The Longest Re-entry

[zeanomourph]

Hello all,

So today I was handed my first contract to explore Minmus and having not been any further than the Mun thus far, I jumped at the chance.

I put together a little probe with little more than two thermometers for orbit and surface readings and a Dawn engine, the first time I have used one, and may have underestimated how much electrickery it would need to keep running. I knew I should have put some solar panels on it, but space was limited and I wanted to try out the new fuel cell that R&D had recently cooked up. Last time I trust those guys!

The launch went off without a hitch, as did the long flight over to Kerbin's furthest moon. After taking an orbital temperature reading, I even stuck the landing on my second attempt, not bad for an amateur with only 4 Mun landings under the belt.

I took my surface temperature reading and after only being planted on this new moon for a mere few moments, it was time to blast off and head home, though I'm not sure if you can call the Dawn's liftoff much of a "blast", more a zephyr.

It took every bit of thrust that little engine had, but eventually we escaped the Minmus gravity well, and we were on our way home!

This is where the problems started. I noticed a little later than I should have that the miniaturized LFO tank my fuel cells were running off was very quickly drying up. So, knowing that I would not have enough fuel to perform a normal deorbit procedure, I did what any sane Kerbal would do and put myself onto a trajectory that would just barely skim the top of Kerbin's atmosphere, to begin an extremely drawn out degrading orbit from a ~4,000,000 km Apoap down to a 68,000 km Periap

With roughly 0.1% of the fuel load remaining in my LFO tank, I had done almost all that I could. With the last remaining dot of current from my probes battery, I deployed my landing struts and armed the chute, crossed my fingers and bit my nails. I no longer had any control and the rest would be up to fate.

With each orbit bringing me a fraction closer to home, after streaking across the skies of Kerbin almost 15 times over the course of 2 days, my little probe warming up more and more with each slightly lowered pass, my Apoap finally found it's way below Kerbin's atmosphere and begun the final, nail-biting, totally uncontrolled descent.

I was very nervous having had no choice but to arm my chute days earlier, far above the reaches of the atmosphere. And with a contract worth over 400,000 Funds riding on this probe and it's two thermometers arriving home safe and intact, stakes had never been higher.

It turns out maybe those R&D guys aren't so bad after all, because the chute they had provided worked exactly as described, waiting until the last possible moment and giving just enough time to slow down enough that it wouldn't rip itself to shreds.

And so ended the saga of a re-entry from orbit with no control over the probe other than what had been planned 2 days prior on the last remaining spark of the probe's battery.

On closer inspection by the recovery vehicle, it was found that the landing struts had melted off during the final re-entry, but no other damage was found. The thermometers were recovered and the KSP boffins were paid their due and promptly spent it on a new Mission Control building and a rather large party.

 

TL;DR: I'm hella proud that this actually worked and the thing didn't just burn to a pile of ash. I was really expecting it to just burn to a pile of ash every single one of the fifteen 3km/s passes through the Kerbin atmosphere

Thanks for reading, hope it was half as fun to read as it was to watch helplessly while it all happened 

[lajoswinkler]

I remember such situations. Whiteknuckling moments, indeed.

[The solid fuel chemist]

I had an incredibly similar experience on my muna 27, my first mun landing ever in the most recent demo version, the lengths I went to were ridiculous, the only engines are the reliant, the flea, and the hammer, with only the small 1.25 meter LFO tanks and non-retractable solar panels. I didn't know about thrusting forward with RCS, so I did everything in space using a reliant so my launch vehicle was so heavy that it would probably make the top 100 most kerbal spacecraft ever. And to top it all off the only demo probe core is a stripped down stayputnik so I did the entire thing with no SAS. If your wondering why muna 27 was the first landing and not muna one, it was because the demo does not allow quick saving or reverting. So any way, muna 27 was my first mun landing ever. But in its extended mission, Muna 27 ReTurn, which was to test if engines could be used as heat shields, (I had yet to send a kerbal to space) it ran out of fule with a apo that still intersected the muns orbit and a peri of 65 thousand. I was able to preserve one solar panel for the first few passes, then I lost it with 5 orbits to go. So the only thing left to do disable the reaction wheels and hope my battery's would hold out. (I did not know how to arm a chute) in the final grueling reentrey, I lost all but two of my 8 batterys. On the last 0.03 electric charge, I deployed my chutes with risky status and bolth deployed successfully. The now dead probe core was recovered successfully and all the KSC staff regoiced, except for the range safety officer, who went insane from the huge pieces of debris that were falling All around the KSC from the launch.