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.

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