chd

This, definitely -- at least for me. I remember a time past thinking "there's a space shuttle mission up right now, why could't they just stop at the ISS while they're up there anyway, to help with [whatever the minor issue in the news was]." Now, I completely get what the fuel and delta-v requirements for such a thing would be and why it would have been impossible. On the other hand, I don't do planes in KSP. I have a pilot's license and fly one for real, and I find the limitations in KSPs flying implementation frustrating... but that's okay, I just don't go there.

*sigh* I started playing again recently, and I usually play in a very liberal career mode (funding rewards turned way up because I really don't want to have to worry much about money), but also with "respawn lost Kerbals" off because well let's be a little careful. I have yet to keep Jeb alive very long. I've played enough to know the basic pitfalls, but I invariably do something stupid and kill him. Most recently, I discovered that if your capsule falls over and rolls to where the hatch is down, against the ground, he dies in a poof if you try to EVA. Sorry bud. And now I just killed 8 Kerbals at once, due to me being careless, on a trip up to populate the newly commissioned space station. Bill is my only orange-suit guy left. Oh well. How does everyone else do keeping people alive? Better than me on average, I'll bet. :-) Now I've decided that I need to plant memorial flags to each dead Kerbal on a moon or other planet.

So, I'm confused about what just happened, but I'm still new at this so maybe it's just how things work.... The setting: Brave but math-challenged Jeb sets out on a mission to somewhere, Mun I think, and runs out of fuel, leaving himself in an eternal eccentric orbit around Kerbin. He chills there for a long time until the guys at home develop The Klaw, at which point an enterprising mission comes out to get him, mostly with success---we find him, grab his ship, pull us both into an orbit that now intersects the planet (return trajectory!), and then detach. Now I have two separate ships again, both coming back to Kerbin, and I switch back and forth between them making sure both have chutes deployed (well, armed to deploy, this was at 80 or 90k altitude still). Since I can only have focus on one at a time I follow the rescue ship back, and ol' Jeb just disappears! After I splash down and can switch to KSC again his mission is gone, and he is listed as MIA. Boo! What happened? Is the only way to rescue a fuel-less ship either give it fuel or stay locked to it all the way down? :/