A Serious of Unfortunate Events - Jeb's Munar Flight

[Crillion]

I recently had quite an absurdly complex flight to the Mun, and here's the story.

 

It's a new career save. Probes have explored the bodies near Kerbin, and it's time to send kerbalkind out after them. Jebediah jumps in Jeb's StrutMaster I, a large, way overbuilt rocket designed to bring him to the surface of the Mun and back. The launch goes well, and the transfer is set up. After the course has been executed, the boys at Mission Control decided that due to the angle of flight, we could use the Mun as a gravity assist, then come around on the next orbit around Kerbin for a better angle to land.

This plan works out flawlessly until Jeb ends up in Interplanetary Space. The assisted orbit ended up outside Kerbin's sphere on influence, but nobody accounted for this. In a desperate attempt to get Jeb back safely, the rest of the main booster is used to end up on a re-intercept course with Kerbin, on day 359 of the mission. Assuming the original objective is now compromised, the vessel reenters Kerbin's Sphere of Influence, only to find a peculiar flyby course which conveniently places the ship in a 143,000 meter flyby of the Mun, with the new desired attack angle. So, the original objective was restored once Mission Control managed to regain communication with Jebediah's ship.

The landing goes as planned, right up until the point where it is realized the trajectory of the landing place puts the ship right on the edge of a crater. Things get messy. The ship flips, tips over, and explodes the descent stage engine, along with half of the solar panels. Fortunately, Jeb walks out unscathed. He does his science stuff on the surface, then climbs back into the lander. A bit of acrobatics gets the lander right side up again, then off Jeb goes once more.

After burning most of the emergency fuel tanks, Jeb ends up in a high orbit over Kerbin. desperatley, the rest of the Emergency Tank is burned, leaving him stranded in a highly elliptical orbit. His idea for a solution? The famous Manley Maneuver. Only trouble is, one of the engineers came into work one day when designing the lander cabin, so Jeb's head couldn't fit out of the airlock without bumping into the Goo Containers, sending the ship into a nasty spin. In a last-ditch effort, Jeb lets go of the capsule and attempts to use his RCS Pack to stop the spin of the ship. Unfortunately, it didn't work, so he played tag with the ladder to climb back in and wait it out.

Meanwhile back at Mission Control, a rescue vessel was being designed. A multi-stage orbital recovery behemoth was born, code-named Jakah. Jakah consisted of the StrutMaster Rocket, retrofitted to hold the rescue capsule and probe systems. On day 381 of the mission, Jakah lifted off from the Kerbal Space Center with one mission (after kicking off Valenta, trying to stow away to save Jeb). Fly to Jeb, have him EVA over, then get back to Kerbin in one piece, all while saving the hundreds of science points stranded on the StrutMaster I.

Once Jakah reached the standard equatorial orbit, it was noticed on one of the telemetry checks that the StrutMaster would have yet another inconvenient meeting with the Mun, boosting it up into an even worse orbit after a pass near Kerbin. Two theories were presented:

1. Wait for the adjusted orbit and rescue from there.

2. Boost up into a higher orbit, then match velocities as best as possible as StrutMaster screams by, have Jeb Eva, then return to Kerbin.

Due to the peculiar angulation of the new orbit, and the fact that the Apoapsis would be almost 15 million meters from Kerbin, option two prevailed in the board meeting. If something exploded, they could just fire the Telemetry team and launch Jakah II.

After some curious orbital maneuvers, the team managed to come up with a trajectory that put Jakah only 3km from StrutMaster, with a solid relative speed of 225 mps. However, due to someone overbuilding the first stage and forgetting to put a SAS module on Jakah, the intercept turned out to be 5.8km from turning the rocket. The two ships gradually got closer and closer until...

The Navigator Glitched.

Yep. Now they were flying blind relative to one another. Quickly, I used Jakah's RCS systems to slow down the ship as best I could while desperately searching for the glimmer of a white ship against the black sky. Then, I saw it. I quickly switched to StrutMaster and forced Jeb to EVA, taking the science from the command capsule along the way. He EVA'd about two kilometers to Jakah and climbed inside. Then I realized I forgot several important tidbits of science in various sensors on StrutMaster! There was plenty of fuel left in both the remaining stages on Jakah, so I dropped what remained of the main stage to allow the ship to be more nimble, fired up the final fuel stage, and slowed my relative velocity to the abandoned ship to zero.

From there, I slowly coaxed the two together. Jeb EVA'd back over to retrieve all of the remaining data (from both the Mun and the Kerbol Orbit), then returned to Jakah. At this point, both ships were approaching the undesired Mun flyby. So I quickly turned tail and dropped down to a suborbit trajectory to come home.

After 383 Days of flight on StrutMaster I and a 2.5 day journey abord Jakah, Jebedia finally returned to Kerbin, only to smash into the ground via me forgetting to click the parachute (I had to go to dinner right after the ship slowed down to the point of deployment).

 

I'll post photos tomorrow!

[Dman979]

Nice stuff! I've moved this to Mission Reports, it'll fit better there.

[Geschosskopf]

Hehehe, I've had days like that  

[DAL59]

Tries to go to Mun, instead gets flung into interplanetary space, returns, still manages to land and take off, needs a rescue ship, and then forgets to deploy the chute. 

Just another normal ksp flight.   

 

[Crillion]

3 hours ago, DAL59 said:

Tries to go to Mun, instead gets flung into interplanetary space, returns, still manages to land and take off, needs a rescue ship, and then forgets to deploy the chute. 

Just another normal ksp flight.   

 

Worst part is, I didn't get a single bit of science for all of my troubles. I forgot to put more batteries on the ship, so there wasn't enough battery to transmit anything. The StrutMaster design really needs some redesign before anybody remotely thinks about launching it again.

Edited November 4, 2017 by Crillion

[Geschosskopf]

It would be nice to see some pics of the Strutmaster.  Its name and how you describe its mission sound so Kerbal, it must be a real rat nest of struts connecting extraneous parts hanging more or less at random all over it  

[Ultimate Steve]

"A Series of Unfortunate Events"

I'm waiting for you to introduce a Klaus Kerman...