The Kerbal Factor.

[astropapi1]

Kerbals are code. No matter what you do, they're nothing but 1s and 0s. However, they're cute and some of us actually care about their lives. I know you can simply send a kerbal on a "mercury" pod to Laythe and return, or strap a kerbal to a seat, drop him on Eve and call it a base, but taking care of them for roleplay reasons is an important part of this game.

I don't care about a crashed probe, after all, I can just send another one; But I'll do everything I can to return my crew home.

That's probably why, despite having probed Duna, Eve, Jool, Laythe, and Ike, my kerbals haven't gone out of Kerbin's SOI.

That has influenced my designs on the long run. Every ascending manned rocket has an abort sequence, most landers have a high TWR for last-moment aborted landings, My spaceships exceed the required ÃŽâ€v by +500m/s, and most of them have different flight configurations.

I'm currently designing my first manned Duna expedition (yay for me! ), and I've included 2 hitchhikers for 4 guys. That's half of the maximum crew, but I like it that way.

What do you guys do for your kerbals, and how far have you gone to save a group of brave explorers? I don't want to believe I'm the only one who goes beyond the "lol moar boostars" and "just call it a base" memes.

[Captain Sierra]

I personally tend to assume that the hichhikers are meant for long term missions but I will take precautions. I make sure to have an emergency de-orbit & landing system on my interplanetary stuff. I never like to kill crew and I make sure all my orbiters have more parachutes than necessary to land safely. I always try and avoid unnecessary death but I have killed Jeb, Bill, and Bob at least once (In my defense, that was Jool and Jool hates me. Every craft sent has gone in retrograde, crashed, or been sent on solar escape, no bull). Probes before men is a motto I tend to live by. And never once have I made a base out of a failed lander ascent. That being said, I have been known to build abort systems not strong enough for the power of the launcher below it.

[fatfluffycat]

I sent a 7 man crew with a ship/station to orbit Duna and returned today, the first time I sent a Kerbal out of Kerbin SoI. I been sending probes to everywhere like you.

I always have a abort sequence and a back-up plan for manned missions.

[Char0093]

I have a Tendency to look after My Kerbals.I'll spend days working out a new design,using the "Revert Flight" Button more like an "End Simulation" button. Let's face it, No Space Agency slaps a Rocket together and goes "Meh it'll do" and sends it up. I take Kerbal losses pretty hard,as it means Either My design as failed them,or My Piloting as failed them.On my main save,I've lost a total of 5 Kerbals on my Main .21 save.Hard lessons learned.I'm looking foward a pseudo career run in .22 with Mission Controller Extended.

However,with that said,I DO have a Screw around save where I adbide by the Rule of "MOAR BOOSTERS" just to have some whacky insane Kerbal Fun! And hey! I've imported some of those designs into the main save cause they worked semi-decently.

[regex]

My rockets always have a safety margin, manned or unmanned. No need for escape systems, I don't use them. I play with permadeath enabled. I like bringing Kerbals home. And while I don't go out of my way to kill Kerbals, I don't shed a tear when one dies in the game.

[Geschosskopf]

Kerbals are an alien lifeform of totally unknown biology so I think it's a worse RP mistake to impute humanocentric life support requirements and psychological characteristics to them than it is to do without any such considerations at all. I mean, Kerbals don't have noses so I think it safe to say they don't breathe and only wear spacesuits for the pressure. They have no genders and when they die, they release a cloud of what appear to be spores. So I feel quite content in assuming they're some type of fungus that can go dormant for decades without any life support at all. They get in their seats, they go into suspended animation, and they wake up at the destination. Thus, I have no problem putting a Kerbal in a 1-man can and sending him off indefinitely.

There's also the fact that from the standpoint of rocket engineering, Kerbals are parts like any other, to be included in the design at the cost of their associated mass only if the mission requires their function. And Kerbals can't do very much. In vanilla, they can fix flats, repack chutes, and plant flags, in order of usefulness. And until the recent release of the new version of KAS, they couldn't do much more with mods, either. None of these tasks (even what the new KAS can do) requires more than average intelligence and a few minutes of training. So in my universe, Kerbalnauts aren't the elite, they're pressganged bums who get their training in LKO from short videos while waiting on their launch windows. The elites design the rockets, the rockets are flown by probe cores, and the Kerbals are just there for any menial labor the mission can't do without. My Kerbalnauts are thought of as galley slaves.

Now, if I didn't need the Kerbals to do something at the destination, they wouldn't be aboard, so I try hard not to get them killed. But I do this by having my highly trained engineers design safe, reliable rockets that usually work the 1st time and program them to operate autonomously so Kerbals can't screw them up. And nearly all Kerbals are on 1-way trips to be the tire repairman on some distant world for the rest of their lives so there's usually no provision to bring them home, let alone save them with an escape tower. After all, the rocket will probably work and if it doesn't, the ever-expanding Kerb City has an ever-expanding population of bums under ever new bridge that gets built .

[Panichio]

I feel so horrible now, and probably with good reason, too. Today alone I killed over twenty Kerbals just on the runway.

[Lazro]

In general I think about what the public would think. They would not be happy if my Kerbonaut died. Especially not if they're important ones, like Bill, Jeb, Bob, Scott, etc. Therefore I go to decent lengths to have safety systems, escape towers and the like mostly.

[KatzOhki]

Hmm, like someone else said I treat them as true pioneers and any mission failure that I can recover is a "simulation." I do a lot of simulations.

[Exxmorphing]

I always set an action key for detaching the command module and releasing the parachutes. I also ALWAYS press the revert button if it goes awry at launch instead of changing vehicles, thus making their deaths only temporary.

[Specialist290]

I tend to lean towards the cautious end of things myself. I've recently taken to adding either an LES or (if that isn't necessary) some other kind of abort system, so that they can land safely if there's a launch failure. I'm also in the process of sending probes to interplanetary destinations so that I can test out concepts I'm going to be using for later manned missions. I also play with Deadly Reentry, so there's a very real danger of actually destroying my craft through heat or acceleration effects, so I try to keep things within safety margins for those as well and include heat shields on my capsules.

I'll send a rescue mission if they're genuinely stranded. On the other hand, I consider a Hitchhiker put in orbit or landed somewhere deliberately to be a permanent base and just assume that it's being supplied "off-screen" by routine launches while I'm busy advancing the next part of my space program, so I don't really feel the need to rotate crews out as long as they're doing their jobs.

[NGTOne]

I try to avoid Kerbal fatalities whenever possible. My missions tend to involve large, complex equipment items (500 tons+ to LKO [and occasionally to destination], hundreds of parts, large enough that "strut spam" is no longer a valid structural engineering philosophy) that can fail any of 1000 different ways between liftoff and mission completion. My usual MO is to send the gear first, unmanned, followed by the crew. Gets a bit problematic when the crew numbers into the hundreds (as it often does with those large pieces of equipment). My most crew-intensive mission had a maximum capacity of almost 500, with a regular crew of about half that.

[Kasuha]

I used to design escape systems but then I realized it is much safer to use software simulations of the launch until proper approach is found and all technical problems are fixed. Also all reentries and especially aerobraking maneuvers are thoroughly simulated before the real action takes place.

Of course not everything can be simulated so there were some rescue missions, too. So far there is no dead Kerbal on my list even though some of simulations were rather horrifying.

[RSwordsman]

I am extremely cautious with Kerbal lives. I'll occasionally do manned missions, but never without ample planning as to how they're going to get home. Since the "finite amount of astronauts" update I've lost maybe three lives, and that's because I'm not very good at the game. But if my mission ribbons were to work I'd show my black stripes.

[alacrity]

I have a fleet of Omphalas and chariot class unmanned rescue vehikles stationed at all my bases, (Kerbin, mun, minmus, ike, and tylo) Chariot is a heavy lift single stage return vehikle with room for six, while the Omphalas is a lighter craft for 3 man return missions. pre seeding my rescue ships is all well and good, but I do have to use them more than I care to admit, which leads to a lot of restocking them. the kethane works at Duna and Mun support some refueling, but the jool outposts have not gotten their kethane up and running. prolly goingto use the lowest grav world I can.

alacrity

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

I do take into account safety, my Jool missions always have at least 2 back up fuel tankers in orbit or tylo (since I've only landed and returned from it once, I use it to 'store' refuelers and out of date ships)

[Commander Zoom]

As others have said:

"Live" game and "Test Sim" game.

Even in the former, the boffins might "run the numbers" a couple of times on a tricky orbit, capture or landing.

Rescue craft and/or CRVs for everyone.

[FellipeC]

Same here. I also never send manned missions before a probe. Just to have sure the things will work as expected.

I also have a rule the the original trio are space race heroes, and for good PR they are never sent out in dangerous missions.

[Zerois]

I have a manned Mun Base, 4 of my Kerbals are living there. It has an energy system and escape pods (pretty comfortable, I guess )

After I finished that, Neildrin Kerman, a recruit, was sent to Duna, his rocket crashed but (luckily) his pod survived. Rescuing him is the next step on my 'To do' list because I care about them.

[magnemoe]

I always set an action key for detaching the command module and releasing the parachutes. I also ALWAYS press the revert button if it goes awry at launch instead of changing vehicles, thus making their deaths only temporary.

me to however the escape system might be off the shuttle type (only work in some settings)

The Jool landing project had lots of this.

http://imgur.com/a/dahmU#1

Yes its an braking parachute on top of an one man landing can, now as the outer side boosters are far higher than the one with the can you can only use this in the atmosphere with engines first.

http://imgur.com/a/dahmU#9

Much the same here. Putting an crew module on top of an refueling probe to get it into orbit.

This caused an structural fault. The decoupling of the crew module did not work out.

http://imgur.com/a/dahmU#10

Lost an engine so no chance of an soft landing, luckily the command module had parachutes so I ditched the service and living module and splashed down.

Just lost one kerbal in space since 0.20 it was during Eve accent.

[JiWint]

I usually just make sure that kerbals reach other planet (surface) safely. If they can't take off,or get of SOI,I just send a rescue craft.

but yeah,when my crew died by an accident called "Transfer-orange-crew-from-first-space-station-deploy-chutes-too-late" I deleted the save and began playing a new game

ALWAYS USE F5 TO QUICKSAVE BEFORE ANYTHING DANGEROUS.MAGIC BUTTON ""F9"" RESETS EVERYTHING TO QUICKSAVED TIME (<- before I knew this,I deleted my savegames where kerbals died)

[Rainbow-Dashie]

I try to avoid killing my kerbals, and rescue them when I can. I havn't killed any yet but i have 10 stranded around the solar system ( 3 on Mun, 5 in Kerbin Orbit, 2 in Solar Orbit).

But i feel for some reason.. that certain Kerbals are more qualified then others If I want Buzz Kerman on my major missions, i have to rescue him from the Mun first!

[Brapness]

I do everything to keep my Kerbals safe. That said sometimes an accident is unavoidable, like a Kraken attack or just very bad luck. In that case I'm careful to always remember their sacrifice and honour them with a 21 SRB salute.

[Hodo]

I was upset by my recent loss of 3 Kerbals. 2 were returning from a cargo run to my station in orbit around Kerbin, the first run in a new SSTO cargo ship. Flew fine up to the station but had an unrecoverable stall at 8km while landing at KSC. And the third died after a equipment failure on his re-entry pod heatshield after a refueling operation for a Mun mission with a different ship. His heat shield separated with the decoupler instead of staying on.. oversight on my part in the construction.

But had a successful rescue of my first Mun landing (on this save) and rescued the Lander crew which was at a much lower Munar Orbit. Left the two craft in orbit around the Mun in case of future emergencies.

All my craft have a docking port on them somewhere that is accessible without power, and I have a dedicated rescue vessel parked at my KerSta-1 Kerbin station.

[Kerbol Prime]

I try to "limit" the amount of deaths by adding escape towers to manned rockets.

I currently have three deaths (bye Jeb, Bill, and Bob) while testing the abort system, which burned the capsule...