Making a Mess on Mun

[trainman96]

Now sit back, because I'm going to share a story with you. A story of success and failure, of victory and loss: The story of the First Munar Expedition.

It was early in the first year of a brand new Career Mode, sitting on my first modded KSP install, with Kethane, TAC Life Support, and Deadly Re-Entry to name a few. I had just wrangled up the parts to build a Munar Lander, and was aiming for one of the largest craters in pursuit of science!

Orbital entry, Munar injection, and Munar orbit went fine, but the logs went fuzzy as we came down. We either ran out of fuel or just miscalculated, but the ship crash-landed on the surface, the capsule intact; Bob Kerman was stranded on Mun.

While he enjoyed the low gravity, the KSC was already planning a rescue mission. He had only a very short time before the power ran out, and he would die. Using 3 of the original, black command pod, which was just about the only thing we had, I designed a ship called the Tri-Savior, and crewed it with Bob's faithful companion Bill.

Well, that mission went far better than the last. We landed less than a kilometer from the original crash site during the middle of the night. The lights guided Bob to his rescue. Well, it all went to heck when they tried to leave. There wasn't enough fuel to make the ascent into orbit, so we gave up quite immediately and remained on the surface. The ship's batteries made it through the night, and the Tri-Savior had several months of food, water, and oxygen aboard, so a rescue mission for the pair was put off for some time.

In the meantime, the KSC had designed and built its first Kethane harvester, using the science that the Tri-Savior beamed back. It landed just under 100KM north of the Tri-Savior, in a rich Kethane field, and began to mine, refueling itself. It was more of an exploratory mission to begin understanding the nature of Kethane, but then someone happened to point out that the KE-1 had two open seats. The conclusion was immediate.

The Tri-Savior picked off the ground and attempted to fly to where the KE-1 was mining. No dice. Bill and Bob ran out of fuel and had to ditch just inside the north wall of the large crater. At that point, the Tri-Savior was irreparably damaged, but still had all of the supplies to keep the two men alive. Because of this, the KE-1 was allowed to finish its operation before flying the remaining 40KM to the Tri-Savior's crash site.

In an attempt to save fuel, the KE-1 landed 8KM from the Tri-Savior's position, and Bill and Bob used their EVA packs to fly to it. And then it was determined that the KE-1 did not have enough fuel to leave Mun, or even return to the drill site. Nor did it have the proper re-entry equipment if it ever were to return to Kerbin. With limited resources on the KE-1, and the Tri-Savior's stores 8KM away and unusable, the KSC had to think fast again. An updated Tri-Savior was commissioned, and flown, without incident, to the KE-1's current position.

Kenrick Kerman took Bob and Bill in the new Tri-Savior, left Mun, and returned to Kerbin with apparent ease. But the KE-1, and its pilot, remained stranded. Not wanting to send a second Kethane mining ship, the KSC decided that the risk of crashing was worth an attempt to go 60KM northward, back to the Kethane reserves. As it turned out, it had the fuel to make the journey, just not the landing. In a last-ditch effort, Genseng Kerman ejected from his vessel just before it impacted the ground, and came to rest at the flag earlier placed by the KE-1 marking the reserves by use of his EVA pack.

Now it was crunch time. We had a man stranded with half a day's worth of supplies, and hardly any EVA fuel. Another redesigned Tri-Savior was launched immediately, with Bob at the helm. In the tense hours that followed, the ship's expert pilot landed it a mere 4KM from Genseng, and he came aboard with minutes to spare in supplies. There was much rejoicing.

But things took a darker turn when they went to land on Kerbin. The first re-entry capsule detached, bearing Genseng, and he came down safely. The main ship then entered a low orbit in order to burn up and not leave debris. But when Bob's capsule detached, the retrorockets pushed his orbit even lower; too low. Bob burned up upon re-entry. Like Jeb, who died of suffocation after an failed Munar rendezvous, he will be remembered.

This is a true story, and I would appreciate any feedback/similar experiences.

- Trainman96

[KeithStone]

Sounds kind of like my first trips to Duna. The writing is excellent, a few pics would help, but I know all too well that when minutes count in a mission to save kerbals (or launch winodws) there's little time for screencaps

[trainman96]

I was playing off my flash drive and circumventing steam (so I wouldn't update to .23), so I didn't know how to take screenshots. I would have otherwise. I'd love to go back and look over what happened, even look at the save, but said flash drive got its index file corrupted, and I formatted it instead of doing any stupid data recovery. It was only games on that thing, and I didn't even use them full time. Now I'm waiting for B9, RemoteTech, and KW Rocketry to update in order to restart my mod party. Thanks for the compliment on the writing, though. I try as best I can.

- Trainman96

[KeithStone]

Yeah, i keep two extra installs of kerbal (one stock and one with hardmode mods) in addition to my main install. Unless you have a background screencap program you would have to prtscrn and alt+tab to paint...which is annoying. Still, awesome story. Videos like that would rival the drama of the big Scott himself!