Riding the fail rocket

[azazel1024]

Anyone else just have a night filled with fail when it comes to a project?

After launching a few of space stations now (two in Kerbin orbit, one of them fairly small, one medium sized and one in Eve orbit, smallish) as well as performing an orbital rendezvous with the bigger one (Freedom Station I) and loading up the crew tank I decided to build a real Mun base and land the sucker.

Previously I placed a small little "fake base" that consisted of a decorative 1m fusealage, some legs, satellite dish, ladder and lights. When I dropped it off my lander it tipped over and took about 15 minutes to right with some EVA work (fortunately it is very light and low gravity). It did take the like of one poor Sherman Kerman in the process though.

So, I built a Mun base roughly the size of Freedom Station I and a new launcher to get the extra delta V I'd need.

A couple of nights ago I built the thing and had maybe 15 minutes of test and tune on the launcher design before I figured I had roughly enough delta V, but it wasn't controllable. So, fast forward to tonight.

I sit do to REALLY get this sucker launched and landed. First launch after a few tweaks, I get it up there after adding more struts to stabalize the torquing of the base on top of the rocket. This helps, but with the NERVA Mun intercept stage, I couldn't boost more than 30% before the thrust would shove it out of control. Stupid me decided to try landing with this handicap anyway. 45 minutes of nudging it along and I get it to Munar orbit and start braking to place it nearish my previous landing site (I figure if I don't manage to get it close enough, I'll rover over my 3 Kerbonauts from Serenity base (Tranquility's Munar counterpart). Well, I brake to around 300m/sec, burn through the last of my fuel in my NERVA stage and kick in my landing rockets on my Mun base.

HOLY FAIL BATMAN! The thing starts spinning like mad at only 40% thrust, no way to stablize, so I dettach my capsule and return rocket, get it stablized and boost back up to Munar orbit and return to Kerbin (I have still never landed and returned anyone, so I wanted to try it out with the Mun base). So my Kerbonaut made it...the Mun base impacted spinning like a top at 400+m/sec, maybe 200m from my Kerbonauts at Serenity base. I wish I had a screen cap of it...I think some space suits need cleaning out now.

Then I realized...oh crap, I bet my center of gravity is off. I hadn't bothered to check it before. So I pull up the handy .17 feature (Thank you Squad!!!), yup. It is off to port by a resonable enough amount even though the space station appears fairly symetrical. I stack 2 small RCS tanks and a decoupler on the light end of the base to dettach after landing (to make the thing appear my symetrical and not so odd with a wart off the end).

Launch goes better, more stable, nice and smooth Dettach SRBs, dettach first LOX stage (6 main sails, 4 tanks each), ignite upper LOX stage, smooth as a babies bottom. Orbiting at 90 to 320km, swing around to opposition to Munar intercept, punch in the upper LOX stage again to burn out, almost exactly the right Delta V for Munar capture on the first pass.

Get out to the Mun, kick in the NERVA stage (with a little fuel added as I felt like I had run out early before), get in to captured orbit. Circularize at 120km, change orbital inclination to pass over Serenity base, kick in the NEVRA stage to decellerate to brake orbit and land. All going smooth as butter. Kill horizontal velocity to get within 1km of Serenity base, but the NERVA stage isn't sufficient to slow down much dropping vertically, so I dettach it and kick in the base landing rockets...CRAP, the little rockets I put on it are no where near powerful enough. Commence plowing in to the Mun 500m away from Serenity base with around 200m/sec of Delta V (I rode it all the way down this time). 35 minutes wasted this time.

Not enough power in the descent/Mun Station stage.

Okay, swap out the mini-orbital rockets with aerospikes. That should be PLENTY of thrust, still high impulse and it had looked like I had plenty of fuel for the landing (2 full size 1m tanks and 2 crew tanks to feed the two rockets).

Repeat next mission, fast forward to NERVA stage seperation at 25km altitude, hit space bar to engage aerospikes...hmm, space didn't do anything. Hit space again and aerospikes fire up!!! OH CRAP!!! THE ADD ON RCS TANK DECOUPLER ACTIVATED TOO AND DROPPED THE TANK!

Proceed to even faster death spiral as the center of mass suddenly goes from being centered to badly off center again, with full thrust from 2 aerospikes shoving not through the center of mass. The Munar station disintegrated from the rapid spin before impacting the surface.

One of the crew tanks landed within 20m of my rover with a Kerbonaut in it.

This time the space suit is simply a right off. A new one will need to be brought for Phil Kerman on the next mission.

40 minutes wasted.

Last act of the night, going back in to the VAB and shuffling my staging so that it will NOT happen again.

So, a good 3 hours or so of fail after fail after spectacular fail...but I think the design is now finished. Lets hope tonight I can actually stick the landing. I guess it wasn't entirely a wasted night.

Freedom Station I rendezvous

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35007[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35008[/ATTACH]

Mun base in orbit around the Mun

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35009[/ATTACH]

And the launcher with Mun Base I (sub model 5) after being finally, I think, perfected. T-minus 9hrs, 45mins till real world blast off.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]35010[/ATTACH]

[zarakon]

I lost like 5 rockets and tons of Kerbals trying to rescue Jeb from the Mun. It should have been so simple