All The Contracts! - 11 contracts 1 mission

[psyper]

I'm having a few problems with my current save so decided to start a new one. My base game is a tonne of mods including fineprint. I also add a load of science and max out the tech tree (in my game I'm running along the lines of today's company contracts - we already have all the parts know-how down).

I got my first run of contracts of getting in to orbit etc etc and went in to mission control. Gene had this big grin on his face as he dumped 12 contracts on to my lap! Most of them were tests (the one I didn't do for this mission was a rover to investigate some anomalies which I'll leave to my drop-ship rover copied from my previous save).

So I'm faced with this:

And I think to myself... yeah I can do all of those!!!

So I drew up a spreadsheet (in the album at the bottom) of all the different criteria for each test and put them in to groups. On the ground, in flight, in orbit and spashdown. Yeah this is gonna be easy - I just need to plan the missions in reverse from the ion at spashdown, rescue mr kerman in orbit, orbital tests etc etc and work my way down a rocket.

I ended up with this monstrosity:

The hardest part was keeping Bill out of the cockpit every time I did another failed launch and it was back to the drawingboard!!

I ran all the tests on the ground and launched the rocket (in the album). I had two decouple tests half way up which had a very tight window where their tests crossed - I had to get between 21,500m & 21,800m and a speed of between 480 & 610. After a couple of attempts I managed to do it - first time I forgot to kill my engines and sent my lower stage crashing in to my rocket sending both in a mad spin --- ooops!

Finally getting my sub-orbit height up enough to do another test, circularize my orbit, and do another test and then get a rendezvous with the Desdred. However I forgot to put solar panels and batteries on my pod - rookie mistake I know but I'm sure we've all done it - esp in light of all the staging I had to arrange right!... right?

So anyway once I was within 2k of Desdred I switched over to him as you can only control the stranded kerbal once its physics have been loaded and got him to go from 150m/s to a decent relative velocity to catch-up. I did a bit of a Sandra Bullock from Gravity move and just thrusted my rcs straight at the capsule - a couple of lateral manoeuvres and I was soon on top of it anyway. getting in the capsule I regained control and headed back home. Fingers crossed the 'chute on my pod slowed me down enough that the ion drive survived and was the final test.... heres the album:

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[Commissioner Tadpole]

Now that's an interesting one. Good job!

Although I think this should go on Mission Reports instead of General Disussion. Ask a mod to move it.

[Jodo42]

Cool! What mod are you using for that nice resources UI?

[Taki117]

Cool! What mod are you using for that nice resources UI?

It's Alternate Resource Panel I know I'm not the OP, but I use it too.

[psyper]

It's Alternate Resource Panel I know I'm not the OP, but I use it too.

Thats the one, thanks Taki117, I just learned that you can click on a resource and it gives you all the values around the ship (like the original) but it has them away from the ship with lines pointing to each tank - when you click on them it highlights the tank in blue so you can see it and it also gives you the control to move the fuel in or out of the tank (like you do when you alt+click on two tanks).