Right... I was clearly not thinking when I wrote that. I do try not to strand Kerbals, but the surface sample confusion stems from a mission when I had a Mun landing and was able to get back into Kerbin orbit, but ran out of fuel partway through my deorbit burn. I didn't have more than 10 days of life support left, and I couldn't send a rescue mission up because of the time required for a launch window (the orbit was really inclined), so I transmitted the data home to get the science and (unfortunately) the Kerbal died from a lack of food (TAC life support).