Asteroid Family Portrait

[Kerano]

Now with 100% more backstory!

I decided when ARM first came out I wanted to try to dock one of each class of asteroid together in a low polar orbit. I didn't get a perfectly representative sample - my D was somewhat larger than average and my E somewhat smaller than average - but I thought the result was cool anyway.

Here's the family portrait:

Without labels:

For the curious, the masses of the individual asteroids were:

A - 4.96 t

B - 35.03 t

C - 69.17 t

D - 618.71 t

E - 861.46 t

Backstory here!

Here's the save, if anyone wants to have a play. (No mods. Craft is "Hairy Harry".)

Edited April 9, 2014 by Kerano

[jfull]

Can we get a look at them in the light?

[Kerano]

Sure!

And without text...

[Kerano]

Lit against a backdrop of Kerbin (with a guest appearance by the Mun):

Without text:

[JiWint]

Amazing!

I can't even imagine the way you did this

[cantab]

Nice work. Pity the D and E are so similar. You should find a >2000 ton E, pronto.

[Brotoro]

Nicely done!

[electronicfox]

That E is rather small, get something 2500+ tonnes. I found out the hard way that a 3050 tonne monster is very difficult to move.

[-RanZ-]

very nice!910

[ScottyDoesKnow]

Is there any info out there on mass ranges for the different classes? I didn't realize E's could be below 1000t

[Caelib]

Nice job docking them together ... I can't even imagine how many reloads it took trying to get the E & D aligned

[bigdad84]

My "D" asteroid was only 300< tons. It was crazy how much fuel it took to move that sucker. I cant imagine anything even bigger than that.

Edited April 9, 2014 by bigdad84

[Wayfare]

That E is rather small, get something 2500+ tonnes. I found out the hard way that a 3050 tonne monster is very difficult to move.

Given that asteroids in KSP are roughly (very roughly) spherical, the volume (which determines mass) is cubed in relation to the radius. That means a chunky E isn't going to look much more massive than even a fairly slim D. I think Felipe and Chad talked about being surprised by how much an asteroid's mass skyrocketed as they increased the radius per class in the

.

If you've ever bought new wine glasses and though "well these are only a little bigger than my old ones", you'll know what I'm talking about.

[Kerano]

Nice work. Pity the D and E are so similar.

Yeah, I would have liked to have a better representative sample. Though I did sort of like how the "parents" of the three "kids" were similarly sized for the family portrait.

That E is rather small, get something 2500+ tonnes. I found out the hard way that a 3050 tonne monster is very difficult to move.

Heh, moving the 600+ tonne D class to match the orbit of the E class was hard enough! (Story to come soon.) Certainly a thought for the future though...

Nice job docking them together ... I can't even imagine how many reloads it took trying to get the E & D aligned

Actually only one reload for the alignment (got slightly lucky there). But at least 20 reloads for the Kraken! It just loves to mess with this thing - waves and bends around like tentacles whenever you switch to it within physics range, eagerly bashing apart all the attached ships. Fortunately I backup saves often.

[Kerano]

Amazing!

I can't even imagine the way you did this

With a great deal of determination and stubbornness!

Part 1 of 4

It all started with a trip to a class E asteroid which just so happened to be heading on a collision course with Kerbin's north pole. Tackling the E class first was intentional, and one of my few sensible decisions during the course of this mission - getting the heaviest asteroid in place first would be far easier than having to move it later.

Boosting it a bit radially got the periapsis to around 45 km, ready for aerobraking.

A few passes gradually brought down the apoapsis...

...then with a bit of fine tuning and a fair sized burn to bring up the periapsis, an 80 km polar orbit was achieved.

Next up, I needed some double-ended claws in order to attach future asteroids to the first one. Seemed a bit of a waste to build a ship just to transport the claws with all the delta-v I had at hand, so I just tacked four of them onto the bottom of my existing launcher.

I turned south to match the orbit of the E class asteroid...

...or so I thought. Turns out while I headed south as planned, I forgot to time the launch window correctly. Good thing I brought all that extra delta-v! Time to burn west to change our plane.

Even with the mix-up, we entered a high orbit with plenty of fuel remaining. Hooray for unnecessarily asparagus staged superboosters!

Next up: a rendezvous with the E class asteroid.

No MechJeb for us today!

From a few hundred meters away, the double-ended claw probes were detached and propelled to connect with the asteroid.

Originally I assumed I'd attach the rest of the asteroids at 90 degree spacings. Yeah... good luck with that, past me.

Part 2 coming momentarily!

Edited April 9, 2014 by Kerano

[Kerano]

Part 2 of 4

Next up was a trip to the D class asteroid. I decided to do a bit of a redesign while I was at it. "Engines in both directions!" I thought. "That'll help me brake with ease." Oh, silly past me. (If your fire engines into an asteroid, you don't move anywhere. Physically correct of course, I just didn't realise it had been modelled in-game already. So I brought up an extra 13.5 tonnes of dead weight. Oops.)

Arrival at the D class asteroid, ready to push it out of its collision course with Kerbin.

First aerobraking pass to get the D class into an elliptical orbit. Huh, it kind of looks like a face from this angle.

My next problem was that the D class asteroid happened to have an inclination of -130 degrees relative to the E class. No small thing when you can only manage about 0.1 m/s^2 acceleration. Even with the highly elliptical orbit, both nodes were much closer to periapsis than apoapsis - which meant an expensive burn. So expensive, in fact, that I soon needed a replacement craft.

Yes, I still hadn't realised at this point that the 6 backward engines were useless. I'd been too busy trying to manhandle this 600+ tonne asteroid into position to remember to test my "braking system".

Whoops, a kraken strike.

Luckily I save often. And so the plane change continued. (I swear this manoeuvre alone took over an hour. The sensible thing might have been to try for another D class with a better inclination and lower mass, but we'd invested too much into this particular asteroid to give up now. In the words of Jebediah F. Kerman - "We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard!")

Part 3 coming shortly!

Edited April 9, 2014 by Kerano

[Kerano]

Part 3 of 4

Meanwhile, the Kraken struck again - this time while preparing to aerobrake our C class asteroid. Good thing I was keeping those backups.

Though I have to say, the Kraken seemed remarkably relaxed when it came to physical timewarp. (This ship could clip in and out of the asteroid with apparent impunity.)

Anyway, I finally brought an A class asteroid into range of the E class which had been waiting patiently all this time. Starting with the smallest asteroid seemed like a sensible idea. (Actually, what you don't see here is that my first attempt was really with the D class, which failed miserably. Arrived with 60 m/s relative velocity and couldn't slow down... forgot how heavy that thing was. D'oh. Decided to save that problem for later.)

Instead of trying to aim the A class asteroid for one of the double-ended claws, I sent one out and connected it to the A class. This actually turned out to be a smart move, since even A class asteroids are hard to aim - and it was only going to get harder from here.

Success! The first asteroid-to-asteroid docking. Many Celebratory Alcoholic Substances were ingested at the KSC.

Next up was our B class asteroid.

Same idea here: attach a double-ended claw to the B asteroid then move it into position. Of course, this would ideally happen slightly further away from the main craft. ("Looks like plenty of room to me," says Jeb at ground control.)

Another success... our twosome becomes a threesome.

Arrival of the C class was next. At this point the asteroids were starting to get noticeably more difficult to manoeuvre, so I took this one nice and slow.

Well, it didn't end up attaching quite where I was aiming it - but hey, it attached to something. Good enough!

Part 4 will be up soon!

Edited April 9, 2014 by Kerano

[Kerano]

Part 4 of 4

There was nothing left now but to try again with the D asteroid. First though, we had to refuel it yet again. (That thing took a heck of a lot of gas to get around.)

Ah, Kraken... we meet again.

Let's try that again... much better.

Well, kind of.

Weirdly, this craft is still all one piece. Time to go home Kraken, you're drunk.

Okay, nice and easy this time - matched orbits with the asteroid cluster then raised the apoapsis slightly so we'd approach very slowly.

The final double-ended claw makes its trip...

...and the D class asteroid is slowly brought closer to its target.

Gently does it...

...oops, slightly off target. Wait a sec - where are you, Kraken?

Let's try that one more time. Detached the double-ended claw and reattached it in a slightly different position, then pivoted it on the approach to get the right orientation.

Phew, at last! That was one crazy mission.

[Werwolf]

Wow, nice.... now, for another challenge... land the whole assembly on Kerbin. hehehehe... may I suggest KAS, so you can strut the whole thing and attach parachutes all over the place

[Kerano]

Yep... required a lot of determination and many, many quicksave backups.

(EDIT: Reply was to a comment that apparently has since been deleted.)

Edited April 26, 2015 by Kerano