Maladies from Minmus: A Cautionary Tale

[HoustonDave]

I come to you bearing a tale of woe which was created through my own stupidity, and recovered only through sheer bloody-minded stubbornness.

I made a space station. It wasn't my first, but it was the first special-made to leave Kerbin orbit and park in Minmus orbit. My first two attempts used the standard docking ports, and were far too wobbly.

This time, I planned it in two major sections. The first, humbly termed the Space Station Delta Core, consists of a tug module, a lab/solar module, and a 4-nuke interplanetary drive module. Each section was launched separately, assembled in LKO, and then the whole thing driven out to Minmus. Result, assembled section orbiting at about 1.4M meters over Minmus. No problem.

Well slight problem. Doofus left the RCS on during warp and we're out of mono-propellant. But still, it all works.

Section two I got a bit more... optimistic about my abilities. This one consisted of three separately launched subsections. Front-to-back: A tug with a Sr/Standard docking port transition and mono-propellant module, an 8-nuke interplanetary drive module, and a five-Jumbo-64 fuel module.

There was a lot of tweaking on the launch vehicles to ensure the nuke drivers wouldn't bake the fuel tanks.

Got section two components in LKO. Check.

Assembled with a bit of frustration. Check.

Test fire. All systems go. Wobble minimum. Here's that baby in transit to Minmus.

Get it to Minmus orbit. No problem. Orbiting about 100km above section one.

Attempt to match planes. Wayyy too much wobble for accuracy. So I figure, let's just do it in pieces. Decouple the fuel section and the driver/rcs modules from the tug. My intent was to spin the tug around and pull the driver from the long end.

Big mistake.

But of course, before performing docking maneuvers, I hit F5 to quicksave.

Bigger mistake.

1) 8-Nuke Driver Module has a probe core. And it has fuel. And engines.

It now has no solar nor batteries. It was using the launch vehicle power at LKO. And the tug power in transit. Oh man. Well no problem except...

2) 8-Nuke Driver Module now has no functional SAS. (See #1)

3) The fuel module has no control either, and it managed, somehow, to bump the drive module and set it to ROTATING LIKE A PINWHEEL.

So here I sit, in my nifty little tug. And I just quicksaved, and I'm watching the Wheel of Death rotating a few meters in front of me. The one that contains all that nifty mono-propellant that I ferried out here. And the 8-nuke drive section full of fuel.

And my fuel module, with four/five full jumbo-64s, is now slowly flying off in the other direction.

After a few minutes crying in my beer, I think to myself, maybe I can manage this. I am an absolute, utter, imbecile that way.

What followed was two hours of seizure-inducing, baldness-initiating, coronary-risking repeated attempts to dock with a spinning, asymmetrical module with the long-end swinging around like a battle axe. I won't lie, I turned to MechJeb for some of the maneuvers, because I just couldn't do it alone.

I took it in baby steps. Halt velocity relative to the spinning wheel of death.

Inch forward just shy of battle axe end. Stop and consider next steps.

I died a lot.

I F5'd each time I felt like I made progress.

I cursed some of those saves.

In the end, I managed to finesse a manually-controlled collision that did no damage but slowed the spin.

F5

So I did it again.

F5

And again.

F5

And finally, I managed a minimal relative rotation. MechJeb was of no use here. There was too much movement for him to adapt. It was up to me.

I got in there, shoved my way in front of the short-axis docking port, and hit F5.

Then followed 30 minutes of hair pulling as I tried to manage fifteen degrees of movement (don't ask) at once. I'm a noob at docking. It wasn't fun. I made about 20-30 attempts. I tried MechJeb again. He would line up properly, then go into a panic attack and hide in the cargo bay.

Finally, what did it was a combination of me and MechJeb. I'd hit F9. Turn him on quickly and switch to CHASE camera. He'd get me lined up, then start to go ape-poo and I'd turn him off, turn on SAS, and hit H. Turn MJ back on, get a little closer, go ape-poo, turn MJ off, turn on SAS.

Rinse and repeat for those deadly remaining 5 meters with slight rotation.

When the screen refreshed on a united section, I wept.

I wept man-tears, hugged my wife and children, and went out and got drunk.

That fuel module can just go to Moho for all I care.

[HoustonDave]

Update: Managed to dock that monstrosity with the other section.

Need to shuffle the bits for optimal use though.

Now.. wonder if I can go find those fuel tanks..

[Vanamonde]

Did you know that if you go into warp for just a fraction of a second, all rotations are canceled? Or would you rather not know that now?

[HoustonDave]

Did you know that if you go into warp for just a fraction of a second, all rotations are canceled? Or would you rather not know that now?

Considering the number of times I've used that trick when trying to hit a node target and the ship was wobbly, I should have realized that.

Now, in addition to being stubborn, I am thrice stupid for not realizing that would have worked in this case.

You are an evil, evil human. And I thank you.

[ZeeWulf]

This..is so wonderfully KSP. I do believe i shed a tear.

[Scotius]

I started cackling madly, because i remembered my own attempts at docking with spinning ship It had entertaining value of a car wreck, in which a truck full of chickens was involved. There were curses, teeth grinding, F5/F9 stabbing. And parts mockingly flying away. After all orbital shenanigans ended, both ships were good only for deorbiting. I salute you, and your tenacity