Claw too painful to use.

[Acolyte]

I am trying to recover debris for a contract (Edlu Kerman's , heh heh), I have my claw armed, and I have tried all sorts of impact velocities (0.1-0.4, over 1) and the debris ( a Mk1 command pod) just bumbles all over the claw which refuses to engage.

I there something I am missing ? I am about to ditch this contract, its just too much hassle.

 

[StrandedonEarth]

It can be tough, I think you need the surface to be engaged at close to 90^o to your approach vector. And you do need to hit it fairly hard, more than 1m/s. Which makes it harder because it goes bouncing off if the Klaw doesn't engage.

[Acolyte]

Well this is taking place about 6000m over Minimus, so I don't have the room to go playing billiards with this thing.

I'll rescue Edlu and leave his junk in orbit, maybe come back with a smaller more agile craft, maybe not, I can afford the rep and cash hit.

This is a great game, but some bits of it aren't.

[bewing]

Klaws are tricky. First, you know that if you start your target spinning, you can stop it by timewarping for 1 second? Second, speed doesn't matter. It's all about touching your target at a nearly 90 degree angle to its surface.

Klaws are extremely powerful devices -- being able to dock to things that don't have docking ports. Grabbing debris. Picking things up off the ground. They make up for that by being finicky about making the grab. 90 degrees is the key. Come in very slow, make sure you know which control direction is which, line things up in one dimension at 90 degrees, and at the last second make whatever adjustment you need to line things up in the other dimension. If you bounce off, kill your retrograde velocity, timewarp to stop any rotation, and come in very slowly again. If your target has a flat side, it can help to maneuver around until you are facing the flat side. It's much easier to touch something flat at a 90 degree angle than something curved.

I love klaws. I use them all the time, and I prefer them to docking ports for almost all things. But to use them takes additional docking practice to gain utmost maneuvering precision.

[Acolyte]

Well I'm in a relatively heavy vehicle (it has an orange tank on the back) that I have already used to deliver a couple of satellite contracts at minimus, and I was including this contract and another basic rescue as well. I think I need the 2.5M vessel to shield the recovered debris during re-entry, but I don't really know what I need for sure.

My vessel is too heavy for me to dock with finesse, so I guess I won't be finishing this one.

Still, if my other (non-klaw) rescue happens then I'll have 3 successful contracts and one part-failure all on one mission.

I can live with that and so can my accountant. I'm sure my new members will too ;-)

[Sharpy]

13 hours ago, Acolyte said:

Well I'm in a relatively heavy vehicle (it has an orange tank on the back) that I have already used to deliver a couple of satellite contracts at minimus, and I was including this contract and another basic rescue as well. I think I need the 2.5M vessel to shield the recovered debris during re-entry, but I don't really know what I need for sure.

My vessel is too heavy for me to dock with finesse, so I guess I won't be finishing this one.

 

There's your problem You NEED finesse for this. If your vessel is 2.5m profile, your Klaw is good for grappling asteroids. And not the small, class A ones either.

MK1 pods are very good against heat, I'd worry about the rest of the vessel more. You need to grapple a relatively flat surface, so you should do it from the MK1 pod's bottom side. Grappling the cone will be a challenge.

Angle matters, speed not so much, as long as it's not too high. You may throttle up minimally right before contact, that way if alignment is not perfect, the target instead of being bumped away, will "ride" on the klaw and may hopefully align itself.

 

But primarily, make a dedicated rescue vehicle. Or a whole carrier of these. Terrier, a medium 1.25m tank, parachutes, drogues, airbrakes, klaw, probe core, RCS, reaction wheel, antenna, solar, light, all that jazz. For LKO that's more than enough. For Mun and Minmus add one more stage of large 1.25m tank and Terrier. Put four, or six, or so of these under a single fairing, launch on a 2.5m launcher into LKO, every time you have a rescue contract separate one and do your contract. Be it part, part+kerbal or just kerbal recovery. Airbrake gently, PE of 53km or so, multiple passes if needed, burn the rest of fuel before reentry, and with airbrakes+drogues+chutes you'll land anything - the heavy parts like MK3 cockpit or passenger cabin are durable enough that they'll survive the mistreatment of landing on too few parachutes. Anything lighter will be slowed to safe speeds - maybe except the lab (still need to find one in orbit) - in which case, just dock another rescue drone for more drag and more chutes.

 

[Acolyte]

Thx for the tips. I was using a 2.5m capsule to shield the recovered pod during re-entry, but it was literally the first rocket I have ever made with the 2.5m pod, all my others so far used the mk1.

But 6 probes under a fairing ? I gotta try that 

 

[bewing]

I don't use a fairing. I leave this in LKO, and use spacetugs to bring debris back to it to be deorbited. It's just a passive system, and this was for ver 1.1. For 1.2 it needs more parachutes for anything over 2 tonnes.

[Acolyte]

No heat shields ? No burnup on re-entry ? 

[bewing]

Most things won't burn coming in from LKO. It used to be that nothing would except Kerbals, but in the current version the dual kerbal MK1 crew cabins also need some special treatment.