An Ode to Design Flaws…or…Riding Shotgun on a Rocket (Images)

[BlkBltChemie]

Stranded

Wilsey and Caling Kerman have been carrying out scientific surveys in orbit over the Mun and on the surface. After their most recent landing, they realized they did not have enough fuel remaining to complete the other two landing assignments. So they decide to take off targeting the next orbital survey site, but overshoot the target altitude. While attempting to correct their orbit, the fuel tank runs dry stranding them in a 66 degree inclined, highly eccentric orbit over the Mun.

Powerless

To rescue the poor Kerbals, KSC flight directors launch a ship to rendezvous with the lander. Now, there were two remaining sites that still needed to be surveyed so a probe lander was attached on top of the rescue craft to complete the mission. The remaining Kerbalnauts employed by the KSC are off on their own missions so the craft is launched to the Mun unmanned and safely arrives in the SOI.

After achieving capture into an eccentric orbit, the craft begins maneuvering to match the inclination of the stranded Kerbals. At about 40 degrees, KSC flight directors notice that the rescue craft is approaching one of the survey sites so they send a command to detach the probe lander and begin its descent to the surface where it successfully obtains a science reading. They then ordered the probe to take off again headed for the next survey site. However, the engineers at the KSC forgot to add batteries and, despite have more than enough solar panels, the probe ran out of electric charge and plummeted into the surface of the Mun at around 600 m/s.

Meanwhile, back at the unmanned rescue craft, the flight directors realize that without a crew or probe to control the ship, it is dead in space in an even more eccentric orbit than its target and at an approximately 20 degree inclination difference.

Sorry for the lack of pictures in this part...poor quality (very dark), not worth uploading.

Of Docking Ports, Ladders, and the Journey Home

But not to worry, the newly completed Munar Orbital Station has a spare lander fueled and ready to go to the rescue. It begins to optimize a trajectory to tow the rescue craft but a frantic engineer rushes in and informs the flight directors that the lander has a Jr. docking port while the rescue craft has a standard size port. No worry, the lander will rendezvous with the stranded Kerbals instead and ferry them to the rescue craft.

Alas, we have two Kerbals to rescue and only one seat in this lander design! Wilsey, being the more experienced (level 3) pilot, claims seniority and enters the lander leaving Caling (a level 1 pilot) to hold on to the ladder.

Wilsey carefully makes maneuvers to rendezvous with the rescue craft using no more than 1/6 throttle while Caling holds on for dear life scooting up whenever he starts to slide off of the ladder. Eventually, they reached the rescue craft and returned safely home to Kerbin in a fairly uneventful flight. The lander meanwhile had sufficient fuel to return and dock back at the station despite the large inclination changes. Despite the happy ending, quite a few engineers were fired over this incident!

For those who don’t know, you cannot time warp or quicksave while a Kerbal is on a ladder. You can use physics time warp to 4x and always let go of the ladder to quicksave. There is also the option to let go of the ladder and use standard time warp, but the Kerbal and craft will drift apart. I think in game time, this whole episode took three hours which is still a long time in real life with only 4x time warp!

I actually did pretty well with controlling the burns and only sent Caling flying away once because my acceleration was too high, but he was able to jetpack back to the craft pretty easily. I gotta love how after a year and a half playing KSP, I still make mistakes like these (albeit not usually this clustered) which if nothing else keep things interesting!

[Wabbit]

A classic KSP scenario...

"Never-ending black hole of rescue ships"