My First Asteroid Redirect

[waterlubber]

I was bored one day and pulled up KSP. I saw an asteroid close to Kerbin, and it was a Class A. I tracked it and it was on a slow hyperbolic trajectory with a periapsis of 450km, nearly exact. (Like 499) I had never done an ARM, nor had I watched any tutorials. I overbuilt a rocket that managed to keep it's upper lifter stage, nearly full, all the way to the rendezvous. This allowed me to make an easy capture, with about 1000m/s of DeltaV. The craft still had 4500 remaining, enough to get into orbit. And that's not counting MechJeb's wacky Deltav readings, which were way off.

I'm circularizing it right now, I just finished the inclination burn. It was rather small as it was only about 30 degrees inclined.

After bringing it into a 250x250 perfect orbit, I still have about 5 m/s left...in my ASCENT STAGE. (Wow, pretty accurate!)

I overbuilt it, didn't I?

Pictures: (mmm):

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I really don't know what to do with "Gerald" as I named the asteroid. Should I attempt to land it by the KSC, or should I build a station around him?

Let me know, there might be a sequel!

Edit: I was setting up the station, and I noticed you can take asteroid samples! This was in sandbox, but how much science do these give?

Edited December 31, 2014 by waterlubber
You win, KSP!

[Scotius]

Good job. And wow - you've really overbuilt that rocket But look at it from the other side - you still have fully fueled asteroid tug in orbit. Go for another one

[Space Peanut]

nice work! never done this myself

[Captain Sierra]

Okay, what I see is that you horridly underbuilt your nuclear tug, and massively overbuilt your lifter. That said, you could easily capture a B class on a more difficult trajectory with that vehicle.

As for doing things, if you're not above installing some mods, you could turn it into a city, extract fuel, use it for storage, or even go so far as to make it the fuel tank of an interplanetary ship (with Asteroid Recycling Technologies, I've seen this done and it's hilarious). Build a station on it why don't you.

[Cydonian Monk]

What to do with a captured asteroid.... Catch another! Don't want it to get lonely now, do you? Plus - you've already got the hardware in orbit to catch that second asteroid.

[waterlubber]

Which really sucks, KSP no longer works.

Blast these darned graphics drivers. Hey, can you all do me a favor and boycott AMD products? Thanks.