The Grand Minmus Adventure
I apologize for the double post, but this is simply too epic.
So, for those who don't know, Kerbin has a second moon, called
Minmus. By the time, I haven't done much exploring on it (contrarily to the Mun), only two missions on two different biomes.
And as the tech tree went further... I unlocked the drills and all the stuff. And so I told myself : "What if I did a self-sufficient heavy lander, for a very long mission ?"
And basically, that's how the
Watatsuki Heavy Lander/Base was born. Able to drill on a planet to extract ore and then convert it to useful fuel (usefuel fuel ? idk), it has proved itself capable to do a lot of cute little jumps on Minmus...
And that's how I explored 6 spots in one trip.
My trajectory, orbits excluded.For those who wonder, Minmus 1 is missing because I forgot to put the flag.
For Minmus 6 to 7, I kinda fled from the dark side to a more lit-up place (I went west), as well as exploring another biome.
For Minmus 7 to 8, welp, I had to explore the last biome, which is the pole.
Welp, things went smoothly, I had an astonishing count of 37 experiments (without counting the reports, which were already gone), and then...
I remembered the Watatsuki was meant as a base.
Meaning... It had no way of going back to Kerbin. No parachutes, no heat shield, and of course not enough fuel to land the retrobooster way.
And so... I had to ask Eirin for help. Eirin is a serie of unmanned ships meant to recover stranded Kerbals.
Luckily, it worked.And that's how I ended with science.
Lots of science.In the end, the Watatsuki proved itself quite expensive, but seeing how much work I've done in a single mission, I'd say I'm quite pleased.
Those little drilling landers also gave me an idea for unmanned drillers, who would periodically go down on a moon to drill and refuel space stations. It could be quite efficient. Free fuel for everyone !
That's all folks. Rest in space !
