Corrod had all but given up hope, sitting in his tin can, far above the world. Planet Kerbin was blue and there was nothing he could do. It was then when he saw the friendly headlights of the rescue ship, floating closer in the void.
The trip home was fiery but safe.
Apart from a dozen rescue missions, I’ve been doing a bit of tidy up work around Kerbin and Mun systems to get sorted for the next phase in the Space Program.
My various paid jobs contracts and a handful of science work in the Kerbin system (and one solar orbit probe) have taken me to the following position as far as the Space Program goes:
The Kerbal Space Center is starting to take shape. We have fully upgraded the runway, including paving the whole length of it despite Jeb’s cries that it takes all the excitement away from landings. The launch pad, tracking station and astronaut complex also have received the full upgrade treatment. Mission control has been upgraded enough to allow for flight planning and VAB and Spaceplane hangar both can take 255-part vessels, which is enough for my needs at this point.
As far as the science tree goes, I’ve been ticking off technology tiers quite evenly as science becomes available - I fast tracked a couple of things early on, but mostly now just looking to expand the parts available in general to refine the vehicle designs for the next phase of explosions. Expeditions! I said expeditions!
In terms of assets deployed, we have a couple of shottily assembled relay trios (around Kerbin and around Eve), an early space station in LKO and and another in low Mun orbit, a reusable Mun lander, a fuel tug and a Mun-Kerbin personnel ferry. Now, I’m not particularly happy with many of these assets, but we’ll get to that.
In terms of personnel, we’ve collected a good number of stranded Kerbals from orbit, which is helpful - however these chaps have largely been of the engineer / scientist persuasion, so we’re rather light on pilots. Only Jeb and Valentina actually know how to steer a spaceship, so we may need to do some extra hires for that in due course.
As far as administration strategies go, we have only adopted the Unpaid Research Program so far. I haven’t really looked into these.
I started this career late last year and had come up with a few early designs, which were quite limited due to the technology level. I’m trying to reuse assets as much as I can, so I’m still working with these older designs for now, but I’m pretty keen to upgrade them.
This is one of those assets - the Mun-Kerbin ferry. It has barely enough Delta-V for the job, but not really properly: it also has a few obvious flaws in design. Not enough lighting, too many fiddly fuel tanks to refill, solar panels that do not fold back in for aerobraking, etc. etc.
Anyway, I had accepted a tourist mission a long time ago and figured I should give Surigh and Urbles their tour. The returning launcher design lends itself well for a small personnel SSTO to take the tourists to the ferry for their trip. I also had to correct my previous mistake of not having a pilot kerbal in Mun orbit, so Valentina joined the tourists for the trip.
Yup that’ll do for a rendez-vous.
Docking and transferring excess fuel to the passenger ferry. The SSTO only requires a spoonful of fuel to drop back in, so most of it can go in the ferry.
Kerbin-Mun transition and docking with the Mun orbital station for some admin work. Bob and Bill were very happy to see Valentina, even if it meant having to deal with a couple of tourists onboard at the same time.
The next job, Kerbin side, was to refuel the fuel tug. I executed an entirely inordinate amount of faffing about and failing as part of this and it was all quite embarrassing…but we got there. I actually had to launch another booster up just to restart the darn thing, because I forgot to extend the solar panels - again. It was amusing to see the high-TWR, almost empty, launcher, run into reentry heat temperature issues during the ascent, though.
Turning on the lights on the fuel tug…sigh.
Bon voyage, fuel tug! The next step was to find the 9 tons of fuel I also left in orbit without electricity.
The heavy refueller SSTO headed back to the surface to be recovered. Never going to use that design again, it was painful…I’m looking forward to more powerful first stage engines so I can make simpler, more powerful designs.
Meanwhile, the fuel tug headed to the Mun to join the Mun orbital station. Again, it is unlikely I’ll ever use it again, I wasn’t happy with the design…but it’ll act as a fuel reservoir for lander missions, so it won’t go to waste.
Then it was time for Valentina to jump into the passenger ferry and go grab the Mun lander and bring it back to the station. Bob came along for the ride.
The Lander was refuelled and docked to the Mun orbital station. The Lander’s scientific equipment was reset in preparation for the next mission.
Valentina ate some snacks and proceeded to jump back in the lander and headed back to the surface for more adventures and science.
The descent burn was badly timed and wasteful, but we didn’t crash on landing, so that was something! Valentina went for a wee stroll, planted a flag and enjoyed the views.
The return to orbit was a bit exciting. I had forgotten that I really did a rather minimalist job with the delta-V margins on this one. I pretty much turned straight prograde after the legs retracted and did what I thought was a relatively efficient ascent, but only got to a 20km x 20km orbit with 5 units of fuel / oxidiser left.
The tourists came along while the HECS-controlled ferry descended to a lower orbit to grab the lander and bring it back up to the station.
The final docking included a bit of acrobatics as the station only has a docking port on each end, meaning a somersault was required on the station’s part to provide both ships a place to dock.
After that, it was time for Bill and the tourists to head back to Kerbin to return science experiments and to bring the tourists safely back to Kerbin’s surface.
It was here that I remembered why I wasn’t happy with the ferry design. I left most of the fuel at the Mun station, thinking it would be more useful there…but forgot that the ferry isn’t well suited for aerobraking (non-retractable solar panels) and now doesn’t have enough fuel reserves to come down to a reasonable LKO orbit for rendez vous. So…I’m currently doing what feels like a million 60km periapsis passes to get down safely enough for an SSTO rendez-vous.
I think from now on the ferry will stay in Mun orbit as a lander recovery vessel…until I get a better lander, at which point both the lander and ferry might head to Minmus where life is a bit easier.
But a good game is a good game, and the graphics don’t bother me, to be honest. There’s a medium-term plan to get my gaming space back, but all in good time.
