Jetpack Only Landing on Ike

[Geometrian]

Landing on Minmus with a jetpack is a

. Get a ship in low orbit, then jump out and thrust backward. Minmus's low gravity (0.491 ms^-2) and relatively fast rotation (11h 13m 20s) mean that the relative velocity of landing on the surface isn't much. Getting back into orbit is easy if you time the rendezvous intelligently. I've contemplated going twice in one run.

Landing on Ike, though . . .

They said it was impossible.

Technically, it is. Ike has well over twice stronger gravity (1.10 ms^-2) and a slower relative rotation (18h 11m 58s). The lowest energy stable orbit I got was 325m/s relative to the surface. Since a jetpack only has 600m/s dv and crashing a Kerbal at >50m/s to make up the difference doesn't sound survivable, well . . .

This all occurred in my Duna mission, whereupon it was realized that fulfilling both contracts (Duna and Ike) at once wouldn't work with a one-time lander. After getting into orbit around Ike I got an idea: stop the ship.

Just bring the ship to a dead stop over the surface, drop the kerbal out, and then accelerate back up to orbit. Switch to the falling kerbal and use the jetpack to break the fall. Land and do all the science.

Getting back to the ship is much harder. You need to jetpack upward, and simultaneously stop the ship exactly so that the altitude, speed, and position all match. Stopping the ship means of course that as soon as you switch to the kerbal, the ship will start falling. In practice, though you can boost upward periodically to compensate, the timing tolerances are too tight to also control the kerbal to a rendezvous--and altitude loss is unavoidable. So, you'll get a hair-raising near-surface rendezvous, after which you immediately blast off back into orbit, just seconds before slamming into the ground.

The difficulty here is managing the actions of two different vessels, one without a HUD to tell you where to go.

I succeeded after several tries, although it could be easier with a different ship. Also, I lost all the science due to a bug

Edited November 6, 2014 by Geometrian

[Slam_Jones]

Nice. Closest I've ever done to this was on a No-Revert career where I sent a lander to the Mun. Landed fine, collected science and everything, took off to get back into orbit.

Due to some poorly timed burns, the ship was unable to reach a stable orbit. Not wanting to lose a Kerbal so early in the game, I had him abandon ship and reach a stable orbit using his jetpack.

The ship crashed back to the Mun but the Kerbal survived, and was picked up out of orbit on my next trip there.

Trying to do something like that on Ike tho... not sure I would've managed it

Edited for typos