Falcon 12
Falcon 12 looked like yet another Falcon, but looks can be deceiving. The capsule had been replaced with a Delta-A capsule. This had 5 seats but only 3 would be crewed on the 6-day journey to Minmus. Kirus, Korolev, and Finni would be the first crew with a mission to get Cobalt 01 operational.
Insertion and capture went perfectly and the Freya upper stage even had a bit of fuel left, which was unexpected. The orbit was so perfectly timed that 2 minutes after capture they would start the landing burn.
“Ehrm, does the descent computer know that the base is in a deep valley?” Finni looked at the edge of the cliff that was approaching rapidly. 1 minute before the final braking burn, Kirus aborted the sequence and jettisoned the second stage of the Freya, which promptly crashed into the mountain. One brief puff of the engine made sure that Falcon 12 would not suffer that same fate, but made an accurate landing harder.
Two hops later, they parked the craft very close to the base. When they entered it the noticed the air was stale. “Why are we so low on oxygen?” Kirus said. “Why didn’t the sensors notice it before?” Finni added. “Whatever the cause, we need to fix the immediate problem,” Korolev said. “I’ll hook up the Falcon for more supplies.”
Powering up Cobalt Base
It quickly turned out that the drills had shut down due to insufficient cooling. “Can’t we make a new cooling panel?” Finni asked. “No drill means, no ore. No ore means no material kits. No material kits means no radiators.” Korolev explained. “Perhaps we can recycle some parts of the descent stage?” Kirus offered.
Turned out there were plenty of leftovers from the Cobalts transit structure that could be recycled too. Korolev and Kirus worked hard and managed to deploy a number of radiators that brought the temperature down to the levels where the drills became effective. Finally, water started to flow and crops started to grow, food would not be much though. With this mission scheduled for 20 days, it was not a problem. The followup would need to bring more supplies.
The base was impressive in size. It could house 6 Kerbals and if they could get the supply correct, it would mean a long duration was very well possible. Much like Outpost Angel was doing on the Mun.
The next day KSC radioed in with a mission for Kirus. Deploy and test the Falcon rover. No big excursions were planned, this was the deploy and ready crew, but the rover was an essential part of a larger base and since they had never driven before on Minmus, they wanted to know how it was performing. “Bit wobbly, but other than that fine KSC.” Kirus was a happy camper.
Minmus exploration
Over the course of the next 20 days, the team worked hard to get Cobalt base operational and do some exploration of the surroundings. Some of the rocks were covered in some organic material that made no sense. It was almost as if Minmus had an atmosphere not too long ago, and perhaps life.
But all good things must come to an end, and after the team had made sure that Cobalt Base was in good condition, they took off for the next deployment and exploitation project. Not too far from their current location but one where they had originally not planned on going to.
An orbital link
“KSC Korolev here, we have approached Gateway 02 to a distance of about 10 meters.” And that was as close as they could get. The current generation of Falcon craft had no docking ability. Sure, it was on the drawing board, but KEI had rushed the docking of Galahad and traditional development had failed to meet that pace. Fortunately, there was no limit to the ingenuity of the crew, and rather than docking, Korolev tethered the two crafts together. This meant that during her EVA where she would work on the station, the capsule could not drift away.
Building out a shipyard
Over the next hours, the team moved the cargo from the Galahad 04 to the station and built out the new docking structure that would allow multiple large craft to be docked simultaneously. This would become the home port of the Beale 01 and the 02 that was about to launch. Prometheus 04 would be the fuel depot that could launch from Minmus and Cobalt base would be able to create rocket parts that would augment the vessels where needed.
Once all the mechanical work was done, the station’s new robotic arm, (provided by Wildblue Technologies) was used to grapple Falcon 12 for a more permanent solution. This allowed the station’s solar panels to be re-deployed and the crew to ferry over to the station and take some rest. It turned out there were still 100 days of life-support left. So the first engineering crews would have plenty to snack.
Going home
The team took two days to verify and power cycle all systems. Finni discovered 25 science in the lab that the last crew had forgotten to take with them and Korolev played golf with the station’s arm. Then it was time to go. A relative short burn meant that the Falcon still had fuel in its descent stage when it reached Kerbin. While the crew was feeling pretty smug about their fuel efficiency, it would have been better if they hadn’t.
On the first pass, the craft skipped atmosphere. Kirus used the aerodynamic properties of the capsule to target a better landing zone. Read, he tilted the capsule to land on land rather than water. In doing so, they skipped atmo, and burned through their EC reserves.
“Wow, what just happened?” Kirus said when all the consoles went dark. No EC meant no control. Fortunately, the systems were prepared for such an emergency, and as the crew started sweating due to a lack of climate control, the parachutes deployed and capsule slowed down. However, the landing computer was not booting up. This meant a powered landing, or lowering the gear was not possible.
Falcon 12 smashed into the ground and as the recovery crew later would confirm: this was a capsule that would not be reused. The crew was safe, however, and happy to be back, and with a list of improvements to the spacecraft.
Galahad returns
Shortly after the landing of Falcon 12, Galahad 04 started its return. It managed to slow down more than the Falcon, due to ridiculous fuel reserves. This time it would remain pointed retrograde during descent, due to the new aerobrakes.
Solar panes and antennae did heat up considerably but survived. Which was great news! After the supersonic trajectory, it deployed its chutes and kicked in the landing sequence which resulted in a powered landing, close to Desert airbase.
KEI had high hopes for future missions, high hopes indeed.
Epilogue: Gateway 02 becomes Wolf Shipyard
Kelly Kerman was stressed. She had never felt so much pressure before and sure it was such a simple assignment. Just bring the print form to the production facility for some project they were working on. The Minmus Orbital Logistics Facility it was called. But Kelly didn’t know that. She was too busy putting the pieces back together of the printing stamp that she had dropped. “Finally, here it is!” the production officer said as she handed him the stamp, hoping he wouldn’t notice she had dropped it and glued it back together. At least that is the unofficial story of how GateWay 02 got re-labeled to WOLF SHIPYARD.
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