Mounting a time-limited rescue mission for kerbal inbound to Kerbin

Mounting a time-limited rescue mission for kerbal inbound to Kerbin - Back view anonymous male military pilots wearing khaki uniform in cockpit and helmets flying armed helicopter

I have a poor kerbal who, due to poor planning by mission control (erm, me), is returning to Kerbin, but does not have sufficient fuel to enter orbit.

The situation:

  1. She has 84 days of supplies left, so I'll only get one shot at a rescue.
  2. Her current trajectory enters Kerbin SOI in 76d 0h 50m, reaches a Periapsis of 1.97 Mm at 77d 4h 56m, then escapes Kerbin at 79d 3h 2m.
  3. She has 334 m/s deltaV remaining to work with.
  4. She's in a lander can with no heat shield (the intention was to dock with a space station upon return), so I'm not sure how safe it would be to aerobrake.

Is it feasible to mount a rescue mission to intercept her as she passes through? I'm thinking I would need to treat it like a rendezvous in solar orbit by escaping to a higher orbit, waiting for her to catch up, then coming back into Kerbin and matching velocity upon intercept. I'm uncertain how to get the timing right, though, as all my other intercept missions have involved multiple phasing orbits and simple Hohmann transfers.

Any suggestions on how to figure out the calculations? Is this even viable or is she just doomed? Can I just throw raw delta-V at the problem? (sounds like a good Kerbal solution...)

The solar orbit:

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Near Kerbin:

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kerbal-space-program


Best Answer

Although it looks like your kerbal is already lost in space. I would have recommended a Munar-assisted orbital insertion:

  1. As far out as possible create a maneuver node and tweak until you can get a Mun intercept.
  2. Tweak the maneuver node to kill as much of your velocity as possible without crashing you into Kerbin - If you have enough delta-v (300 should be heaps) this should be relatively easy.
  3. This will put you into Kerbin orbit so a simple docking should be possible.


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How do you rescue kerbin?

Just point retrograde, get out and push near the engine. Originally posted by AlexMBrennan: You can get out and push. So long as you can preform EVAs then you can get out and push, otherwise you'll need to set up a rescue mission.


Rescue A Kerbal From Orbit Of Kerbin | KSP Contract Tutorials



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Images: Somchai Kongkamsri, David Peinado, Oleksandr Pidvalnyi, Pixabay

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