Dead Kerbin on EVA

[Sauceman]

I went to rescue a guy, and during the rendezvous, I looked away for a minute (I was at work) and my craft hit the craft of the guy I was rescuing, and it went spinning out of control. I got close again, and when I sent the rescuee out for EVA, he was flung away pretty fast. I caught up with him, and when I tried to activate the RCS, it wouldn't turn on. After closing and re-opening the game, I could turn the RCS on for the EVA, but a couple jets were stuck on, and I had almost no control. All the while, his arms are just flailing around, and he has an expressionless face. Is it possible the his spinning craft whacked him, and he died after exiting the craft and was floating around? I eventually gave up and terminated him from the tracking station. Just wondering if anyone else has seen this.

[Snark]

10 hours ago, Sauceman said:

I went to rescue a guy, and during the rendezvous, I looked away for a minute (I was at work) and my craft hit the craft of the guy I was rescuing, and it went spinning out of control. I got close again, and when I sent the rescuee out for EVA, he was flung away pretty fast. I caught up with him, and when I tried to activate the RCS, it wouldn't turn on. After closing and re-opening the game, I could turn the RCS on for the EVA, but a couple jets were stuck on, and I had almost no control. All the while, his arms are just flailing around, and he has an expressionless face. Is it possible the his spinning craft whacked him, and he died after exiting the craft and was floating around? I eventually gave up and terminated him from the tracking station. Just wondering if anyone else has seen this.

Welcome to the forums!

The term for the kerbal state where they're just flopping around and you can't control them is "ragdolling", so "ragdoll" is a handy search term if you're looking for similar tales of woe in the forums. 

I can tell you that he definitely didn't die.  Kerbal corpses aren't a KSP feature.  They certainly can die, but they don't leave corpses behind; they just go whuff in a puff of gray smoke and then evaporate.

Normally ragdoll isn't a persistent state-- for example, if you have a ragdoll kerbal that you can't get control of, you can generally fix it by doing a quicksave (F5) and then restore from your save (hold F9), and that clears up the problem.

I don't know why your own problem was so persistent-- haven't seen anything like that myself.  Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

[maceemiller]

This is everything you need incase of further problems