2262t Fail - An Asteroid "Mission"

[Speeding Mullet]

Sometimes I get a timely reminder that things don't always go to plan, and this is one of those cases.  A Class E asteroid was spotted heading right for KSC so I threw something together in about half an hour based on total guesswork and launched.  See how far I got on my second ever asteroid mission in 1.05:

 

 

Now clearly the international community wouldn't put together a mission quite like this, and we sure as hell wouldn't send a crew of 8 to ride the thing through the atmosphere, but you get the point - It did get me thinking about the difficulty that we would all face should a "Class E" come barreling at us out of the darkness.  Would we stand up and be counted against the odds?  I was actually amazed how close I came to success here.  I think given a little more notice in spotting the asteroid I could have flown a better trajectory instead of just "melting it upwards" and possibly met it early enough to deflect into an aero-brake.  Whether the parachutes would have slowed it down (32 drogue and 32 main) I have no idea, but it would have been a sight!

 

SM

 

[Ackoli]

class E asteroids are much bigger than I thought...

[MagicFireCaster]

That's a lot of weight, i will make sure to mine some of it before trying to land a class C or higher

[RA3236]

It wasn't the asteroid that exploded; those things are very resistant to heat.

[Speeding Mullet]

5 hours ago, RA3236 said:

It wasn't the asteroid that exploded; those things are very resistant to heat.

the asteroid ceased to exist so if it didn't explode I'm at a loss as to where it is now....I tried about 20 times and every time the asteroid vanished in a humungous explosion at about 3.2km/s just under 16km (edit: Re-entry was straight down perpendicular to the surface from interplanetary space, so no gradual aero-brake) leaving the manoeuvring stations to plummet into the ocean.  this was the only try that one of the parts exploded before the asteroid as I was playing around with different orientations.

 

SM

Edited January 19, 2016 by Speeding Mullet

[Speeding Mullet]

Not sure if this will merge with the above post, but I used the same ship this evening to try out a class C that was discovered slightly earlier.  Here's the report!

 

So the ship concept is sound, it's just horribly designed.  I think the control modules need to be squat and wide rather than tall and thin.  Everything was a little wobbly, but the point is it worked!

SM