Kerbal Pickup 2001 B Mass: 446.535 Cost: 104,990 Class: Kerbal Rescue Ship Crew: None until two
This is the same ship as the Kerbal Pickup 2001, the only difference is the 12 boosters strapped to the 4 main boosters all fire at once instead of 12 then 4.
That minor change made this mission a success. We were able to rendezvous with the Kerbal Pickup 2000 and bring back the final Kerbals who got to touch the first asteroid.
We had plenty of fuel to turn the ship around, burn hard, and land back on Kerbin safely even without a heat shield as that extra fuel pretty much saved our 2 little Kerbalnaughts.
This is also a great example to pack parachutes even if you don’t plan on using them.
Kerbal Pickup 2000 Mass: 511.853 Cost: 120,744 Class: Kerbal Rescue Ship Crew: None until Two
When the team on the Sloth Scraper Asteroid Grabber disengaged from the rock and attempted to return home, only to find they only had enough fuel to end up in an orbit that wasn’t even close to home we all had some fear develop in our hearts.
Kerbals are not cheap and here at S.S.A. we care about our kerbalnaughts even if they didn’t cost us an arm and a leg.
This mission has a slowly ticking clock as the S.S.A.G. had an orbit that ran through the Mun’s orbit and at some point in the future the Mun would cross paths with the S.S.A.G. and ram right into the ship, or worse fling the ship into a Kerbal escape trajectory.
We were able to meet up with the S.S.A.G pickup the two Kerbals and get that orbit to a safer inner orbit. But still did not have enough fuel to get home.
So that last launch, launch number 23. Had one thing missing. Once the ship was in orbit we realized it was missing a lot of battery power. In fact it had no power attached to it at all. So we made a quick little satellite, docked it to the Sloth Scrapper and then did the asteroid mission.
Sloth Scraper Asteroid Grabber Mass: 334.459 Cost: 131,323 Class: Asteroid Redirect Ship Crew: Tedrim and Maya Kerman
Have you ever bitten off more than you could chew? Well we did at S.S.A.
After finally making contact with the Class E asteroid and grabbing it with the claw, we noticed that with the remaining fuel we could only slow said asteroid down by 2m/s which is practically nothing.