial cross-coupling, a human station would need an inconveniently huge diameter.  The Edge of Infinity is a big structure for KSP, but it's nowhere near big enough for humans to feel comfortable.

 

Isn't that the one where CM posted half a page of instructions, each sentence of which included "you will die" ?

Actually, I was at ISDC 2016 a couple of months ago, and one of the revelations made to me there was a new study(ies?), or new information, which revealed the minimum radius might be as small as 7 meters! (....Although the other problem with trying to cut close to the minimum of 7m should be obvious: how many of you would like to live inside of a 7-meter wide aluminum-kevlar bagel?)

[Garibaldi2257]

it needn't be a bagel, it could be a cylinder, a la babylon 5.

[Geschosskopf]

9 hours ago, ElJugador said:

Actually, I was at ISDC 2016 a couple of months ago, and one of the revelations made to me there was a new study(ies?), or new information, which revealed the minimum radius might be as small as 7 meters! (....Although the other problem with trying to cut close to the minimum of 7m should be obvious: how many of you would like to live inside of a 7-meter wide aluminum-kevlar bagel?)

Hmmm.  Well, this result indicates one of 4 things.  Either all the people who puked long and hard in prior tests at such radii were lying, or human aural physiology has changed more in the last few decades than at any time since mammals diverged from reptiles   Or the new study either had vastly different underlying assumptions, or is just wrong.

 

Edited August 3, 2016 by Geschosskopf

[ElJugador]

8 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Hmmm.  Well, this result indicates one of 4 things.  Either all the people who puked long and hard in prior tests at such radii were lying, or human aural physiology has changed more in the last few decades than at any time since mammals diverged from reptiles   Or the new study either had vastly different underlying assumptions, or is just wrong.

 

http://www.nss.org/settlement/space/RotationPaper.pdf

That seems to be the source. Although it's pointed out that there are several caveats.

[Cydonian Monk]

3 hours ago, Garibaldi2257 said:

it needn't be a bagel, it could be a cylinder, a la babylon 5.

Bagelon 5.

 

2 minutes ago, Geschosskopf said:

Either all the people who puked long and hard in prior tests at such radii were lying....

Or, the people involved in the prevous study were somewhere near 1.0 on the Garn scale and not representative of humans as a whole. Pretty sure I'd be useless in a 5 meter spinning bagel though.

 

We've had.... complications with the Jool mission. Seemingly unavoidable complications that I've just decided to play along with. Still, that delayed the mission somewhat while I was trying to find a resolution, a resolution which suggests use of a time machine and as such is not an option. Update perhaps tomorrow? Maybe Thursday. Life is busy and miserable at the moment, and I could use a quick trip to McMurdo to cool off and get out of the sunlight.

[Geschosskopf]

5 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

Or, the people involved in the prevous study were somewhere near 1.0 on the Garn scale and not representative of humans as a whole. Pretty sure I'd be useless in a 5 meter spinning bagel though.

I'm OK at such radii provided I remain facing the center of rotation and don't get anybody else's puke on me.  Even watching the guy across the bagel from me aspirating his own puke from trying to puke straight "up" towards me is just funny, not sickening.  But if I turn to look at the guy next to me doing the same thing, and/or the reason he puked was because he turned to look at me, it's game over.

 

5 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

We've had.... complications with the Jool mission. Seemingly unavoidable complications that I've just decided to play along with. Still, that delayed the mission somewhat while I was trying to find a resolution, a resolution which suggests use of a time machine and as such is not an option. Update perhaps tomorrow? Maybe Thursday. Life is busy and miserable at the moment, and I could use a quick trip to McMurdo to cool off and get out of the sunlight.

It's OK.  Geriatric save files have good and bad days, you know.

 

[0111narwhalz]

On 7/29/2016 at 2:07 PM, Geschosskopf said:

auricular inertial cross-coupling

Yaay! New thing to get out of school with!

"I'm sorry, sir. I can't come to school today. I have auricular inertial cross-coupling."

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, 0111narwhalz said:

"I'm sorry, sir. I can't come to school today. I have auricular inertial cross-coupling."

Your teacher is probably as old as me, and remembers getting this in small-diameter spinning cylinders at amusement parks, before they got litigated out of existence.

[ruiluth]

On 8/2/2016 at 6:52 PM, Cydonian Monk said:

Update perhaps tomorrow? Maybe Thursday.

...*bump*

On 8/2/2016 at 6:52 PM, Cydonian Monk said:

Life is busy and miserable at the moment

...but it's okay we understand.

Alas, this series has inspired me to use remotetech. I had to restart my career save But now I'm having lots of fun so it's okay. I've also stolen a few of your design elements which I liked, hope you don't mind

[Cydonian Monk]

Just now, ruiluth said:

Alas, this series has inspired me to use remotetech. I had to restart my career save But now I'm having lots of fun so it's okay.

Always err on the side of fun. Glad you're enjoying it - I've had a long running love/hate relationship with RemoteTech.

Just now, ruiluth said:

I've also stolen a few of your design elements which I liked, hope you don't mind

Don't mind in the least. One of the reasons I share my craft (through photos and craft files) is in the hope that others will find them useful or improve upon them. 

 

I do have an update nearly ready. Work has gone wacko busy over the last three weeks and this neverending summer is leaving me drained. Perhaps tonight? Might split it in two as it's a bit word-dense. We're in the middle of heavy exposition.

[RocketSquid]

This story has just gotten more and more awesome, and I finally know why the ruler of your universe would allow the Memory of Tomorrow to be stolen.

I must thank you for introducing me to Taerobee and Tantares.

May all your saves be bug-free!

 

[Cydonian Monk]

Answers in Time....

"Space adaptation syndrome, or rather de-adaptation. It can be pretty nasty the first few times, even for those who've lived out here for years."

Thomlock took another sip of the warm mug of brown goo the kindly kerbal in the white jacket had handed him. Strange stuff, more a sludge than a drink, but supposedly it'd help steady his stomach. "I thought that only happened when first going to space."

"So did we. Yet almost every one of us had a reaction like you when we first got here. Even me, which was weird considering how long I'd lived on the Mün." The other took off his white jacket and hung it on a wall hook. The room was small, obviously the station's clinic based on the jars of tongue depressors, boxes of gloves, and other hospital knick-knacks. Thomlock downed another swig of his sludge, already feeling better.

"Anyway, you seem to be back to normal. We should rejoin the group. Bob will have better answers for your questions than I do." The other pushed through the door, revealing an equally sterile-looking hallway. Thomlock followed him, mug still in hand. Bob. Jeb. Both dead kerbals. And then there's this one....

"Who were you again?"

"Lobo. Lobo Kerman. Closest thing to a doctor you'll find this side of Duna." He twisted around and jabbed a hand at Thomlock, forcing an awkward handshake. "Pleased to meet you."

"Thomlock Kerman. Closest thing to a fossil you'll find anywhere." 

Lobo grinned. "Of course you are. A kerbal such as yourself needs no introduction." The end of the hallway met up with the bottom (or top?) of one of the spokes, with an arrangement similar to what they'd seen in the Library. "The others are just through here in the common room."

The other door opened and, sure enough, everybody was gathered in what was obviously the station's cafeteria. Macfred, Gletrix, and Agake got up to greet him and make sure he was ok. They then introduced him to the others in the room: Jebediah, Bill, Bob, whom he already recognized, Valentina, Rama, Grazy, Shepcal, and Joekin. Macfred suggested a few others were on the station yet absent, either on-duty or returned to their beds.

Thomlock pointed at Jeb, Bill and Bob. "You. I watched you three die. How are you here?"

Jeb shrugged. "It wasn't us?"

Bob shook his head. "He's not wrong, but he's not right."

"I'm never right."

"As it so happens we were just discussing your death, or rather lack there of. Lost in space, frozen in a capsule that would orbit the Sun indefinitely. Every schoolkerb had heard the story, though few believed it was true. The Famously Dead Thomlock Kerman."

Val agreed. "You were the textbook example of why a kerbal shouldn't blindly follow somebody else's plan."

"Glad I could be of service." He took another glug of the syrupy goo and sat down in the nearest chair. "Ok, so obviously I survived and eventually made it back to Kerbin. Doesn't explain how these three are still alive. And whatever happened to Nelsey and Albro?"

Everybody looked up at the mention of the name. "Albro?"

"What? You kids have legends about him too?"

"No. Yes. Kind of." Bill looked to the others for agreement before he continued. "This station wasn't empty when we arrived, far from it. Until you got here we were the new kids. The oldest of the original residents, Maclie and Kening, were here on orders from an Albro Kerman. He was a slightly mad kerb who had fashioned himself as The Director. Claimed to have been the first kerbal to go to space and live to tell the tale."

So he wasn't the only one. Thomlock had always wondered what happened to the rest of the Hawk Project crews. Jeb had died in spectacular fashion, Bob exploded mere meters above the launchpad, and Bill had simply disappeared, his capsule discovered safe yet lacking its pilot. Nelsey had scored a named moon like Thomlock, though he'd never heard exactly why. "So Albro's alive?"

"Not anymore. He died several decades ago from what Maclie told us. He was already ancient before their first trip to Jool, and passed during their second. Just around the time they discovered this station." Bob continued with the story of how they came to be at Jool, with Bill and Jeb chiming in as they felt the need.

The eight younger kerbals had been at the Edge of Infinity now for a little over thirteen years. The four guys, Jeb, Bill, Bob and Ribzor, had been working at Eve on the Onepake 1 when they lost all radio contact with Kerbin. They were originally going to return home when Jeb had a crazy idea and plotted a course for Jool. (None of them were in agreement as to whether he had done this before or after checking if they had enough fuel.)

They were somewhat surprised when they arrived and discovered the girls, Val, Rama, Grazy and Lindra, had also set course for the jolly green giant. Those four had been wrapping up the exploration of Duna when they were tasked with the rescue of one Shepcal Kerman. Val took one of their landers out to Ike, discovering Shepcal's ship anything but disabled, which sparked a bit of a standoff. A short time later all contact with Kerbin ceased. Eventually Shepcal convinced them to ferry him to Jool, promising fuel for their return to Kerbin.

None of them were quite certain how old the station was or how it came to reside at Laythe. Internally half of the torus was reserved for crops, mostly things that grew well in low-light. The remainder was taken up by storage, crew quarters, common spaces, and laboratories. Some of the heavy-duty labs which rivaled those on Kerbin.

Bob then launched into an overly detailed explanation of his earliest research when an alarm chimed on the station's public address system. One of the other kerbals checked a nearby console and motioned towards Macfred and his crew. "Your ship is trying to reach you."

"Time to get back to work folks. We'll pick this conversation up again later, ok?"

--

More Pieces for the Jumble

The work to get back to was the arrival of the Potassium 3. The ship had slipped into the Joolian system some days before, and was coming up on the first of its capture burns. The last of the three Potassium tugs was hauling most of their fuel reserves, a third comsat (Scandium 3), and a probe to investigate the ability of jets operating in the atmosphere of Laythe (Calcium 7). 

Aside from the Laythe landing, the Vall landing would constitute the single greatest expenditure of fuel during their trip, so one of the two fuel depots was to be placed into the orbit of that icy moon. The third Scandium commsat would also enter into a polar orbit of Vall, which would hopefully improve inner-system communications.

As such, the K-3's capture was designed to place it into an immediate intercept with Vall. The first step was an eight minute burn to set up the intercept.

Capture complete, the K-3 was indeed lined up for its rendezvous with Vall 5 days later. The Scandium 3 freed itself from the nose of the Calcium 7 (under Gletrix's direction, of course... the robots haven't taken over just yet), discarded the couplings that had secured it to the stack, and made its own burns to place itself into a polar intercept at Vall.

[The actual burn escaped the screenshot key, but was just a short puff of fuel.]

The crew spent the next several days resting up and becoming better acquainted with the others at the station. Most had arrived by accident or after taking a whispered suggestion, such as the eight members of Jeb's and Val's crews. Some of the others had fled here after Kerbin had gone silent, borrowing whatever craft they could get their hands on.

There were a number of interplanetary ships in their fleet, most originally designed for missions to Jool, Duna or Dres and repurposed for whatever it was the Forgotten Space Program was doing. No other infrastructure was apparently present in the Joolian System, which left Macfred questioning how they fueled their adventures. The answer was simple - piracy. Mostly they had taken craft that had been prepared for a mission to Jool immediately before Kerbin went silent, and as such were abandoned.

Kerbin going silent was a theme that ran through every conversation. 

Somewhat remarkably, four of the kerbals had been members of the Pioneer mission to the like-named base on the Mün: Lobo, Roemy, Burvin and Joekin. Their mission leader, Gregory, was off on assignment with some other kerbals and one of the program's borrowed ships, but they promised he was still very much alive.

Thomlock grunted at them as they were recounting their tale. "More famously dead kerbals. I'm telling you, kids, this station isn't real. It's the afterlife. These four are dead and buried."

"He's not wrong. We found your graves on the Mün," Macfred said, somewhat less confidently. "Flags and all. And some crazy old kerb who claimed he killed you himself."

They laughed, except for Lobo who only grinned before offering an explanation. "Poor Hallock. We tried for days to convince him to come with us. Wouldn't go. Kept asking who would take care of his bananas. His münfruit. He suggested we draw straws to leave somebody behind, and we did. Except he kept rejecting the result, forcing us to remove whoever won and redraw. Eventually he was the last one with a straw.

"Gregory never wanted to leave him behind. We were going to slip him sleeping pills and drag him to the shuttle while knocked out, but he got the jump on us and locked himself in the greenhouse wing. We were going to miss the transfer window to Jool if we stayed any longer, so we had no choice. We sent the shuttle back down to the surface hoping he'd take the hint, but that was the last we heard from him. Probably for the best, he had always wanted to go to Duna anyway."

The Scandium 3 arrived at Vall first. Its approach brought it in over the moon's south pole, in an orbit that mirrored that of the Calcium 3 almost exactly. Unfortunate, as it meant two whole hemispheres would be without satellite coverage at any given time, but such are the vagaries of orbital mechanics.

Once the initial capture was complete, Thomlock programmed in a second burn to place their newest communications satellite into a nearly 1800km orbit around Vall. This, when combined with the Scandium 1 and 2, gave much better coverage of the various craft operating at Jool. (Though Bop was still a bit spotty.)

The circularization burn at apoapsis was completed without incident.

Hot on the heels of the Sc-3 was the K-3, which had a somewhat longer burn to capture into a 150 degree inclined, 400km retrograde orbit of the moon. A four-minute burn that took place almost entirely on the dark, Jool-ward side of the moon.

The plan here was simple - drain all but a select amount of liquid fuel from the forward fuel depot into the mostly depleted K-3, detach the Calcium 7 probe and the forward fuel depot, move said depot free of the stack, then dock the Calcium 7 back up with the still-full second depot and continue on to Laythe. Enough liquid fuel would be left at Vall to refill a Sulphur shuttle at least twice, and the depot would have full oxidizer tanks. (A later resupply mission will top it off.)

Gletrix was handling the K-3 while Thomlock was assigned to the Sc-3, both working from one of the terminals in the Edge of Infinity. So far everything had gone according to plan, so she transferred the needed fuel into the K-3's rear tank, undocked the Calcium 7, and was preparing to release the forward fuel depot when the readout started to throw errors.

"That's weird."

"What?"

"That." She pointed at the numbers scrolling past in the control console. "None of the docking ports are aligned anymore. It's like it all just came unglued. And now the forward fuel depot is showing a leak in the liquid fuel sys-... Oh."

The explosion rocked the K-3 and its two pieces of cargo, sending all three tumbling into the void. The forward fuel depot received a kick of forward momentum, sending it spinning past the Ca-7 while the other two larger pieces tumbled away in the opposite direction. The two cameras on the Ca-7 were responding and sending data, and both Gletrix and Macfred watched as their precious fuel supplies drifted into the inky black.

A few moments later the Potassium 3 came back online and started responding to commands. The tug was still in range of the two fuel depots, which both started broadcasting their telemetry data. Neither were responding to commands, though the second depot still showed full storage in its tanks. 

"Ok, so now what?"

"Hmm." Macfred had to think it over. "Activate the SAS on the tug. We'll bring the Calcium 7 in to take a closer look."

The closer look showed little to no damage to the rear of the K-3, but total loss of the forward docking assembly and the docking adapter. Meaning the only port remaining on the craft was at the rear, nestled between the eight radiation-spewing engines. Though radiation was the least of their worries.

The Calcium 7 was considered an essential part of the exploration of Laythe. Originally intended to fulfill a contract, the small probe is also the proof-of-concept that jet engines will operate in Laythe's atmosphere. Without that proof, the Aluminium X-4B 10 LEA would not be cleared for use by a crew member. And since Gletrix was supposed to ride it down form orbit, they needed to get the Ca-7 to Laythe. 

Independently, the probe could make it to the moon on its own. Making it to Laythe would be all it could do, discarding the small space tug it was attached to and losing quite a bit of hardware in the process. It also wouldn't guarantee the atmospheric entry and flight would occur at a time when the Jumble of Parts (or the Edge of Infinity) were overhead to relay the signal back to Gletrix.

So they needed the K-3 (or some other space tug) to get it there.

After some consideration, it was decided docking the Ca-7 to the rear port of the K-3 would be "safe" provided they only used two of the engines during the tug's transfer and capture burns. As an added bonus, this would move the K-3 to Laythe, where they might be able to effect repairs or attach a spare docking port. Only problem is it might leave the little probe a bit "hot".

 

The transfer to Laythe wouldn't happen for another five days though, leaving the crew some time to continue their conversation with Bob and the other members of the crew. Which is where we'll pick up next time [assuming I don't self combust in this Houston summer...].

 

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Edited December 4, 2016 by Cydonian Monk