I was screwing around with setting up a space station when I saw an object go flying through the Kerbin system and remembered that enough time had passed for the starter asteroid cloud to start passing by. I've almost maxed out the tech tree (I like playing with the restrictions of campaign mode) so I hastily slapped together a rocket to catch the next intercept. Given my past difficulties with docking it was absolute miracle that I managed to catch it on the far edges of the system, but the rocket used almost all of it's fuel just getting there so I couldn't do anything with it.
I have a tendency to build rockets to exactly the capability that I think they'll need, which usually results in them being inadequate for the job (as the field of stranded landers on the Mun can attest). I don't like having a bunch of extra rocket left over at each stage of a mission, because then I have to plan around the thing.
For the next asteroid though, I didn't want to screw around. It was a class B instead of the first's C and would pass much closer to Kerbin, but I'd wasted enough time to screw up again. So I did what probably everyone has done with the latest version and made this:
It practically walks off the launch pad and burns up all the booster stages just getting
near orbit, but the main stage left over is enough to put the robotic catcher almost anywhere in Kerbin's SOI. This is great, because the boosters are automatically disposed of and the rest will be on some weird unique orbit. Turns out though, class B's are lighter than I expected, so the catcher was able to put it at a perfectly planar 5000km orbit just waiting for a science team, with over 3/4 of its fuel left. After I get all the science out of it, maybe I'll crash it into the ocean.
Feeling pretty good about that, mastering the rather difficult new feature on the
third second attempt.
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Topic: Kerbal Space Program: Now Hiring Optimistic Astronauts for Dangerous Munission (Read 1508855 times)