Minmus Base Rescue! (image heavy)

[Nome]

Last night I took on a daring mission to return two trapped Kerbals to their home planet and I wanted to share the experience. The two Kerbals were part of a previous "science base" mission to Minmus, where they would stay in the base and transmit science experiments back home. There was a problem, however, when once they entered the "hitch hiker storage unit" part of the base, they discovered they could not open the hatch again to exit, due to a poorly placed solar panel.

- The doomed "science base mission". The rocket on top separated and returned home before the blocked hatch was noticed...

There was a free Kerbal from a previous base nearby, so he tried launching himself into the side of the "hitch hiker storage unit" in a futile attempt to dislodge the solar panel... It didn't work, but he lived (at least) and returned to his own base. (Sorry, no pics).

It was decided that the entire base would have to be lifted off the Minmus surface and returned home with the Kerbals in it. A space crane was designed...

...and maneuvered over the failed science base...

The crane formed a sort of cage around the science base. Landing struts acted as "cage doors" on the bottom of the crane. The science base was secured and the crane launched off the Minmus surface!

All was going well so far, but this is where it got complicated. Since the crane and the science base were technically not attached to each other, every time I tried to time-warp, the two crafts would drift "through" each other and away from each other. "Physics time warp" prevented this, of course, but at only 4x time warp, it would take a very long time to return to Kerbin. My eventual solution was to time warp and let the two crafts drift away from each other, then try to re-capture the science base once we were close to Kerbin (no monopropellant thrusters - I had to make due without them). It worked:

I was really worried about the science base breaking free once the 'chutes opened up, which is why there were four smaller "braking" 'chutes installed in addition to the other main ones. There was extra fuel left over as well, which also assisted in slowing the craft down.

It worked! All Kerbals were returned safely to Kerbin! Science earned on this mission... 2 points. For recovering two crafts from the surface of Minmus. Well crap.

[Scotius]

Still, you should be proud of yourself. That was a tricky and complicated mission - and experience gained is worth more than science points (that can be easily earned elsewhere).

[Nome]

Thanks, it was definitely worth it - I still have a no-lost-Kerbals record. I just thought it was funny that the game would award a mission this complicated/delicate almost no points at all.