They All Come Home Alive! Safety/Rescue Features since .21

[Hovis]

So the End Flight mission has gone, and for me this has changed the game a lot. Gone are the days I could end a mission and kid myself that it wasn't a horrible death for all involved. I'm just not going to be happy if I can't count my Kerbals into space and count them all back home again.

It is time for a revolution, for me at least, in design, building ships that can be recovered easily, ships that can land, and ships that can, in emergencies, be used to dock with an rescue Kerbals from other ships.

No more Kerbal orphans. No more letters to Kerbal moms. The body count stops here.

So I was wondering if anybody had any tips or designs they might be willing to share? I'm specifically working at the moment on some fairly basic concepts, and I'd appreciate any input people might have on them.

1. An easy to use escape pod, either a sort of standard capsule build to use for all craft that can be relied upon to detach and fly home from a reasonable range and come down from orbit, or some kind of pod I can have the Kerbals run to when things get hairy. My previous experiments with this have tended to leave me with an escape pod that is too big though, and it becomes more work to get into orbit than it should be, and gets in the way of actually doing anything in space itself.

2. A crew transfer vehicle. Am thinking of using an SSTO for this, but am thinking it might be simpler to use some sort of basic shuttle type design that launches vertically off a rocket but has enough lift on re-entry to actually land softly. Essentially this would be a flying bus that could return the passengers safely. Was thinking something like this will be required to bring folks home from stations or from any rescue missions.

3. A rescue ship. A proper Thunderbirds are go cleanup vessel. Something with loads of useful equipment and other gizmos (possibly from mods) to either collect the crew of a damaged/stricken/immobilised vessel, or refuel that vessel, or dock up and tug things away. Am thinking such a vehicle would be entirely spacebound once launched, have it deliver rescued crew to a transfer vehicle to drop them home, so it could be bigger and capable of longer range. Maybe docked onto a station.

Anybody got any thoughts? I've seen rescue missions as a recurring theme in the game but that was when it was just a part of the fun, now it's serious business to get everybody home.

[espm400]

I'll start by saying that I'm pretty big into mods, so if you're against those, the rest of what I say might as well be blowing smoke.

1. Step one of an escape method begins on the launchpad. I used to use the Orion capsule from Bobcat's American Pack since it seated six and came with a launch escape tower that worked pretty well. Barring that, you can always just build one out of structure and sepratrons. Just be sure to use docking ports to jettison it when it's no longer required. Step two, you've got your Kerbals on an orbiting station and something has gone catastrophically wrong. For my escape vehicles now, I use a three man command pod with the smallest 2.5m tank, four small radial engines, a heat shield (for DRE), and parachutes. Usually I can get away with launching three or four at a time on a single lifter rocket, that way I have more than enough attached to my space station to get all of the crew home safely. As for anything farther away than KSO, I'll get to that in a moment.

2. Despite my initial statement, I've tried to keep mod use to a minimum here. This is one subject where I have to bring them up. If you're going to be building SSTOs, you're really going to want FAR and B9 Aerospace. As I've said many times, the original KSP aerodynamic and drag models are just awful, and FAR solves that issue. As for B9, don't get me wrong, but I hate the look of the stock plane parts, again B9 solves this problem. Not to mention just the sheer number of options it affords you (in your case, the six Kerbal crew compartment makes for a good crew transfer pod).

3. As for the rescue ship, I always have a remotely controlled one in orbit around any planet I plan on building a base on. In my case, it wasn't much more than a frame with docking ports, some fuel and an engine. The crew would come up in pre-dropped LVs with just enough dV to get a stable orbit and dock. Just remember if you build it this way, you'll need more dV than you think to get back, as the ship is now toting the planetary escape vehicles. I suppose you could build one with habitats on board, but those tend to be much heavier, and usually need to be built in orbit. Lastly, the 'I missed the planet' rescue vehicle. I've never built one of these, since I tend to greatly over-engineer my LV's, I always have enough to get an orbit with my target. However, there is always the possibility of catastrophic failure mid-burn, or something along those lines, in which case, you shouldn't need much more than what you were using for your inter-planetary ship. Just modify it a bit, maybe some extra docking ports, Romfarer's Robotic Arms Pack or the Kerbal Attachment System work great if you have a stranded crew in a capsule with no docking ports.

Well, I hope this helps. If you've got any more questions, feel free to ask.

[BigDog]

My "Lost on EVA" rescue vehicle. And yes it works as I have had to use it. Turns out my EVA problem was caused by my Joystick but this thing is handy for those rescue missions anyway.

[Affan]

for reentry of a craft make sure you add a small slowing down stage for when you re-enter kerbin and then place decouplers all around the pod for when you reach lower altitudes. Add as many parachutes as you can. The best way to re-enter is by reaching directly opposite a large quantity of land then burning retrograde until your periapsis reaches around 10k. You optimise use of atmospheric braking and then just burn retrograde at the lowest point in your orbit then slowly let yourself lose altitude. Once you reach the deployment altitude of your parachutes decouple your pod and activate the parachutes. Land safely and recover.

[Spyritdragon]

Thunderbirds rule!

For an escape pod, how about just sepratrons on the pod and a parachute? Should work in atmosphere

Get KAS to tug things and for fuel transfer too :-).

[Scarecrow88]

I actually had a rescue station in orbit around Kerbin. That was fitted with escape pods that could get the crew back to the surface if anything happened to the station. Docked to it was a vessel used for normal transfer of crew to the surface, a craft fitted out to dock to craft in the local system in case anything ran out of fuel. That would bring them back to the station for transfer to the surface. Finally I had a lander craft fitted out to rescue stranded Kerbals on either the Mun or Minmus.

[Nephas]

For me building escape pods even got easier since 0.21. They now fly quite well without additional SAS and flight computer stuff.

Just a 3-man-pod, the smallest of the 1.25m tanks on top and two of the small radial engines (250m/s Delta V, brings you home from a 500km orbit). 3 radial Parachutes land on a soft 7 m/s.

Makes a total of seven parts (with an additional heat shield they even work great for Deadly Reentry). Got a small array of these Pods on my Space station.

Also, the separatrons work great on a one man Pod, but unfortunately they're not strong enough to push the big one.

[mbainrot]

I try to insure that I have a docking port on all vessels, this allows the rescue vessel to be effectively tied down as to avoid it drifting away. You can in theory have multiple docking ports (allowing a backup vessel to move a stranded one) but bare in mind docking ports are not all that strong and you will have to be gentle to it when maneuvering... Otherwise you'll end up sending the lads in their parade uniform to the next of kin of the poor kerbals who got turned into pink mist.

Additionally to make my space program safer I put remote guidance units on all of my ships and test them thoroughly (I use MechJeb for consistency sake) before authorising a manned flight as to avoid accidents.

Remember prevention is the best cure

Today I had just successfully made my first Mun landing WITHOUT getting Kerbals stranded I had to have a refueling vessel sitting in orbit on Mun at 200kms to refuel the lander so they could get back home.

iirc the KAS (Kerbal Attachment System) is operational in KSP 0.21.x so you could use that with the blimp addon for recovery of command pods from the ocean (winch them up).

But yeah if you wanna stay stock add docking ports and make sure your ditch and burn craft can dock with them (ditch and burn craft = cheap, simple, mechjeb driven throw away ships with too much fuel and remote guidance modules (you don't want to increase the number of stops the lads have to make, should manure hit the fan, do you?). You fly it to your stricken vessel (hence why mechjeb, after 5 trips it gets old REAL QUICK), dock, refuel, then undock and deorbit (leave enough fuel in it for like 150m/s delta V to enable you to de-orbit, otherwise if you leave it up there its another thing that can go wrong)

Pardon my grammar and slang and scatter brain it's getting late and my brain has already gone to bed.

[Hovis]

FAR has been a bit evil for making me relearn how to into space, but seems very good overall. Due to it's uneasy relationship with Mechjeb (which I've now largely sorted) I did at least get to test a large number of in-atmo-rocket-goes-crazy escape scenarios. Only fatalities so far, out of about ten attempts, was when a capsule failed to get far enough clear of some debris and a chunk of wreckage took out the chutes. My bad on that one though. Am installing separatrons now as standard to get capsules well clear.

I was a bit worried some of these mods might not have been updated yet, but I'll give them a look. Is B9 clear to work with FAR?

[Castun]

B9 hasn't been updated yet, some of the plugins it relies on don't play nice with .21 just yet it seems.

[espm400]

B9 hasn't been updated yet, some of the plugins it relies on don't play nice with .21 just yet it seems.

It may not have been updated, but works fine for me. What issues are you having with it?

So far, out of my large repertoire of normally used mods, the only issues I have experienced were with Lazor Systems (but that's since been updated and work perfectly), and Quantum Struts, which will cause your game to enter some 'quasi-freeze state' where you can't click on anything upon returning to the Space Centre after a flight.

[Skorpychan]

I've got a mun return lander set up. It's basically a probe-controlled Hitchhiker container, with lots of parachutes to get back into kerbin atmosphere, and a lander/fuel tank on the bottom from my mun landers.

I have not, however, figured out how to land properly in .21 yet.

[Hovis]

I've got a mun return lander set up. It's basically a probe-controlled Hitchhiker container, with lots of parachutes to get back into kerbin atmosphere, and a lander/fuel tank on the bottom from my mun landers.

I have not, however, figured out how to land properly in .21 yet.

When it comes to landing, on Kerbin at least, FAR or no FAR, I've found the secret is ALL THE PARACHUTES. It's getting back into the atmo that proves challenging at the moment.

As a further query, has anybody had any success with emergency procedures for planes? I often find with planes, whether I'm using FAR or not, that landing is impossible, or just unlikely, and I should probably bail. Having a pod that can pop off the top of a rocket is one thing, but escaping from a plane as in its death throes seems a lot harder. Was experimenting with decoupling the front of the plane, but there is often too much momentum in the same direction to get clear, and a lot of the cockpit setups don't have the strength of a capsule and things can get ugly. In some cases I've just loaded up small aircraft with enough parachutes that if things go bad I just gain altitude, cut the engines, pop the chutes and float down, but this is seldom practical for larger aircraft.

[espm400]

When it comes to landing, on Kerbin at least, FAR or no FAR, I've found the secret is ALL THE PARACHUTES. It's getting back into the atmo that proves challenging at the moment.

As a further query, has anybody had any success with emergency procedures for planes? I often find with planes, whether I'm using FAR or not, that landing is impossible, or just unlikely, and I should probably bail. Having a pod that can pop off the top of a rocket is one thing, but escaping from a plane as in its death throes seems a lot harder. Was experimenting with decoupling the front of the plane, but there is often too much momentum in the same direction to get clear, and a lot of the cockpit setups don't have the strength of a capsule and things can get ugly. In some cases I've just loaded up small aircraft with enough parachutes that if things go bad I just gain altitude, cut the engines, pop the chutes and float down, but this is seldom practical for larger aircraft.

If you're having problems, I've found that the greatest aid available to you is either a gamepad (I use a simple 360 controller) or a joystick. I never liked flying with the 'on or off' style of using a keyboard.

Of course, if you're already using one, just ignore me...

[Cal'Mihe]

Having a pod that can pop off the top of a rocket is one thing, but escaping from a plane as in its death throes seems a lot harder. Was experimenting with decoupling the front of the plane, but there is often too much momentum in the same direction to get clear, and a lot of the cockpit setups don't have the strength of a capsule and things can get ugly. In some cases I've just loaded up small aircraft with enough parachutes that if things go bad I just gain altitude, cut the engines, pop the chutes and float down, but this is seldom practical for larger aircraft.

This is precisely the reason ejector seats came into being for jets

Historically, escaping from a crippled WW2-era jet aircraft was extremely difficult when the craft was going at high speeds. Either the force of the slipstream would be so strong that the pilot would be unable to pull himself out of the cockpit, or when the pilot did bail out, he would be struck by the rudder or tail before he could drift clear, either killing him outright or knocking him unconcious so he could not deploy the parachute.

So the operating procedure became that the pilot would try to slow down the jet (as far as possible) and then bail out when it had reached tolerable speeds, either by inverting the plane and dropping out of the cockpit, or standing up on the cockpit seat and letting the slipstream pull him out of the craft.

Essentially, it was the proximity to the damaged jet that was dangerous, so ejector seats solved the problem by enabling the pilot to get away from the plane as fast as possible and as reliably as possible.

For KSP, you can try something similar where you position a set of seperatrons along the side of the cockpit, pointing upwards, and linked to the same action group that seperates the cockpit from the plane. They then bring the cockpit clear of the craft. Notice also that most ejector seats propel the seat both forwards and upwards.

Of course, if you need to bail out and are flying inverted at low altitude, then you're out of luck.

So if you're in a bad spin at low altitude, then you may need to time the bail out just right, in order not to eject directly into the ground.

[Castun]

It may not have been updated, but works fine for me. What issues are you having with it?

So far, out of my large repertoire of normally used mods, the only issues I have experienced were with Lazor Systems (but that's since been updated and work perfectly), and Quantum Struts, which will cause your game to enter some 'quasi-freeze state' where you can't click on anything upon returning to the Space Centre after a flight.

I haven't tried it yet with .21, but I've just read that some of the plugins it relies on haven't been working properly. I may reinstall it myself just to test this out.

[Skorpychan]

When it comes to landing, on Kerbin at least, FAR or no FAR, I've found the secret is ALL THE PARACHUTES. It's getting back into the atmo that proves challenging at the moment.

Landing on kerbin won't be an issue; the lander has chutes. What IS the issue, however, is landing on the Mun without any lateral velocity sending the lander tumbling on touchdown.

[LoneRider]

To have a good touchdown on planets / moons without atmosphere, there are some things to consider...

- build a lander that is WIDE instead of HIGH. if you need fuel, attach tanks to the side of your lander instead of underneath, so you have a low center of mass, and add landing struts at the widest positions. So low lateral velocities wont be so hard

- when going down from orbit, burn against the current velocity vector until it is right at the upper center of your navball - this means you will fall straight down. It then the velocity vector moves away, use RCS to move SIDEWAYS (i, j, k, l-keys) - dont turn, but use RCS to burn sideways against that movement. So the velocity vector stays centered on the navball's top.

- if your landing place is not flat, pray - or have a lander that is wide, so it wont matter that much