Rescue Missions or Refuel Missions?

[Artheus]

I've had two manned craft that did not go quite the mission plan.

Number one was a very nooby, insufficient mun lander/ship design dubbed Erebos (you know, underworld ruler, much like hades, powerful, strong). I had few knowledge about how stuff works, so I just kept firing the engine when burning for mun transfer. It ended on a trajectory crossing eve's orbit, but it would'nt hit it in the next hundreds  of years. I even eva-d at one point trying to get a kerbin encounter, but at the end I was just left with Val having no eva-fuel on a solar orbit. I soon launched a rescue mission, that made use of ladders for valentina to grab on while the "Zilean V" (Zilean for the life-saving supporter champion from LoL, V for Valentina) was coming at her at about 0.2 m/s. The return was uneventful and within 250 days of the capture. The mission taught me a lot about orbital mechanics and rendevouz.

Number two is a bit more difficult: The powerful nuclear reactor on the litium-fueled spacecraft "Erebos 3" (heh, that name's got no good history) dedicated for a Jool-5 mission would just randomly explode on load without any reason. The rescue mission is ongoing, but is very basic in comparison with Zilean V: a capsule, solar panels, an engine and fuel. There is no reason to save the craft already there, since literally everything that was not the capsule exploded into nothing or going on a NaN orbit as I panicked and alt-f4ed out, leaving the game no time to calculate all these trajetories. But chances are high that it will be a success.

I don't care about the craft. Only very few of my ships are desinged to be reused&refueled, an ion-propelled Moho orbiter with lander being the only one that has been refueled at least two times, and a duna fuel&engine module being the other one.

[NSEP]

I remember making a ''bee'' kind of thing that would suck out all the fuel from space debris and bring fuel back to the station. But i have barely done any rescue missions.

[suicidejunkie]

On 09/09/2016 at 3:40 PM, Corona688 said:

I've been getting better at hauling entire ships...  A fuel plant on minmus filling autonomous orange tanks lets me get away with more dv.  whoops, the mun rescue doesn't have enough fuel?  send Tanker #3 that way and do a rendezvous.  I've also got little robots to grab and reposition things so the real lander can pick them up more easily.  Sometimes used in pairs even, rough grab, reposition, fine grab.

What's hurting right now is the lack of an orange-tank equivalent for pure LFO.  Trying to make do with mk2 fuselages.

I recommend the MK3 fuelselages.

5000 LF in a package quite comparable to the orange popsicles.  Strapping 6 of those puppies together with an LV-N nacelle each for boosting off Minmus at 2.0 TWR should slake your thirst quite efficiently

[Admiral Regulus]

If something goes wrong during a mission, I send out another to bring back the crew, and whatever science they have with them. I rarely bring vessels back to Kerbin unless it's really early game, or it's part of a mission objective. In mid-game or later, I do not design crafts to survive atmospheric entry on Kerbin. Instead, I use a cheap, reusable, dedicated space shuttle to retrieve crew from LKO.

[Archgeek]

On 9/5/2016 at 2:09 AM, steedcrugeon said:

As a rule (if you have one) do you try to rescue the crew from a stranded ship or do you attempt to salvage it, and drag it back across the system?

[...]

So to the original question, do you guys and girls tend to bring back everything you can or do you start little 'Stations of Opportunity'?

Yes.

One of my earliest careers saw poor Bob get stuck after his pre-solar panel Minmus run ran out of gas, and getting out and pushing was really only good for getting his apo below the mun so he wouldn't get kicked out of the system while Jeb to headed up in a simple two-pod rescue boat.  This was before kerbals could grab science from things, so another mission was sent to retrive that once it became possible.

The mission profile for my idiotic heavy Eve lander (2 cans, an ion stage with 2 gigantors on the upper can, @Whackjob-inspired landing legs, and engines that had been accidentally designed for kerbin gravity...), involved leaving the be-probed transfer stage, with its surfeit of volume for fuel, including a bit of xenon (which ascent module was meant to top off from) in Eve orbit as a fuel-depot/observation station.  The intended rescue craft will have the much-lighter ascent module pull an ion-powered return drive from the orbiting transfer stage instead.

Meanwhile, the "I Was Dared to Fly This" ion probe that's been bogarting the screen time in my Bring-em Home project will be be recieving a mission extension package out at the mun with some more solar panels and bunch more xenon, to allow it go visit Duna, Ike, and Dres.

[steedcrugeon]

7 hours ago, Archgeek said:

Meanwhile, the "I Was Dared to Fly This" ion probe that's been bogarting the screen time in my Bring-em Home project will be be recieving a mission extension package out at the mun with some more solar panels and bunch more xenon, to allow it go visit Duna, Ike, and Dres.

Your next planned rescue sounds much more ambitious and demanding then mine! I've dallied a bit since I wrote my original question but last night I finished building the engine section of drone controlled 'Intrepid' which will now need fuel payloads added before it departs for Duna. Reading your tale of misfortune gives me hope that my little issue is not insurmountable, time will tell...

[purpleivan]

Almost always refueled my vehicles that ran out of fuel, rather than just picking up the crew. Partly because my ships almost invariably have a docking port somewhere (e.g. a transfer ship and lander docked together) but also it felt more satisfying.