Kerbal Space Program First Contract 24

Channel:

TroZ

Subscribers:

909

Published on October 15, 2014 1:52:55 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGFnSCbDnwM

Game:

Kerbal Space Program (2015)

Duration: 1:01:55

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Finishing up my Kerbal Space Program First Contract with this episode, although I'll probably have more more episode to complete all the contracts that I currently have.

Ok, we are on the surface of Minmus with just a few more biomes to hit. We take off from the Midlands off of the Greater Flats, heading for the Flats to the north west. We landed in Flats on our first trip to Minmus, but we didn't have all the science instruments unlocked at that point.

We land safely, and gather all the science that we can. The Goo, Materials Bay, Thermometer, and Reports give little science, but the scismometer and Gravioli Detector give us some good data.

We then lift off and head for the Great Flats. Half way there, we realize that we've already landed there, our first location for this mission. We quickly consult with the Science Archives and determine we have missed Lowlands, and we make a course correction to land at a nearby lowlands, that are ironically at the top of a large hill.

We gather all the science we can at the lowlands, and have now used every instrument on the ship, and visited every biome on Minmus. Because the science is worth more if we bring it back to Kerbin instead of analyzing it and transmitting it, we decide to return to Kerbin directly, without stopping back at the station in orbit. We have 1/2 a tank of fuel, which should be plenty to get back to Kerbin with the efficient Atomic Rocket Motors that we have.

We blast off vertically and keep heading in that direction, as it is close to the correct direction to leave Minmus and reduce our orbital velocity to return to Kerbin. We make some corrections, but then shutdown the engine until we have left Minmus' influence, where we make another correction. We aim to be about 40 km above Kerbin, so that we slow down in the atmosphere, but not immediately land, so that we can attempt to get closer to KSC for better recovery.

We do slow down in the atmosphere, but we have just passed KSC as we do, which is about the worst possible location. After exiting the atmosphere, we slow down a bit more and adjust our orbit to attempt to re-enter the atmosphere on the day side when KSC us just about to come under us.

We aren't correct in out estimation, and we are coming down over the ocean east of KSC (maybe raising our orbit another 30 minutes would have done it). We make a big correction burn to attempt to hit land instead of water, and it works. However, we are entering the atmosphere at over 3 km/s and heading nearly straight down. We are able to close all but 1 of the solar panels before they break, and begin to use the engines to help us slow down. We put the gear out and pop the parachutes at 2.5 km, and we are slowed to 7 m/s once they open. We fire the engines to slow the landing to about 4 m/s and recover the ship.

As a result, we have returned the ship with 81.3% recovery (about 1/3 the launch cost) and a total of 4247 science! This allows us to unlock the remaining tech on the tech tree and have 647.4 science left over! We also have 3,413,730 funds, and 2 contracts remaining.

I plan to have one more episode where we complete those last 2 contracts and play with some of the stuff we have unlocked.

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