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[MarcAFK]

Partly the info dump, partly because I've been busy making a stock R-7, well, stock except for the paint job.

[GreatWyrmGold]

R-7?

We design an automated rescue craft. We stats, of course, with the part that will come back to Kerbin.


_{I briefly considered giving it wings and a jet engine before realizing that that was unneeded and that the wings wouldn't fit in the heat shield.}

Next is the stage which will go to Minmus and return.


_{If it wasn't for the poor TWR, it might be able to reach LKO.}

Next, we have the orbital workhorse.


_{It has less Δv than the Minmal stage, but a lot more thrust.}

Finally, some solid boosters...


_{These should provide enough thrust to let this behemoth reach orbit. I think.}

...and then odds and ends like more solar panels and struts, and we've got a rocket.
Note to self: Re-install KW Rocketry. Those ginormous SRBs and whatnot should help with these kinds of issues.

Anyways, we're exploiting the MechJeb unit's ability to act as a probe body to send the thing over there. Thanks to thrust limitation on the smaller SRBs, they all run out at about the same rate, and we can discard them at the same time (66 seconds in, 3800 meters up). Once we do so, we hear some kind of explosion.


_{Wait, aren't those the three Poodle units? ...I think we needed those...}

Well, we've still got a 1.33 TWR, so we'll still be rising, and we should have enough Δv, given how overbuilt the Rescue Stage was in that regard. I check, determine that the decouplers stayed on, and get rid of them. They're light, but no reason to drag 'em up, neh?
The gravity turn is executed. It is amended as the Time to Apoapsis is noted to be under 18 seconds and dropping. About two and a half minutes in, the upper half of the tanks run dry, and the three radial engines on it...keep running, keeping the thrust very high but the isp sub-optimal. Huh. We run out of fuel in that stage, and activate the Rescue stage...20,000 meters up, with a TWR just under 0.8. Still, as fuel was burned, the craft lightened...slowly...ever so slowly...eventually, we got the time to apoapsis to start increasing! (The TWR was still under 0.9, by the way. Weird, but yay!) It's a pretty steep ascent, though; this isn't a very efficient orbit. Hopefully, the lower stages gave enough velocity to us that our craft can get to orbit and still have enough fuel for its mission.
The mass drops to 30 tons and below. The TWR rises above 1. I shift the angle down a bit. The five-minute and 48-kilometer marks are passed, the former a bit after the latter. Fuel is around 60% at this point. Time to apoapsis: Almost 38 seconds, and rising. The craft is turned from 70 degrees from vertical to 40.
(I'm using MechJeb, so I can focus on non-attitude tasks. Like flying a spacecraft when three of its engines are knocked off and you need to burn the orbital insertion fuel to get to space.)
Much as I predicted, we continued to push that apoapsis up. I flatten more, wishing I had done so earlier. The apoapsis is pushed above 70 kilometers, and we're a bit above 65. Fuel: Just over 47%. No time for a manueuver node; I just start burning prograde and hope for the best, even as we begin to fall...


_{Fun fact: As I took this screenshot, the music stopped.}

Fuel drops. So do we. I notice that throttle is at 1/3 (when did this happen?), so I turn it up. I also turn the nose of the spacecraft up, even with the horizon; we're still falling. And we're entering the thick middle atmosphere.


<sub>Remember that bit where I said I installed Deadly Re-Entry?

Now you do.</sub>

Apparently, blasting through the air at over two kilometers per second is a bad idea. I try to turn the nose up, but...


<sub>Was that important?

MechJeb windows and control just vanished. That was definitely important.

And there go the engines.

This thing is just surrounded in an aura of fireballs.

Wait, I saw the Crew Hatch indicator for a second there--did the cockpits survive?

Yup, that's a cockpit. And another. Holy carp! Do I even need the heat shield? ...Well, the parachutes don't look so good.</sub>

Remarkably, the main fuel tank and the Kerbal Return Unit made it to Kerbin successfully.


<sub>It's flying pretty well, actually. Better than some of my planes.

The landing needs work, though.</sub>

According to the Flight Report, the solid boosters hit the Poodle tanks and knocked them off. This is an obvious thing to fix. Less obvious is adding a bit more fuel and a Poodle engine to the upper stage, giving it more Δv and more thrust. But the obvious thing is...a less obvious fix.


_{Do not adjust your monitors. Do not call the rocket scientists insane. We're not Junior, but we know what we're doing.}

The theory is that the small SRB will allow us to toss the other SRBs away from the rocket, stronger than a Seperatron. Also, we have a truss decoupler. Anyways, there was a staging mistake when fiddling with stuff, and so we have to adjust staging before launch.
Launch is a bit slower, and I think we might have lost some struts. Oh well.


_{Is it just me, or does that strut end in mid-air?}

The craft is spinning, more than even MechJeb's mastery can deal with. Still, we're pointing straight up, so for now it doesn't matter.
The fateful 66-second mark comes, and...


_{Stuff is exploding, but it isn't attached to us so we don't care!}

It's not pretty, but it works. Well, something works, dunno what. We start with a TWR around 1, but build up acceleration as the craft drops fuel. Good thing, too--we're under 40 m/s, and keep falling until after TWR exceeds 1.


_{Can exhauts hit fuel lines and slow us down?}

Something drops our throttle, and we begin losing speed. I bring it back up. Bad enough last time, potentially disastrous this time. We lose something like 10 m/s from that error. With full throttle and rising TWR, we manage to push our speed up past 50 m/s. Past 100. To 125 as we start the gravity turn. We get it to 200 right as we eject the three Poodle boosters.


_{Is it just me, or does the Minmus Rescuer look a lot like some starship now?}

We keep going up, but time to apoapsis is staying at a constant 14.7 seconds, so we increase our angle for now. Not much--60 to 70 degrees--but it means less horizontal momentum, which means a less efficient orbital burn.


_{Yeah, that's definitely an awesome starship-looking thing.}

As TWR increases and time to apoapsis nears 40 seconds, I begin to flatten out the angle of attack. (Is it still called that when you don't have wings?) We discard the lower stage around 40,000 meters.


_{This part looks less like an awesome starship.}

Apoapsis is up to 71km by 60, but we're over a minute out so I can set up a crude maneuver node. The estimated burn time is about two minutes and I get back with about 20 seconds until the node, still just in the atmosphere. Whee.


<sub>Looks starshippier from the front or, to an extent, behind than it does from the front.

Vanity isn't a sin for rockets.</sub>

When we end the burn, we have an orbit just above 84-by-70*. We have a bit over three km/s of Δv left, more than enough to get to Minmus and back. "More than enough" is generally called for.

*How I think of an orbit with an apoapsis of 84 and a periapsis of 70. Well, 84.3 and 70.3, but eh.

Anyways, we do a bit of a plane-change maneuver, bringing the orbital difference from 6.0 degrees to 0.4. For some reason, I can't get it lower than that. I prepare to actually burn, and KAC (Kerbal Alarm Clock) helpfully reminds me about the manuever node. (I really appreciate all you do and will let me do, KAC, but you're annoying sometimes.) By a quirk of timing, I start burning just as the sun rises over the horizon.


_{A beautiful quirk of timing, even if it comes close to making me miss the end of the burn.}

We quickly and easily get a very, very good encounter with Minmus.


<sub>That's 24,000 meters, not kilometers? I'm...I'm not messing with that.

Okay, it looks a little like a starship. Or at least a clunkier Firefly-class transport.</sub>

So, we warp to the node, then burn.
The burn was estimated at 6 seconds, but turned out to be about a minute. What the hell, burn time estimator? Now we won't get that lovely encounter, we'll probably be lucky to encounter at all. Why did you screw up so much, any--


_{...In my defense, when I set up those fuel lines I thought that the main tank would hold up until like the very end.}

Ah. With only the 300 kN of thrust from the LV-909's, we couldn't accelerate fast enough. Phooey. And we've got under 1900 m/s of Δv left.

Well, I was right about one thing...


_Damn.

A few hours later, though, a retrograde burn brings us to a similar encounter to the one we lost.


_{Is this a cool-looking spaceship, or is it just cool-looking because it's a spaceship?}

I panic when I see the KAC timer tick down below the three-minute mark it's supposed to warn me at, only to realize after I've slowed to 1x time that that's the time until it warns me. Oops. I guess I just don't trust my new toy yet.


_{Still no reason not to trust space to look awesome, though.}

I don't burn perfectly, but a 63-km encounter is still pretty good, methinks.
Alright. The rocket has been in space four days, twenty minutes, almost exactly. We're twelve megameters from Kerbin. How long until we enter Minmal influence?


_{Good thing kerbals can go without nutrients for extended periods of time.}

I take a breather before accelerating through those days, and notice something neat about my currently-projected orbit.


<sub>Of course, the Minmus encounter will toss that periapsis way up, but it's still a neat ratio. Eccentricity 0.973; I wonder what 0.98 or 0.99 would look like.

And here we are, way above Kerbin, eight days (and change) out, fifteen minutes from Minmus.</sub>

I set up a capture maneuver.


<sub>Good, crcular-ish orbit.

Wha...? Must have clicked on Eve. Not today, Gilly, maybe later.</sub>

As I zoom in to prepare for the burn, I notice a fatal flaw of the redesign.


_{Can you spot it? If so, you're cleverer than old-me was. Or you just have fewer rocket bits in the way and have hindsight powers.}

Well...I guess it's a good thing the Poodle's out of fuel, so some hardware-assisted lithobraking won't cripple the vessel. Unless it makes a devastating explosion, but empty fuel tanks shouldn't explode...right?


_{We distract ourselves by looking at pretty pictures of Minmus.}

Yet again, the predictor gives me a burn time way, way lower than the actual; yet again, I fail to expect it.
Well, the craft's been journeying nearly nine days, so you know what time it is?


_{Time to bring that up to just over nine days, then burn to start coming down!}

As it happens, I didn't end up picking that point, on the opposite side of the orbit. I picked a spot 90 degrees past the originally-chosen point!
I do a little math. With our current mass and thrust, our acceleration will be about 13.4 m/s² to start. The burn will be 91.8 m/s, so we'll need almost seven seconds to do it. Hence, I should start about four seconds out. Better than the one-second guesstimate provided by the game.

The estimated and actual trajectories were both much further from the target than anticipated. Whoops. I prepare another node, 68.5 m/s, so about five seconds. I screw up, distracted by the modded-in solar panels which seem to not have an Extend option (but I added other ones so it's fine), but my trajectory looks fine.


_{Much steeper than it looked from above, though.}


And it's getting late, so I should probably end this one on a cliffhanger.

[BFEL]

And it's getting late, so I should probably end this one on a cliffhanger.

NUUUUUUUUUUU!

WE MUST SEE HOW YOU SCREW THIS UP!

My money is on "Kerbals die when the rescue-ship lands on them"

[BigD145]

MechJeb will land RIGHT on top of another vehicle. Directly. It's damn good at that.

BOOM

[SOLDIER First]

What was the fatal flaw of the redesign?

[GreatWyrmGold]

My money is on "Kerbals die when the rescue-ship lands on them"

Hey!

MechJeb will land RIGHT on top of another vehicle. Directly. It's damn good at that.
BOOM

I don't have Landing Autopilot researched yet. Even if I did, I understand that it's a bit on the fuel-inefficient side, and I'm good at fuel-inefficient landings all on my own.

What was the fatal flaw of the redesign?

What, the one that made it to Minmus? I haven't found it yet.


Anyways, I'd say that I hadn't updated just to increase tension, but it was actually due to a combination of RL stuff and finishing this. So, yeah. It's uploaded now, so I'll be able to get to work on the update.

[GreatWyrmGold]

We now return to: Bay12 Space Program!

Much to my gladness, I can switch to things from the Tracking Station.

Once we descend to about 20 kilometers above the cyan Minmal surface, I have a bit of a burn to kill our horizontal speed.


_{It's a useful thing, not falling sideways.}

4,000 meters later, we're drifting sideways less than a meter and a half per second and pointing straight up, ready to kill vertical velocity. Our TWR is apparently exactly 29 at this point.
Ten kilometers above the surface, and we're falling at nearly 95 m/s (with a horizontal speed of almost 3.5 m/s, somehow). Over the next most-of-a-kilometer, I reduce it to less than three m/s.
4500 meters up, we've got almost 60 m/s of velocity. Decimating velocity, literally. Unless I've got the literal definition backwards.
Just under two kilometers up, and we're tilted at 70 degrees to bring us a bit closer to the poor marooned kerbonauts. Vertical speed around 40, horizontal around 8. At the end, we're going up and sideways at 25 m/s. Oops.
One kilometer. SASS off, following the Surface-Retrograde marker. (Which is something I'd like MechJeb to do, but whatever.) We burn to kill velocity, or at least reduce it. We go from 34 m/s (combined) to about 3.5, and also go up. Horizontal speed (currently) 2.3; I can probably just burn up from here on out.
500 meters. Burn from a bit over 20 m/s to less than 2 m/s. I can see my shadow.
200 meters. 15 m/s to zero(ish). We're definitely getting close.
100 meters. 8 m/s to -4. Oops.
40 meters. 7 m/s to less than one.
13 meters. 2 m/s to -2. Oops.


<sub>Told ya I was good at wasting fuel.

Aaand flawless landing!

Well, we're a bit far from the target. Also, we're on our side. But other than that, flawless!</sub>

Halfway through Day 23 of Minmushot, Jeb sees the rescue rocket coming down. He alerts his newfound companion...Archibald?!?


_{I know I didn't send you up...alright, you're getting a refluff and being added back into the canon. And you're getting a rename.
   
Little comic I just made.}

Jeb fills his pack with half of what little monopropellant he could scavenge from the debris of their two rockets and other useful trinkets before preparing to jetpack to the rocket.


_{It's funny because it's true.}

Jeb gets a decent arc going.


_{It'll take  afew minutes to get there, but that's pretty darn fast. It's like...um...ignoring vertical speed, almost 200 km/h. So, about terminal velocity.}

4.5 km above "sea level". The plateau is around four kilometers high here, so I should probably start slowing my fall. So I do. While checking to see if I have a visible shadow, I start going up, reaching a potential apoapsis of 4.8 km ASL. I slow down and--hey, what's that?


_{A photograb opportunity, of course.}

4,300 meters ASL. Slowing down to zero. Not rising this time. Again at 4,000. Again at 3,900. And 3,800. When is the ground? I don't want to miss it. And by "miss" I mean "unexpectedly hit".
Every hundred meters or so, I'm killing my falling and quicksaving. At random intervals, I'm fiddling with my horizontal speed. At 3,550, I fear I might not hit 3,500, so I kill vert. I'm wrong, but at 3,500 I see my shadow. And also that I'm moving horizontally (towards the ship) rather quickly. I slow both horizontal and vertical speed, then...


<sub>"Yes! I landed!"

"Yes! I'm closer to the rocket than when I landed!"</sub>

Jeb takes a surface sample, then plants a flag in honor of the rescue.


_{Will anyone ever read this? Archie, maybe.}

Nothing left to do but hop up to the cockpit, grab on, and--


_{"The rocket hit me!"}

--that second step is a doozy. Still, Jeb hops up, and slides smoothly into the cockpit on the way down.
Now for Archibald.


<sub>"...I cannot believe I'm going to be doing exactly what that maniac just did."

"Well...no time like the present."

In layman's terms: "AAAAAAAHH!"

"Wow the scenery is really pretty from up here AAAAHH!"

Almost done.</sub>

Archibald attempts a much more vertical landing than Jeb did, coming in over the site at a fairly high altitude before redirecting his flight.



_{More comic.}

Archie takes a surface sample (ooh, we seem to be on a biome boundary!). And then he tries to hop into the front cockpit, like Jeb...


_Comic!

Three or four hops later...


<sub>Please don't fall please don't fall please don't fall--YES!

Crap, I've been drawing speech lines the wrong way this whole time!

C'mon, Archie, you were on a ladder one second and the next you were sailing through the lack of air!</sub>

A jump, a rocket-pack-jump, and a careful rocket-pack-push later, Archie's in the rocket. And we can try to take off.


_{Once they calm down.}

I manage to torque my way back up to a more vertical position, despite the fact that qweasd didn't line up with the directions one intuitively expects. Thanks to hill and torque, I manage a 45-degree angle before I give up, thanks to the engine and stuff getting in the way. I check MechJeb; we have...1,143 m/s of Δv. Now let's check the Δv map and...


_{...That's a problem.}

Well, then. We don't have enough fuel to get back to Kerbin, even if we fly perfectly. We have a few options of how to remedy this:

1. Fly another rescue craft there, with more fuel and whatnot.
2. Fly a refueling craft there. If it has excess fuel, we can try using KAS fuel lines to refuel it on Minmus.
3. Fly it to orbit around Kerbin, fly another craft to meet it, and have the kerbals EVA to that OH WAIT I suck at rendezvous and microgravity EVA.
4. Try to knock off some weight, somehow. That big fuel tank in back, maybe.
5. Send a small kethane rig up, have it mine fuel, proceed to Plan 2.

So. Which of the four plans will we do?

[Baffler]

A refueling craft will probably be easier now, but a kethane rig is useful later as well...

Nah, they've been up there long enough, I vote for option 2.

[SOLDIER First]

As I zoom in to prepare for the burn, I notice a fatal flaw of the redesign.


_{Can you spot it? If so, you're cleverer than old-me was. Or you just have fewer rocket bits in the way and have hindsight powers.}

[GreatWyrmGold]

As I zoom in to prepare for the burn, I notice a fatal flaw of the redesign.


_{Can you spot it? If so, you're cleverer than old-me was. Or you just have fewer rocket bits in the way and have hindsight powers.}

Oh, that one.
An extra fuel tank and engine were added. I wanted to land. Is that enough of a hint?

[Baffler]

Oh, I see it. The landing struts don't reach past the new engine and fuel tank.

[BFEL]

Yeah I'm just gonna say you shoulda landed a bit harder then you did, to knock the excess rocket off.

Also I say you need to at least throw the rocket as close to Kerbin as you can get it before you send another suicide craft out.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Yeah I'm just gonna say you shoulda landed a bit harder then you did, to knock the excess rocket off.

In retrospect, yes. At the time...the difference between "hardware-assisted lithobraking" and "litho breaking all my hardware" is pretty hard to determine.

[BFEL]

Yeah I'm just gonna say you shoulda landed a bit harder then you did, to knock the excess rocket off.

In retrospect, yes. At the time...the difference between "hardware-assisted lithobraking" and "litho breaking all my hardware" is pretty hard to determine.

I would guess somewhere around 10-15 m/s would be right. That's usually when things get breaky, and you have the legs to absorb what the explodey parts don't.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Alright. We have one vote for attempting to use KAS and one vote for attempting a rendezvous. Since I suck at rendezvouses and microgravity EVA, we're going to do a KAS refuel. First, I'm going to look up how to use KAS, since we seem to lack the containers. Sadly, it seems that without having prepared for this, it'll be...tough. Or impossible, more like.

I look over the options I have. I look at my rescue craft, hoping to see something I could maybe make work. I remember one little bit of KAS...could it work? I test my plan out, sending Bill and Bob into a secret late-night test.
...Oh yes, yes, this'll do just nicely...if it doesn't break the game.


First, the refueling craft.


<sub>23.5 tons of fun! And fuel, although there's a bunch of not-fuel too.

Very similar to the rocket already on Minmus.

Heptaskipper asparagus. It would look cooler if I knew how to zoom.</sub>

Completely unmanned. Completely in need of struts. Once we strut it, it's ready to go. And so we launch.


_{Dropping the first tanks...but that's not all we drop...}

Once we drop the first pair of tanks, despite having a 1.33 TWR, our speed starts dropping! Whatever caused this, it is reversed. We're still spinning, though. I may need to use the Smart ASS for the gravity turn; I don't like relying on it, but I can't deny its results. And that it knows how to deal with ships spinning, as long as they're not crappily-designed planes in a spin. (But then, I can't fly those either.)
Come 9500 meters, we drop the second set of tanks. Our TWR is still 1.09, so we're good. I have MechJeb execute the gravity turn on our spinning ship and...it tilts north despite me asking for east...starts going easter...it's doing better than I would. I wonder if the fuel transfer is what's causing the spinning? Soon we're going horizontally north-east. Then slightly down and east. Then horizontally southeast. Then mostly south mostly vertically, then vertically.
...Well, it's still probably better than I could have done in that situation. Let's add some winglets. Six of them should do.

Adding those, the craft goes straight. The first pair of tanks, engines, and winglets are dropped...starting to spin. SASS is having as much trouble as SAS. I drop the next two tanks, try to turn, and...well, it goes awry slower and slightly less than last time at least. The nose circles the mark, never dipping below the horizon. Eventually, we get there, still spinning of course. We pass 200 m/s just after 13 km ASL, so that's nice. Time to apoapsis is remaining at a constant 4.7 seconds, though, which isn't ideal. I have MechJeb angle the nose up (again, spinning), and that seems to work well enough.
One nice thing about the spinning: It makes sure the engines won't hit us when we drop them. Less-nice thing unrelated to the spinning: With one Skipper, our TWR is only 0.66, which is less than one. Time to apoapsis: Dropping. MechJeb: Requested to point us straight up to slow the inevitable. Well, inevitable unless the vessel mass drops low enough, fast enough.
22,000 meters ASL. Apoapsis in six seconds (theoretically; it's only dropping maybe 0.1 seconds per second). TWR 0.7. Pointing vertical.
22,800. "One second." TWR 0.74. We start falling after hitting 0.75.
Hm. Our upper stage has 520 kN of thrust...less than the 650 of a Skipper. Damn. But if I could just activate all of the 909's at the same time...but I can't. Damn.
22,300 m. TWR 0.8. 21,250: 0.85. We're down to a quarter of our current fuel.
...If we ditched the Skipper, we'd be dragging a lot less. But nope, TWR is about the same. Damn.
Alright. How can we do this? First, I'm ditching asparagus staging in favor of more normal staging. Second, I'm halving the fuel capacity of the last Skipper, and adding eight rather than six LV-909's. I'm also adding three radial engines to supplement the Skipper, and finally eight giant solid rocket boosters as low as the game will let me.


<sub>This won't cause us issues, right? Just to check, though, let's hit the launchpad for a decoupling test...

The explosions continued for a while. The only surviving bits were two radial engines and a Poodle, and maybe something else jetting off into the distance that I couldn't switch to.</sub>

Um. Alright, let's try moving the LV-909's up as high as they will go.


_{If we wait for the SRBs to turn off before releasing them, we'll be fine. I think.}

Naturally, the ship starts to rotate once we start it up, because screw you GWG. Aside from that...SRBs are intense. We have a TWR well over three by the end, and when the boosters run out, we're over 11 kilometers up and over 400 m/s. The spin, of course, helps keep the boosters from hitting us. I note that, once we rise above the lower atmosphere, we'll have a TWR of 1.24 or 1.25 (the game can't decide). I order the turn and, once it's done, start the burn. Sadly, the spin makes it hard for MechJeb to turn, so we start falling. Once we're pointed roughly the right way, I fire up the engines, hoping that the gimbal would help. It does.


_{This would look so cool if there was light to see by!}

We're still falling, of course. And we burn what fuel we have fast. And we--oh screw it, I'm adding two winglets per SRB and starting over. Hopefully we won't have all that spin.
Launch successful. No spin. With help from M.J, of course. I'm glad to not have to micromanage roll.


_{This stage actually looks pretty cool even without light.}

Anyways. Boosters dropped, gravity turn started. The nice thing is that, by the time you've figured all that out, you're out of the lower atmosphere and don't have to worry (so much) about losing speed to the atmosphere, so ending so fast isn't so bad. Anyways, by 26 kilometers up (roughly double what the boosters gave us) and 430 m/s (roughly what the boosters gave us), we're ditching that little...um...anti-tug, so...gut? push? Anyways, it's gone, we've just got eight LV-909's and a Poodle giving us 0.95 G of thrust. It's enough. I need to fiddle with the angle of ascent, though. MechJeb makes it easier to change your attitude, but it doesn't reduce the desire to micromanage it; it merely maximizes the efficiency. And precision. And results.
The Poodle cuts out before we or the apoapsis are out of atmosphere. Uh-oh. I mean, we have plenty of Δv in the top stage, but...do we have enough?
I set up a quick maneuver node for a circular orbit, and need to start burning basically when I switch back. I turn on the engines to help gimbal down, but...faster, faster...almost there...close enough, throttle up!
That stage lasts through orbital insertion with a bit of fuel left. Stellar. I plan to adjust inclination with the rest, and a bit of the last stage's fuel...but then notice a mistake.
No. Fracking. Solar. Panels. That was a waste of time...

I add solar panels, then relaunch.


_{Sun. That'll keep us from running...um...dry?}

Knowing what to do makes it a little quicker and easier. (Not switching windows every 10 seconds to blog about the launch probably helps.) Oh, and did I mention I remembered the solar panels?


_{How's THAT for way more power than I need? Especially since I don't even have any batteries onboard?}

I'm still on a suborbital trajectory when I ditch the penultimate stage this time. The slightly asymmetric design required for me to keep this kinda secret throws off my balance, though, which sucks since it means I start spinning. And start falling, into atmosphere. I start burning, until I realize that I'll just rise out the other side. Since I'm near periapsis, I order MJ to turn retrograde, warp to apoapsis, fix my direction a bit, and burn prograde. It's pretty easy to get into a circularish orbit, 169x166 km. I rename the ship to distinguish it from the failed one, then set up an inclination change maneuver.


_{Nice. 0.1 degrees is pretty darn good.}

I turn to the node and warp out there. Then, I burn...at full, stupid me. Why did I feel the need to try and hide my plan so slightly and clumsily?!?
Inclination difference: 3.7 degrees. Not good enough. I need to get a maneuver node at the other side.


_{Well, that's nice.}

I try to burn slower, but determine that my thrust is high enough that I can't burn as slow as I thought I could. Still, I burn slow enough. I screw up by not pausing while typing the last bit, so I end up 0.2 degrees out of line, but...who cares?
I set up another maneuver node to get me close to Minmus.


<sub>Is...is that a collision course with Minmus? I think I'm almost done, here.

Close, but still a bit low.

Very precise, but I'm still pretty sure that's a crash.
(And I couldn't duplicate the thing where I didn't crash into Minmus with 20 or 21 m/s at radial-out.)

That'll do, pig.</sub>

So. We're ready.
The burn-time indicator was pretty far off, especially since if I go above 2/3 throttle I'll get off-center; the encounter won't be quite as nice as I had hoped.


_{Understatement.}

No encounter? No closest approach, even? Wow. I need another maneuver.


<sub>Another collision course? Why am I so good at these today?

Not my best encounter, but it'll do.</sub>

I screw it up--there's just too much thrust. I don't have an encounter, but at least I have a close approach. That's it, I'm disabling half the engines.


_{Not bad. Not likely to stay that way, but still!}

Maximum thrust: 120 kN. With three engines and, say, one-third thrust, that's still 120 kN. With a 5.5 m/s burn and a 15-ton vehicle, we'll be accelerating at eight m/s² for not enough time. So. Each tick is one-fifteenth of 100%, it seems; that's 1.6 m/s² for three and a half seconds. ...I don't much like this. Well, I'll just tap shift a few seconds out, then x when I'm out of Δv needed.


_{Good enough.}

It takes a week for the craft to reach Minmal influence. Once it does...


_{171 m/s with 360 kN max thrust and a 15-ton craft...at max thrust we have 24 m/s² for seven seconds and change. At two-thirds thrust, it's just under 11. Just under two-thirds for twelve seconds it is.}

My eventual orbit isn't perfect, but it works. There's just one minor issue...


_{Don't see it? Look for the terminator. Good advice, whether you're a solar-powered probe or a Conner.}

I said minor, even though we'd quite possibly run out of power before landing if we took too long. Why? Because I intend to come down hard and fast. (Until I slow down.)
Time for math. (It's how I make up for heavy MechJeb use.) On Minmus, the surface acceleration from gravity is 0.491 m/s². I'll assume a constant pull of 0.49 m/s² to keep things simple. If I kill my velocity at 2,000 meters, it will take 55.33 seconds for me to reach an altitude of 500 meters. Thus, I will have accelerated to just over 27 m/s by then, and could kill off my velocity in three seconds, which would take me less than 75 kilometers down.
...Let's see how far I can take this.
If I waited until 200 meters, I would accelerate to nearly 30 m/s, which would take me 3.75 seconds to burn off, during which time I would fall roughly 56 meters. The remaining 144 meters would take 17 seconds to fall, and I would accelerate to 8.33 m/s. The crash tolerant for the fuel tank I'm using is...6 m/s. Shoot. Well, if I waited until 100 meters, I would accelerate to 30.5 m/s, which would take 3.8 seconds to burn off, which would leave me roughly 42 meters above the ground; my final impact velocity would be just over 4.5 m/s.
So, in short, my plan is to burn into a crashing trajectory with Minmus, kill my velocity two kilometers above the cold, hard surface, free-fall, slow myself a measly hundred meters above said surface, and then fall the rest of the way, trusting that my rounding, approximations, and poor understanding of KSPhysics won't leave me splattered.
I'm quicksaving before I land, by the way.

I fiddle with the retrograde and prograde markers on a maneuver node and discover, much to my surprise...


_Yay!

...that I don't need to burn normal or antinormal to hit the spot! I try to overshoot a smidge, so I will be more or less over the site when I kill my velocity. Now for maneuver math!
50.5 m/s of Δv. 8 m/s² of acceleration. About twelve seconds. Works. Also works: Eight at twelve. Half throttle it is.

...Geez, just thinking about this maneuver is making me shiver. I'm not envying future-GWG (past-GWG to you), who has to actually do this...
The math works out. The math works out. The math works out. The math works out.


_GODDAMMIT!

I have other problems right now.
I turn the rocket prograde and, on the map screen, burn slowly. I watch the line flow across the Minmal surface...not straight towards the site. Time to burn normal, because I screwed the perfect stuff way up.


_Yes!

This is working okay now. I zoom in to get even closer, and to overshoot just a little. I see why some experienced players don't use maneuver nodes much.
There we go. Overshooting just a little. Quicksaving. Just...significantly over 45 minutes until we come close to the ground. I warp ahead and--aw crap.


_{Curse you, basics of planetary motion!}

Another maneuver. 18.2 m/s. At one-third acceleration (8 m/s), that's a bit over two seconds. At two ticks of acceleration (3.2 m/s), that's a bit over six seconds. I wish I didn't have to calculate so many maneuvers.
We're close.


_{Very eccentric orbit there.}

I hope that we don't get screwed over by this. Anyways, I burn normal to get closer. Then, I burn retrograde, because...


_{In theory, we'd orbit forever. In practice, we'd plow into the side of a cliff eventually.}

It doesn't take long, and we're only a few kilometers above the surface. It's now just a matter of waiting and performing my plan:
1. Kill velocity at 2,000 meters above the surface.
2. Kill velocity at 100 meters.
3. Try not to panic.

Well, step 1 goes awry. See, it takes a bit to kill my velocity, and while doing so I fall. Fast. The speed of velocity-killing is further hurt by my slight off-centeredness. I don't actually kill my velocity until I'm one kilometer above the surface. Time to re-math.
If I kill my velocity starting at 70 meters...I'll have 21.33 m/s to kill, and at 1/3 thrust I'll kill it in 2.66 seconds, falling 28 meters, leaving me with 42 to deal with. Oh. That worked nicely.
Alright, just gotta quicksave, then wait until I'm 70 meters above the ground, then burn straight up at 1/3 thrust, then fall. Minmus's gravity is low, it'll work. Trust the math. It's just algebra, you mastered that years ago.
Oh God those numbers are going down fast.
500 meters. 19 m/s. Almost exact agreement. So close to landing.
150 meters. 27 m/s total velocity.


_{Above this screenshot is an explosion.}

CRAP I DIDN'T BURN IN TIME OR ENOUGH! Or something. Could someone double-check my math?
Another explosion. I need to turn my screen brightness up to almost 100% (I usually manage it at 0%) to see what survived. Not much. Well, that's what quicksaves are for.
I will start at 100 meters this time. I slightly overkill my vertical velocity by 18 meters, going up to 19 before going back down.
Before I unpause...it'll take 6.23 seconds to land. 6.23*0.491=3.06, which is easily within crash tolerance. It'll be okay.


_...

GODDAMMIT I HATE YOU MATH.

Thankfully, I quicksaved right before the crash, so I should be able to manage a gentle landing. I do, but burning right before means I pogo up, and since I wasn't quite straight up-and-down, I'm on my side. My true altitude shoots up; either I flew off a hillside or I screwed that up way more than it looked like.
F9.
I barely get any time before everything explodes. Great, when did I re-quicksave?
F9.
I pogo. I go over the drop.
F9.
Things explode.
...
Alt-F12. Nothing is selected. Alt-F12. F9. Hey, I survive this time!

...

Shut up. My math failed, what option did I have?

Anyways. I've landed.


_Kinda.

We're rolling, though. And while we roll, we lose electric charge. And when we're out of electric charge...well...
Not much I can do. Might as well answer your question. What was the test?
(Just pretend you cared.)


_{Simple, really. I put two pipe end points on one vehicle and then took one off, then linked them.}

See? I can just yank the spare end off and connect them! In theory. Pretty sure I can't do it from over 15 kilometers away. Or while rolling down a never-ending hill.

...

So.
Um.
What now?