Bill and Jeb's Excellent Adventure: Saved by the Klaw

[corvustech]

Shortly after I started my first Career game, I sent Jeb to Mun. Unfortunately, his lander fell over, and he was trapped there for 2 years while I "Scienced" up enough to build a rescue-capable ship. Bill arrived in Mescue II and landed on Mun about 6km from him; the two were reunited after a long and careful EVA. However, this reunion was not the end of the story...

With Jeb happily boarding the passenger compartment of Mescue, Bill slapped the ignition only to discover.....the best he could hope for was Munar orbit. 5 more years of spinning awaited the two; miraculously, they had snacks enough for the both of them.

I didn't take a picture of the shame to follow. Suffice to say I built 5 different refuelling probes and attached the KLAW to them because I'd unlocked it, but all of them ran out of fuel and were spinning in various, non-intercept directions with bellies full of payload. I ended up refueling them off of the payload tank and smashing them into the Mun just to reduce chance of collision.

Back on Kerbin, I was developing my Starflight series of starship prototypes, named after my favorite space games of all time and designed to go into space for long missions where they might even serve as mobile stations. With Starflight I barely making orbit and Starflight II fireballing before takeoff, Starflight III was designated to take a rocket up, which it successfully did to Minmus with Bob and a crew of 4 other kerbals. Starflight IV then had its science systems removed and replaced with crew modules and a KLAW.

The massively increased fuel reserves and replacement of the heavy science modules with two lander cans as passenger spaces allowed for a much more maneuverable ship and additional chutes in case I had to drag anything or anyone into atmosphere manually. Reaching Mun was a simple task, and with all that RCS fuel and all those batteries, I was able to line up the slightly eccentric orbit of the Mescue vessel. It wasn't long before I was on top of it.

Did you know that the KLAW does nothing if you don't ram the hell out of the center of mass of your target? A good hour of reloading quicksaves taught me that. I think I was expecting it to reach out and grab or something.

Success! Rather than refuel the Mescue, I realized it might be wiser to just tow her with the Starflight IV out of orbit and back to Kerbin. I took the linked vessels back to Kerbin, but I knew I'd have to uncouple, so I shared out their fuel to manage a couple of control burns and hit the big red button. I immediately put as much distance from Mescue as I could; an uncontrolled re-entry on chutes only is Kraken bait so I wanted to ensure I was able to guide both ships down.

As you can see, we have comfortable separation at this point, with the blue course being Starflight IV and the white course being Mescue II. Both still contain only their original crews (except of course Jeb, whose fault technically all of this is anyway). The question of course....did they all land safely?

Kerb yeah they did! +300 or so science!