Not dead.. just resting

I actually have a lot to write about, but I've had to decide whether it was better to play or better to post. Gee.. guess which one won?

So,

So what did you just see there?

See rover base. See rover base deploy to Duna. See parachutes. See parachutes rip the lower half of the rover base and leave 2 Kerbals stranded.

There was a resuce mission.... yeah, not so good. That'll be the next post, the 'Space Train'...

Gilly!

I had intended to drop this lander on to Eve when I launched it, but changed my mind when I had arrived and opted to try to land on Gilly instead. I made a few mistakes, like entering the EVE SOI oribting the wrong direction, so I had to correct that. The orbital plan for Gilly was about 75 degrees off mine, so I had to correct for that. Lastly, Gilly is tiny, almost too tiny. When I did finally get the lander on the surface (using only RCS, which was overkill) I actually had to thrust in to the moon to stop it from sliding around.

Gilly is so small it is almost like having to dock with a station just to reach it. Once there, the gravity is so low that you have to force the probes down. Time compression isn't available for a lot of it because you are too close.

It is also very rough, so I had to fly around some to find a semi-level landing spot.

But, in the end I did get a couple nice Eve-rise shots.

I do not know if a rover will even stay on the ground here. I'll find out someday. 

Next on the BL, Eeloo sat

My next shot was to put a satellite in orbit around Eeloo. I've never been there before, so it was actually something new to see. Using my standard HLV rocket I tossed this tiny satellite out to Eeloo. I don't use any mods for targeting nor do I do any thrust to weight or delta V checks either. I either make it or I don't. I also don't F5/F9.

Hitting Eeloo is a bit of a patients test, unless you arelike me and don't have time for that, then you just take the Jeremy Clarkson approach and yell, "POWER!" while holding down the Shift key like a mad-man.

This was my end intercept angle, really steep.The burn to slow down used up a ton of fuel.

I did find an interesting glitch with this rocket. As I burned fuel the center of mass moved aft and the ship started to develop a mild rotation which started to become unmanagable after a while. I believe this is because the 'umbrella' antenna on the nose was off center and with the lowering fuel supply and CoG shift I started to have some serious attitude issues (control-wise of course, emotionally I always have attitude issues). I was able to dampen this issue by shifting the fuel in the tanks as far forwards as possible. (using ALT+Right Click on the tanks)

Anyhow, I eventually burned down an orbit to Eeloo which I then tweaked in to a polar orbit. Another one off the Bucket List. 

Yes, I know the sat should be pointing more towards the sun, that is where Kerbin is, but due to an over-site  the solar panels would be blocked. My excuse here is that the satellite will rotate periodically towards Kerbin to transmit reports. (never mind that the solar panels shouldn't be able to be of much use this far out, that is going to change in the future versions)

The Bucket List

I made a bucket list a couple weeks back and then 0.19 came out and I kind of forgot about it. Last night I restarted it. First on the list was to place a synchronous satellite over the Mun. However half way there I found a footnote that says I can't do that because the Mun doesn't rotate fast enough, so the orbit would be outside the SOI. So that goes off the list. Instead I put the satellite in to a polar orbit around the Mun.

Not a big deal, but it is the start of the list (it has over 200 items on it). I'll get it posted soon.

To Laythe... almost

Below is a pictorial narrative of my attempt to get to Laythe for the first time. I built a rocket with four rovers to drop on Laythe. Now a couple details I should mention. I knew Laythe had an atmosphere and was similar to Kerbin, but I didn't know how big the oceans were or I would have added rockets to fine tune the rover descents (as we will find out it didn't matter).

After a nice launch using my heavy lift rocket I dragging out behind Duna and headed for Jool. Fairly boring stuff until I do the aerobraking off the atmosphere of Jool at 107km which almost ended the mission right there.

Here is where the story however goes to crap. After a few burns to get in to orbit around Laythe...

.. I find out that I can't cut any of my rovers free from the ship (pairing the Jr docking ports is 'messy'). For now it will sit in orbit around Laythe. I didn't even get a T-shirt, just this screenshot, enjoy. 

-Lego

Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be having fun.

Let me catch up on the last few days.

Well, given the large amount of orbital debris floating in space in low orbit (90km-110km) I was having trouble targeting my station. So I made a couple attempts to deorbit the debris. Here are a couple pictures of the attempts:

The idea was to use the lander legs to brace against the debris (the orange tank) and try and deorbit it. It ended up doing some good (the orbit dropped to 80km90km) but it began tumbling so bad there was no hope of doing it again. I gave up and deorbited the deorbiter.

Frustrated I opted to work on the station. I had enough fuel to try to move it in to a Mun orbit, so I thought what the hell?

Minor glitch, I didn't have the station balanced, and it went all Gumbi on me. I then made a control mistake, and well.... you can see for yourself...

Dammit! This screenshot is only a partial story, a lot of those debris are multiple pieces.

Screw it, I'll just launch a new station...

... or not. I was working quickly, I was tired, I was frustrated. At this point I only had only working craft (the probe on Minmus) and a sky full of debris. 

RELOAD! (F9)

Hey, the station is still there in this one, but now the probe isn't. Fine. I deorbit the station and enjoy the light show, then I am off to start a new save game.

 

Well, that was cool looking!

Next time up, anew save game and the work on a real heavy lift rocket...