Bob Stranded Again

Now that we proved we could dock and refuel, time for a quick run to the Mun in the lander to test it out.

It took more ΔV than I expected. Hmmm. We did have a fun eclipse on the way there.

OK, here we go:

Ummm, nice "landing" Bob. Let's see if we can right ourselves.

Right side up... but wait! All the engines exploded! Great. I suppose we should try to mount a rescue.

Well here's the rescue craft. Added a few more tanks to the shuttle so that it can reach 70km orbit without using any RCS. Managed to dock OK for refueling:

Off to rescue Bob. Let's take a page from 2010 and use the fuel tanker as a booster rocket. Let's put it on a free-return path to the Mun:

Nice plan but our orbit did not end up looking like that. It was close enough though.

Thrusting! The docked ships wiggled a lot, making ground control nervous, but it worked in the end.

Near the Mun! Time to undock!

Let's get the tanker back to Kerbin first. Let's go Lodfrey:

And he landed safely! Hooray!

Ok let's try to rescue Bob:

Great, another "landing", poor Derler. And 45km away from Bob, so too far for him to jetpack over. And we lost one engine :(

After many, many, many tries managed to take off again. Lost another engine, but luckily that made us symmetrical again.

We made it back to Kerbin!

And landed mostly intact.

I think we need to do some more testing before we're ready for Jool. At least we need to move the engines up and the landing legs lower. And I suppose we have to go get Bob.