Are your asteroid capture missions manned or unmanned?

[katateochi]

I'm just wondering what folks approach to asteroid capture missions is. Do you take crew to make the capture or do you send in the drones?

I did my first couple of captures as manned missions and it was touch and go. I'm playing stock atm but I will be running with life support mods soon so I've changed my approach to be more like the proposed NASA missions. I have an unmanned craft that can capture and bring the asteroid into orbit and then I have an Orion type craft that brings crew up to the orbiting potato. That way I don't have to worry about packing enough oxygen and sandwiches as some capture missions have lasted a couple months. And also the risk to our little green friends is much less.

So what is your approach?

[ArmchairGravy]

Too high of risk to send a manned mission for me. Once the potato has been wrangled I'll send crew.

[Godot]

I only just started my first AR missions ... but I started all of them manned (so that my Kerbals can inspect the asteroid durign the process of getting towed in [read, that is gives you science points for each Biome the asteroid is in]).

Might change it, if the missions turn out to be too hazardous

[helaeon]

Been doing a little of both but it seems the most prudent is to send the probe to intercept it and get it going where I want it, then if a crew is necessary to do whatever then send them.

I'm testing right now if you get new science every time you take a sample on a SOI change with the asteroid. Then you may want to send crews.

Another reason to send crews is if you're using KAS you could attach solar panels, engines, RCS pods, etc to the asteroid to help you move it. That might be a big deal for very large asteroids.

[Jouni]

Both, but mostly unmanned. Smaller asteroid tugs are basically glorified utility tugs, so it doesn't really make sense to add crew to them. Besides, asteroid capture missions take long enough that according to my design principles, I need a crew of three, with a big command pod and a hitchhiker module.

[Pipcard]

Well, NASA's planning to do it unmanned, so...

[Vanamonde]

Small, un-manned ships with high dV. Send a crew to it after it's placed in orbit.

[The Destroyer]

I'm suprised at the amount of Unmanned voyages. For me it's always manned.

[biohazard15]

Same as Vanamonde - unmanned tugs with high dV. I don't want to increase weight.

[KerbMav]

Uncharacteristically for me I sent two manned missions into a standby orbit for two incoming asteroids.

I, the player, might have been influenced by the multitude of videos these days that always put the the claw ontop of the three man pod - I, the KSC flight director, might think it to risky to not send a manned ship on such a vital mission like diverting an asteroid threatening to impact Kerbin.

[blizzy78]

Always manned, of course. If it goes wrong, well, there's always the next rescue mission.

[bsalis]

Mine have been Kerbaled. Wouldn't feel right not to bring a few of 'em for the adventure. Never know, they might need to get out and push.

[Minarkhaios]

First attempt was with 3 kerbals in the big pod.

And with an empty hitchhiker pod in the claw part of the ship (two parts separated with a big docking port couple).

Now we are throwing a party in high kerbal orbit.

[pauix]

If I can send a sacrifice Kerbal near the rock, I won't send a probe. As bsalis says, sometimes you have to get out and push

[jaredkzr]

As of right now they are unmanned. I don't trust myself enough at the moment to be sending manned mission into deep space since I've had about a 50% success rate so far. If I send some guys out there, I feel obliged to bring them back. I've sent some ion probes to fly by some asteroids and a capture mission is in the works. This update has proven to be very fun!

[cantab]

Manned, but I do the risky (either actually risky or just roleplayingly risky) stuff with unmanned probes. For example my first rendezvous featured a 3-manned "orbiter" that approached to a few hundred metres away before the unmanned "lander" made the actual first clawing. Then with things confirmed safe I docked the orbiter to the still-clawed lander for the Kerbals to get out and take a look.

My second mission has an asteroid tug that takes a 2-man crew, but I launched it empty since it was a bit experimental and brought the crew up after in a bus. Good thing too since the first launch went...not as planned. Nor did the second launch, for that matter, but at least that time it still made orbit.

Despite NASA intending to do the capture unmanned, I just feel there should be some Kerbals on site to supervise the operation. And in the case of the first mission, visit their asteroid namesake 1 Jebediah.

[Kasuha]

Unmanned is so not Kerbal.

Someone must always check if the asteroid is not made of snacks.

[InterCity]

Usually a mix of both. Some recognition drones first, then a manned asteroid tug, and finally (planned, but not realised) landing drones.

Checked "manned" in the poll.

[NecroBones]

So far, all unmanned. I've been capturing asteroids into LKO using unmanned tugs. Science can come later. Or maybe I'll just land them all near KSC.

[regex]

All my redirects have been manned; that's the Kerbal way.

[Koltronn]

My missions have to be manned, cant risk a probe to not have the delta-v needed to capture the asteroid and miss out on that sweet sweet science.

Edited April 9, 2014 by Koltronn

[Demon_82]

All unmanned but the first. Thankfully, because two of the unmanned have ended in "unwanted explosive landing".

[troyn123]

I've been trying to move the really large ones, so I've been using manned missions so they can EVA to attach extra struts (KAS add on: http://i.imgur.com/mI6A8qZ.png) to keep higher thrust engines from breaking the ship/clamp. I spent something like 5 game years getting a 3,000 ton class E into a near perfect 250x250 orbit to use as my new space station... Only to have the physics get wonky after I got partway through building and it somehow tore everything apart and ejected the pieces all over the system. :-|

Couple pictures:

http://i.imgur.com/XXkZmKD.png

http://i.imgur.com/iDNtsmA.png

[NeoMorph]

I've been doing both.... really the poll should have added the "both" category. Either that or say "Was your first Asteroid Mission Manned or Unmanned".

It would be cool to work out how much each of our missions cost. Pity that it would be too hard to do with the current system. I just hope in future career modes you will have a fixed budget like NASA does and you have to do stuff that makes the rest of the Kerbals WANT to do manned space science.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I do two missions, the first unmanned to capture the rock.

And then another manned one to grab science, name it and leave a piece of debris attached to it so the asteroid keeps it's custom name, but it doesn't lose the "asteroid map view symbol"â„¢