Launched a mission to the mun to collect some data from orbit. First stage went off okay, solid rocket boosters did their job fine. Second stage did a cartwheel before leveling out but had no further trouble pushing itself into orbit and its payload 7/8s of the way into a mun encounter. Final engine stage started off without a hitch. Then i remembered I didnt have solar panels yet so i had to rely on the batteries and the alternator in the engine. The batteries didnt last the full trip to the periapsis burn qnd i had to try three times to get a burn that would correct my terrible planning, allow me to collect that scientific data, swing around the mun and back towards kerbin with only 387 m/s dv to spare, and on a near-circular orbit which would result in another mun encounter, and collision, in 3/4 of an orbit around kerbin. So i finally coerced that into an aerobraking capture at around 50km up in the atmosphere, that was the best i could do. So we coasted in and entered the atmosphere...
And then the fun began. I thought having a heat shield at both ends of the craft was sufficient, but turns out they didnt adequately cover the materials bay in the middle of the ship. It overheated and exploded before i knew what was going on.
So now the ship is cut in half, with the cockpit flying off ahead and the passenger module pagging behind. I deployed the chutes on the cockpit module, but the passenger module had no electrical batteries attached. Its spinning out of control and i have no way to deploy the chutes. Since this is in atmosphere decelerating at a hundred m/s^2, it would be suicide to try to do an EVA to deploy them. All i can fucking do is pray. And apparently the kraken had mercy because both the command module and passenger module escaped the atmosphere again before making a final descent. The command module would take half an hour to swing hack around, but the passenger module got a mere 2 minutes or something above the atmosphere. I quickly deployed jeb to deploy the chutes, and stowed him away again. Then round two began. There was still no way to control the craft at all, but thankfully this time its spin was fairly benign, and the passenger cabin was dragging behind the heat shield. No further explosions, but everything was red and the heat indicator bars were terrifyingly close to the cap. And then it slowed enough to begin to cool off. And then the chutes deployed. It landed safely and both jeb and bill survived the trip. Since the passenger module contained most of my collected data, i got that sweet, sweet science.
Then i just had to land the command module. I had bill repack the chutes just in case something went wrong and redid the staging order to ensure it would deploy on command. Then round three began. And as the command module plummeted into the atmosphere at 3km/s, i was rudely reminded that bill is a scientist, not a pilot, and shouldnt have even been in the cockpit when i was attempting reentry in the first place. So he couldnt stabilize the module on his own. So im sitting there tapping buttons to correct its spin while trying to spin it just enough to keep the tiny .625m heat shield in the way of the majority of the heat. It was just wobbling back and forth endlessly, and i swear that heat bar came within a pixel of 100% capacity multiple times, but amazingly it survived! I deployed the chutes and coasted safely to a splashdown in the middle of the ocean. With the service bay containing the experiments intact on the bottom of the command module! More science! And no deaths!
So i spent that science on some control tech and the first tier solar panels, as well as some new engines and fuel. Now its bed time.
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Topic: How did you last *own*? (Read 1352502 times)