Build a Realistic Recovery Vehicle

[Jetski]

Ever wonder what happens when you click that lovely green Recover button at the top of the screen?  Now you can find out!  Jebediah has unfortunately failed to land the good ship Untitled Space Craft in an acceptable manner, and now Bill has to drive the recovery vehicle and collect the remaining pieces.

Your mission is to build a realistic recovery truck (or plane or rocket) that can drive over, pick Jeb up, and bring him back to the launchpad or the runway start.  Sounds easy right?

Here are some rules, because challenges need rules, right?

1. You can recover whatever you like - a plane, a capsule, a spent booster, a crashed part and you can land it however you like.  We will call this the Debris.
2. Your Recovery Vehicle can be whatever you like - a plane, a truck, a rocket, a VTOL, whatever.  We will call this Bill's Ride.
3. Bill's Ride must start either on the Runway or the Launchpad, and return to the exact same spot intact with the recovered parts.
4. Staging is technically permitted, but crashing either the Debris or Bill's Ride will result in fewer points.
5. No cheats of any kind, although HyperEdit or similar is permitted to place the Debris. Mods are permitted, but will be listed as Modded.
6. Bills Ride and the Debris (which might be a good name for a band) should both be intact at the recovery point to be scored.
7. The Debris must be landed, preferably on Kerbin (but I won't disallow other bodies), ideally in some awkward manner suggesting a crash
   
   There are a number of ways to be awesome at this challenge, and the scoreboard will reflect your awesomeness accordingly.
    
8. Long Drive.  Get a screenshot either in Map or Flight mode showing the distance to the Debris. Debris not on Kerbin will be scored separately.  Go for distance!
9. Big Debris.  Points for the largest item returned intact!  Show a screenshot of the Debris in the VAB with the Engineers Report showing tonnage. Bigger is better!
10. Style. Build the coolest Recovery Vehicle you can, either realistic or creative or both!

 Here's my mission (Imgur Album)

 

Leaderboard:

1. @Cunjo Carl with a badS airplane recovery vehicle, collects 15T from 1000km away across the ocean!
2. @qzgy recovered a 6T shuttle from LKO, helped me refine the rules a bit , and will be our last orbital Debris entry
3.  @Jetski Bill drove a tractor 1.7km to recover the capsule of Untitled Space Craft (1.09T)

Edited September 6, 2017 by Jetski

[qzgy]

Cool challenge. Never really thought of how to pick stuff up. There was a rescue mission for another challenge that I guess counts.

I had a shuttle (weighing about 6 tons, estimated) stranded in orbit and sent up another one to recover it inside of a cargo bay. Album Link

Debris:

Weighs a little less since I used fuel.

Edited July 10, 2017 by qzgy

[Jetski]

1 hour ago, qzgy said:

Cool challenge. Never really thought of how to pick stuff up. There was a rescue mission for another challenge that I guess counts.

I had a shuttle (weighing about 6 tons, estimated) stranded in orbit and sent up another one to recover it inside of a cargo bay. Album Link

Debris:

Weighs a little less since I used fuel.

Excellent job!  Also thanks for showing me a glaring hole in the rules

That's a great mission, but I fear that "Recovery in Orbit" is far too common a theme, as contracts spawn routinely for this, and many KSPers are very familiar with this type of mission.  I'm altering the rules so future entries must be landed

 

[Cunjo Carl]

I'm just back after a KSP break, and this one sounded fun! Sounds easy, not so much . I like how it pokes fun at that wonderfully but outlandishly convenient little recover button.

 

This mission follows Jeb and Bob as they go on a routine trip to orbit. After jettisoning their fairing though, onboard cameras reveal a slight but critical failure in one of their systems. They abort on a suborbital trajectory and land 1000km away from KSC with their 15ton spacecraft becoming very stuck in the mud somewhere near the badlands. Only one tow service is up to this challenge: Bill's Overseas Retrievals of KSC Enterprises (BORKE). BORKE leaps to action!

 

 

The recovery craft is an airplane with space on the wings for two fork-lift style rovers. The plane's body is shaped to make the plane kneel forward when its landing gear is retracted, so you can easily drive on/off the wings. In flight, the engines and control surfaces are mounted high to permit large and imbalanced loads on the wings. The forklift rovers have two sets of wheels to raise and lower their loads, and a large block of vernier engines in the front allows for tight, forklift-like maneuvers.

The whole system works quite cleanly, with the exception of docking system between the forklift and the plane. You've gotta rub those docking ports together like firesticks to get them to grab hold!

And here's a larger version of the mission gif... Mobile users beware, it's like 5MB!

Spoiler

 

Thanks for the challenge, @Jetski!

[Jetski]

That is a seriously cool recovery vehicle, nice job @Cunjo Carl

[Slam_Jones]

What about a recovery ship?  Is that allowed?

Also working on a recovery Truck to go with it and get the debris onto the deck of the ship, and KAS to keep it attached.

Edited September 14, 2017 by Slam_Jones

[RedPandaz]

Ooh, I'm in