My biggest success yet, in a disorganized kind of way

[James_Eh]

Wish I had joined the Forum sooner, have been addicted for a while now...

Off to Duna! No problems getting there. Areobrake #1 at Duna, no problem. Aerobrake #2 put me straight into a collision course with Ike. SO, we landed on Ike. Planted flags. Took off, only to realize that we had underestimated how much fuel the lander needed to achieve orbit. Barely made orbit with the help of RCS tanks. Flipped to mother ship, had it make the rendezvous.

Looked like enough delta-V left to still visit Duna. Aerobrake #3 and #4 and we were in orbit. Detached and headed for landing. Huge landing botch - chose a 7 KM high landing site and the parachutes were near useless. Finally managed to safely land, planted flags. Took off, and once again realized we were shy of fuel to achieve orbit. Once again drained monopropellant tanks and got into something resembling an orbit, and flipped to mother ship to make rendezvous.

At this point it was looking a bit shaky for a return home. Detached the middle (empty) fuel tank to save weight. Threw caution to the wind and headed home. Suddenly realized one of the 4 landing legs was broken. Had to do an EVA to fix it - and DIDN'T wind up losing the Kerbonaut into the void!!! From there it was very routine, Aerobrake #5 and #6 in Kerbin atmosphere, wound up circular @ 200 KM with a teaspoon of fuel. Sent up a refuel tug, de-orbited, and came home safely!!!!

LOVE this game (pant, pant) !!! Was a great Friday night, albeit involving a few too many beers.

[Vanamonde]

Add some pics, and this could be a mission report.

[James_Eh]

Oops. Hey, look! This forum has mission reports! Sorry for the long post in the wrong spot - I was excited. But I am a newbie forumer...

[Vanamonde]

Your post is not in the wrong spot. What I meant was that it's the kind of entertaining story which, if fleshed out with pics and stuff, makes for a good mission report. I was being encouraging rather than critical. (I'm also trying to call attention to the mission reports sub-forum, because that seems to me to be under-utilized.)

[Sirrobert]

Welcome. That sounds like a very Kerbal like trip, impressive.

I especially loved the 'SO, we landed on Ike.' part

[DonLorenzo]

Hehe, yeah, good stuff

However the refuel tug at Kerbin probably wasn't necesarry? If you were already aerobraking you'd have come down eventually

[larsmaehlum]

Welcome. That sounds like a very Kerbal like trip, impressive.

I especially loved the 'SO, we landed on Ike.' part

The spirit of a true rocket jockey

[James_Eh]

Refuel tug was necessary I guess, just because I wanted to keep the mother ship alive so that I didn't have to relaunch it. I really had NO fuel left. I could have dipped low enough that the lander could make it, at the expense of strewing a few trillion K$ of ship across the landscape... Anyhooo, kids and wife are in bed now - time to try to rescue the poor slob who has been orbiting Vail for 10 game years!