i got 2 kerbals orbiting mun. after some upper stage engines failed while attempting to land my munbase, leaving the station on a death vector. i managed to abandon ship with all 3 kerbals, and put 2 of them back in orbit using most of their jetpack fuel. i attempted landing with the third kerbal with disastrous results. then i got another munbase in orbit with 3 kerbals on board who also need to be evacuated. this base stranded cause the new engines were uncontrollable and i had to eject them. the munbase consists of a couple of my 19-engine couplers, and some crew tanks (5 of them) sandwiched in between. i figure theres enough space to accomidate 18 of the little bastards, assuming jeb doesnt convert one of the modules to a bar. landing struts ladders and other features included. these parts include a large amount of descent fuel, so no extra tankage is required. reguardless after these two launches i perfected the base design, used engines that didnt suck, and rearranged my rcs thrusters as well as beefed up the structure. the capsule sits atop the whole thing with the descent stage is attached atop of that with a decoupler so it can be ejected after landing using the hover and eject technique. its configured much like an oversized abort tower, but with a lot more power.
so just got my 3rd moon base in orbit, with working engines and plenty of fuel. too much in fact, i want to lighten the load somewhat. so i decided to do a little rescue mission, to populate the base. with 5 kerbals to rescue i have something to do with all that surplus delta-v. there are also 6 kerbals on the ground occupying a rover and a wrecked ship (jeb among them, hince the wrecked ship) who would just love a place to stay. now i just need to figure out how to do a a sync orbit and rendezvous manuvers. ive already done the plane alignment, easy enough to do by eyeball (ksp's interface is good at that). and syncing orbit is just a matter of deviating slightly from the target's orbit and waiting. manuvers i learned to do playing orbiter.
the last manuver is kinda trickey. even if you get to where you can stay fairly close to the target throughout the orbit. the slight differences tend do cause a psudo-orbit where from either object's frame of reference the other object is always rotating around it. i could do the maneuver in orbiter by watching the orbital velocity parameter and trying to closely match velocity vectors while closing distance until i was in transponder range and could lock onto it with the docking mfd. the problem is (besides the fact i dont have a relative velocity gauge or docking mfd) the time it takes to do this allows both objects to follow their orbits somewhat, and its very easy to end up on a course that diverges greatly from where you had intended to be. i need more instrumentation to pull this off i figure. i could try to do it by eyeball. but the ship has plenty of fuel and the manuvers dont use much, and the last quarter tank should do the job. but im going to bed right now, i got to think about this some. maybe il post some pictures of the thing when its on the surface/rescuing kerbals.
