Journey to Vall

[Captain Tom]

This is my first ever post on the Forums, so i decided to write about my recent and ill-fated mission to Jool's icy moon Vall.

This mission begins like any other. Melmy Kerman and Edwig Kerman are Secured in their Lander Module. Their ship, the 'M.P.S.V 3' launches without a hitch, and the gravity turn begins at 10 KM.

They circularize at 110 KM with half of the booster stage's fuel remaining. As always they do not wait until the correct moment to begin their escape burn, and it requires 3 passes of the periapsis in oreder to

compensate for the NERVA's lack of power, but they make it to interplanetary space with more than 80% of their fuel remaining. After some calculating it is determined that the ideal joolian injection burn should

occur in 104 days time, this will be a long trip.

The burn lasts 18 minutes and consumed more than 40% of the fuel, but the two kerbonauts are still confident in their ship's ability to keep them safe. Due to laziness at Mission Control, they will arive at Jool

in a polar, retrograde orbit, once they have waited the 200 days for them to enter Jool's SOI. No one really payed attention in training so no one really knows what altitude is the best for a aerobrake at Jool.

Eventually 120 KM is chosen and the ship's course is adjusted accordingly. They enter the atmosphere and immediately a red flame engulfs the ship as the enter.

After they exit Jool's atmosphere they find out that they have got an encounter with Vall already! However it is polar and retrograde which makes things more challenging.

Holy Bio-Propellant Batman! There is less than 20% of their fuel left! That same fuel is supposed to land them on Vall and then return them to Kerbin. The crew decides to take a risk and land on Vall anyway, Mission Control is holding their breath in anticipation...

Even with a very light ship, (due to the lack of fuel), the NERVA is unable to slow the ship in time, and they hit an icy slope at 20 Meters-Per-Second. But luckily the ship is undamaged! Unluckily, they have bounced up several meters and are tipping over! The gravity is too strong for the RCS to overcome in time! The ship falls over as the last of the RCS is exhausted.

So, to sum up, Melmy and Edwig spent more than 400 days in space, only to end up sideways on a slope more than 50 Million Kilo Meters from home. The crew is fine and so is their capsule, but they aren't going home any time soon. And Melmy had already spent more than 4 years on Eeloo prior to being recovered. The head of the Space Program is planning what will be a rescue mission if it is successful, or the start of a colony on Vall if it fails to lift of from Vall.

Thanks for reading my story, keep a look out for how the rescue goes. Thanks to architeuthis for explaining how to insert pictures for me

Edited April 28, 2013 by Captain Tom
Now with pictures!

[architeuthis]

Hi Captain Tom, welcome to the forums. If you want to add pictures to a post you need to use a 3rd party hosting service such as imgur, flickr, or dropbox. Click on the insert image button in the forum post dashboard and paste the link from your upload:)