Bill, Bob and Jebediahs Most Excellent Adventure

[bsalis]

I thought this was worthy enough for a General thread...

So here we are. An SSTO on the runway with Bill in command. Ready to go for a Grand Tour. Minmus, then Mun, then return to Kerbin.

Not possible in that you say? Sure, but it's not practical to build such an SSTO in RL anyhow. You would dock and re-fuel right? Thanks to the mod available now, that is exactly what I will be doing.

We are off...

The Orca tanker is ahead. Need to catch up and rendezvous. (crappy night pics, there are a few of these - sorry)...

Now time to dock. Set attitude control to orient, then use RCS translation to guide her in. These pics are from the fixed cameras (mod)...

Fuel transfer is... somewhat painful in this mod. You have to EVA and connect the "pipe".

Undocked. Full of fuel. Ready to go again.

Meanwile, on a related mission. I have a fuel tanker set to land at the Mun. In case I need more fuel to get back to Kerbin.

Bill has arrived and landed on Minmus.

I landed on the most convenient lake. By chance, I had another mission landed only 10km away. I didn't know, but none other than Jebediah was in command. I though he was, um, dead. But no, just hiding out in a capsule on Mimnus. So he decided to pay Bill a visit in the buggy.

After some... "discussion", it was decided that Jebediah would complete the Grand Tour mission.

With Jebediah in command. It was time to head to the Mun.

Planned landing point is below at the Mun Arch. It's dark... will wait for daytime to land for safety reasons.

Change of plans. A buggy is at the base, I park it near the tanker. The ground in front of the buggy is very flat. The headlights should help me guide the landing.

Landing at night. Mebe this was not such a good idea. Jebediah seems fine with it. As usual.

Landed! The landing was very wasteful on fuel, but I had plenty. Better safe then sorry.

The tanker is too far away. I need to move it over. I'm more worried about this than landing the SSTO. Need to be careful not to crash into the SSTO!

Oh my. It's Bob in command of the fuel tanker. I remember that. Seriously, I did not plan it this way with any of the "prime" crew involved. Anyhow, time fuel up again. However, after checking fuel stocks... it seems that I don't need any! Since I went to the trouble of getting the tanker here, I *have* to use it. I decided to top-up the jet fuel tanks to be 100 units each. Just in case I need it flying back to KSC.

Finally, time to head home...

I had fuel to spare. So after one pass of aerobraking, I rounded out the orbit to 100km with a couple of burns. Now it's time to land while it is still daytime.

And that's it folks. MET 6:11:00. Grand Tour in a small-ish SSTO. One docking in LKO. Two fuel stops. One crew transfer (unplanned). Ad-hoc precision night landing on Mun. Return to Kerbin on KSC runway. So the question is... what features do you want to see on 0.18 eh?