How can i rescue my spaceship from orbit?

[12padams]

So I got a ship in career mode stuck with lots of data in orbit with an apoapsis of 250km and a low point of 95km. How can I rescue this ship and retrieve all the data on it?

Would sending another ship in a circle orbit at 95km and then colliding it with my stranded ship to slow the orbit work?

Would I be better off trying again to collect the data and just abandon that ship? Would the data be worth less now that that ship has it or does it not count because I haven't received the science from it yet because it hasn't been retrieved?

Thanks in advance

[Oggula]

Unless it has a docking port on it to transfer fuel, that ship is a lost cause. However, you can still rescue the kerbonaut aboard. Try rendezvous like in this video:

[Kerbart]

Oggula, I disagree. Just build another ship with some protruding "arms", rendezvous, maneuver to catch the ship between the arms, and at periapsis rotate to retrograde and burn. Repeat as needed until your apoapsis has now turned into a periapsis of, say, 30km. Then move away, burn again to get back into orbit, and switch over to your other craft to guide it through the atmosphere.

I've done it multiple times to get rid of debris.

[bogpad]

In case you are not a docking/rendezvous pro, the first thing I would try before I bother with building another ship to fetch it somehow is getting a kerbal out at apoapsis (if it is manned that is) and use his rcs to slow down until your periapsis gets within kerbins atmosphere, since you can recharge the rcs fuel in his backpack by just reentering the ship, it might take a while, but should work just fine.

[Saberus]

In case you are not a docking/rendezvous pro, the first thing I would try before I bother with building another ship to fetch it somehow is getting a kerbal out at apoapsis (if it is manned that is) and use his rcs to slow down until your periapsis gets within kerbins atmosphere, since you can recharge the rcs fuel in his backpack by just reentering the ship, it might take a while, but should work just fine.

I was going to say this as well. The good old "get out and push" method. Technically gives you infinite delta-V, so long as you don't get stuck in gravity wells.

[blizzy78]

Would the data be worth less now that that ship has it or does it not count because I haven't received the science from it yet because it hasn't been retrieved?

To answer this question: Diminishing returns are taken into account when science points are actually awarded. For example, you can run the same experiment in the same biome on multiple vessels. The first one to actually transmit or be recovered gets the full reward, the second will get less, and so on. It doesn't matter if there is a vessel that has already done the experiment but hasn't transmitted yet/has not been recovered yet.

[Seret]

Oggula, I disagree. Just build another ship with some protruding "arms", rendezvous, maneuver to catch the ship between the arms, and at periapsis rotate to retrograde and burn. Repeat as needed until your apoapsis has now turned into a periapsis of, say, 30km. Then move away, burn again to get back into orbit, and switch over to your other craft to guide it through the atmosphere.

I've done it multiple times to get rid of debris.

Same here for debris. Never done it for a whole ship though. You'd just have to be careful, but totally doable IMO. You don't need a lot of ÃŽâ€v to deorbit, the only tricky part would be rendezvousing and lining yourself up nicely on the right side of the target. Try and get the target aligned nicely with the SAS locked on to stop it spinning.

[robsr3v3ng3]

Tbh I'd say go and save the Kerbal and just ditch the craft. The amount of time it will take to build something capable of going and bringing the whole thing down in one piece means it won't be worth it. You might as well just stick some science modules on the craft that goes to rescue him and re run the tests.

[Seret]

The amount of time it will take to build something capable of going and bringing the whole thing down in one piece means it won't be worth it.

Depends what your objective is. If you want to earn the most science as quickly as possible, then yeah launch a new mission (and forget the kerbal). But if you want a fun little design and flight challenge then why not?

[toomuchbrew]

Depends what your objective is. If you want to earn the most science as quickly as possible, then yeah launch a new mission (and forget the kerbal). But if you want a fun little design and flight challenge then why not?

I think the game is very easy as far as getting tech. I like to set up situations like this. Although, last time, my capsule got kicked out of the Kerbin system and now orbits Kerbol. That is three Kerbals that probably won't see Kerbal again. The capsule is out of fuel

[Seret]

That is three Kerbals that probably won't see Kerbal again. The capsule is out of fuel

Needn't be the case if you can rendezvous. Send up an empty hitchhiker or an empty 3-man pod and have them jet over to it. Or you could attach a "grabber" made of landing legs to the front of a rocket and go grab the whole pod.

[KerbMav]

Depends what your objective is. If you want to earn the most science as quickly as possible, then yeah launch a new mission (and forget the kerbal). But if you want a fun little design and flight challenge then why not?

Depends on where the ship is coming from and what kind of data ...

[phunk]

So I got a ship in career mode stuck with lots of data in orbit with an apoapsis of 250km and a low point of 95km. How can I rescue this ship and retrieve all the data on it?

Would sending another ship in a circle orbit at 95km and then colliding it with my stranded ship to slow the orbit work?

Would I be better off trying again to collect the data and just abandon that ship? Would the data be worth less now that that ship has it or does it not count because I haven't received the science from it yet because it hasn't been retrieved?

Thanks in advance

I had a similar problem once. I built a ship with a "cage" made of the girder segments on the front, and used it to push the other one towards reentry.

[Taki117]

I too had a similar problem, attached are a couple of screenshots showing the rig I used. You have to be very careful that you don't damage anything, and take it in stages.

1. Get the disabled ship into an aero-breaking orbit.

2. thrust the rescue ship backwards using RCS, put that one in a stable orbit

3. switch over to the disabled ship and follow it all the way down

4. deorbit the rescue ship

This shows the successful capture of a vessel in orbit:

same picture with labels:

[phunk]

Yeah that's very similar to the one I made, I just had it a little wider and I added landing legs facing inward around the entrance so it could be closed. I didn't have RCS at that point, so I couldn't come to a stop before the captured ship hit the bottom of the cage and bounced, so closing the front door behind it kept it contained.

[Taki117]

Yeah that's very similar to the one I made, I just had it a little wider and I added landing legs facing inward around the entrance so it could be closed. I didn't have RCS at that point, so I couldn't come to a stop before the captured ship hit the bottom of the cage and bounced, so closing the front door behind it kept it contained.

I tried using landing legs for that very purpose, but I couldn't get the orientation right so that they would open and close. The stranded ship still bounced, but by that time I was accelerating towards Kerbin so it didn't matter. One thing you need to be careful about though is rotation. It's kinda like a slingshot, If you get rotating the ship you are trying to rescue is going to come flying out (Unless you use the door idea)

[CapnMorgan18]

Is it a probe or does it have kerbals, if the latter, you can always EVA and use your EVA thrusters to push the ship retrograde at the apoapsis.

[12padams]

Thanks for your help. In the end I decided to just leave it there and redo the research. Getting out and pushing was way too slow.

[JBT]

I had a similar problem once. I built a ship with a "cage" made of the girder segments on the front, and used it to push the other one towards reentry.

i am still right in the start of my career and stuck in orbit. going to try this cage idea as i dont want to loose "another" kerbal.

[nala2624]

Had a similar problem a few weeks ago. What I did was build a ship with basically a giant "claw" to grab the ship that was afloat and pull it back to Kerbin. Loaded it with parachutes and took re-entry slowly and it got down easy.

The claw ship was actually 2 ships that disconnected to open the "claw" and re-docked to close it. Each ship had 4 nails (not sure what to call it, 3am here) to total an 8 part claw built out of massive amounts of girders to secure the "cargo". Infernal robotics made it really easy as I could use hinges to tighten the claw. Biggest challenge was the cargo shifting as I came down.

[TheGeoninja]

I had a similar situation and successfully retrieved a crew returning from the mun. My advice would be bring a probe controlled ship and a crew capsule and leave the capsule empty for your brave kerbonauts. If you have a general idea on docking all you got to do is get close enough for the crew to eva from one ship to the rescue ship and collect the science from your modules. Simply deorbit your rescue craft and hooray science for everybody. If you don't know how to dock you maybe in some trouble. Just tinker around with the nodes and target the stranded craft trying to get as close a possible and look at a docking tutorial.

[porter17]

Eureka!! I just did it just a bit ago. I guess they invented the grabber since the last post here. Jeb ran out of electricity and couldn't stage or retro. Periapsis was 199, too high. So, Bob, Bill, and Tedfrey mounted a rescue mission with the grabber. Approaching Jeb, Bob attemped EVA to transfer a solar panel from Rescue to Jeb's ship, doesn't work. So, they grabbed Jeb's pod with the grabber. It won't grab the science jr, but will grab the command module. Once 'docked', at Apo, retroburned to a Peri of about 40 km. Meanwhile, since the ships are connected, Rescue charged Jeb's batteries, even through the grabber. Stayed connected until almost to re-entry. Once disconnected, Jeb had full batteries. Successful landing. During reentry, couldn't switch to the Rescue pod, game won't let you. Thought I was gonna lose the crew, but, at 23 km, it skipped back out and it gave me time to recover Jeb and over 500 points. Then, next orbit, aerobraking allowed landing and recovery. A successful mission all around.

[Kryxal]

So you know, you could just EVA somebody and pull the reports from the science lab. You could also take up a command pod with a free space inside (so long as there's somebody or something to control).

[Claw]

While all good ideas and feedback, the original post is from nearly a year ago. I would like to think that the poor ship has been rescued/abandoned by now.

Congrats, however, on saving your ship!

Cheers,

~Claw