My achievment for the day: launching a sat via shuttle.

[128MB]

Landed for the first time on Duna yesterday, today made my first payload shuttle! And it actually worked! Sort-of ... Well when i say shuttle more like a flying brick on a very large boomstick.

I set myself the challenge of launching a small satellite using a shuttle and return back to kerbin base.

First stage fired! went shockingly well !... Offcource with 3 times the power it actually needs ... Just in case something bad happens...

Which it did! I had to ditch the first stage early because it started to pull the craft up uncontrollably so i lost a lot of speed.

Now the second stage, which did the exact same thing, had to decouple after 3 seconds

Forgetting to look at the map, i suddenly had an apoapsis of 280km so a proper orbit and return was impossible.

Time to open (explode) the doors.

Goodbye little guy! good luck!

And then the firy deathball plummet back to kerbin...

The results: 3 kerbals lost but a sattelite in orbit!

What have i learned? Shuttles are a pain in the ass to balance the weight and fuel!

Edited October 27, 2013 by 128MB