Keep it coming Sean, loving the story of disaster and exploration.
It's now shaping up to be more exploration than disaster, thankfully.
So, Bob.
That little purple blip you might notice in the crater is Jebediah and his ship. Initially Bob steered his mining ship towards him, but soon spotted a different blip.
Bill is still sitting in that crater with nothing but his suit. Jeb can wait.
Bob was never a master of the precision landing though.
17 kilometers to Jeb, 5 and change to Bill. Eh. Good enough.
The drills are deployed, during which we find out that the tug
really can't sustain a mining operation. Its four solar arrays, even in full light, don't even provide enough power to run a single drill. Not indefinitely at least. But there is enough power storage that leaving the drills running for an hour or two won't be a problem.
Let's return to Bill. Having spotted the approaching lander, he immediately takes to the sky and starts making his way to it. Maybe there's something useful left in the wreckage. Surely it couldn't have successfully landed.
Yeah, it's still kind of a long trip, even five kilometers.
Pretty view from up here. Alright, almost there! I wonder how much fuel I got left?
...Crap.
Oh well. At least the lander is actually intact.
After a long and arduous journey on foot, Bill is finally at the lander. At which point yet another artifact of hasty retrofitting from a tug surfaces.
There is no longer anywhere to stand on after climbing up to the engine pods. And no new access ladder was installed.
Welp.
After an even longer, even more arduous journey, which involved smashing headfirst into one of the solar arrays, and getting Bob to raise the landing legs to make the hatch reachable via jumping...
Perfect. ...Except now the craft has
even less power. *sigh*
A fairly large number of hours later, the craft is finally filled up, with fuel, monoprop, and Kethane all together. Time to rescue Jeb.
With fuel now being abundant, a more efficient "rocket up and straight down" approach is discarded in favor of the more entertaining "rocket hovercraft" method.
While the wasting of fuel is horrendous, you can't deny the results.
Hi, Jebediah! Look what we got, a working mining ship! Now we can load up on fuel, and...
...
You know, a rescue mission only works when you have at least as many empty seats as you have people in need of rescue.
Or at least a way to refuel the craft of the other guy.
Welp.
Meet the Mun Supply Delivery Probe.
(Yes, I managed a pinpoint-perfect landing right next to the other two craft. The probe having a great amount of fuel helped. The uneven mass distribution did not.)
So, what is the probe, then? The answer lies in the recent update to KAS. It has introduced Containers, and a set of new functions to regular old items. I shall explain soon.
Jebediah gets out of his craft and goes to check out the probe. He hauls the containers off to where they will be used.
First things first, he takes out two Pipe Connectors from one container, and links the two mining ships up.
Opening another container, he procures a set of replacement solar panels, and replaces Bob's ship's solar arrays that Bill so carelessly broke.
He then takes a command seat out of the third container and...
...sticks it on the probe. Because he's Jeb, and he's staying here.
Bill, on the other hand, has had a little too much adventure, and decides to leave on Jebediah's ship once it's properly refueled.
...he should probably be reminded of the meaning of the words "properly refueled".
Stay tuned for the next episode of the Kerman Brothers' Misadventures in Modded Space!
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Topic: Kerbal Space Program: Now Hiring Optimistic Astronauts for Dangerous Munission (Read 1505812 times)