Rescue Mission: FFS

Previously on Mission Log: The Journey Home

Read from the beginning: Rescue Mission

It was all going so well fine, why did I have to make a rookie mistake after making so many accomplished professional ones?

I built a recovery vehicle, and loaded that thing up with OODLES of fuel to get there and back.

I set my sights on Minmus and high-tailed it over there, even doing a bit of homework to fine-tune the orbital transfer, trying to avoid wasting all that lovely fuel.

I got a nifty orbital insertion, ditched the superfluous stage and entered orbit around Kerban's smallest moon.

I had managed to avoid making the same mistakes this time, leaving lots of room in the capsule. I wasn't going to repeat the same mistakes of the past, I thought to myself as I came in for a landing, oh no, no definitely not, not the same mistakes at all.

I would make new ones, like making the landing gear too short to reach the ground, thereby knocking my effing rocket off as I land. The nuclear rocket I had chosen is much longer than most other rockets of the same diameter, and even though it's thrust is very low, it has VERY high efficiency, perfect for low- or zero-gravity environments. It's less perfect when it's lying, dented and useless, all by itself on the ground of a moon, hours and hours from help.

I'm not the giving up kind, especially when there are near-worthless kerbals at stake. I still had the skycrane attached, and discovered I could use an incredibly inefficient workaround, transferring fuel from the main tank up into the smaller radial tank in the skycrane, using the wee orange rockets for thrust. This worked, after a fashion, but a couple of hops towards my lad's location confirmed I couldn't do it for long before I'd completely deplete my fuel supply, so I had to get little dopeyface to leg it over to me if I was going to get both of those guys out of there.

I tried getting into mild orbit first, using his wee jetpack.

This ended up being super dangerous. It's the equivalent of firing a cute beanie baby into the sky...sooner or later he's going to come down, and it's going to make you feel super guilty. He bounced for a while (like...five minutes) before eventually coming to a stop, and then getting to his feet and dusting himself off, so I got him to walk the remaining 90% of the journey off.

I'll spare you the whining. After a very long time, I got him to the LZ (that's military-speak for landing zone). As it happens, I was right about the smaller rockets being less efficient. Turns out they're WAY less efficient...

The good news is that the Kerbals are OK. The bad news is obviously that they are once again stranded. I'm not going to make any of these mistakes again, but I do have a cunning plan up my sleeve...

To be continued...