Get a Kerbal back to Kerbin by riding on the back of the command pod?

[Cairol]

Has anyone ever tried this (willingly or unwillingly) ?

It just came to my mind how this could work.

You have a command pod and you EVA your Kerbal before entering the atmosphere and stick him to a ladder on the side of the pod that will be the "back" during re-entry.

Is it possible to pull this off without loosing or evaporating the brave little guy during decent?

I probably will try this just out of curiosity as soon as I get back home to my PC...

Edited July 1, 2015 by Cairol

[annallia]

It should be possible.

I mean you can leave them sitting in the command chair and they will survive re-entry, even without a heatshield so long as there is a tank or something leading the way. I see no reason why it wouldn't work with ladders as well.

[Sharpy]

Risky. The command pod is quite a rock early on, the kerbal is unlikely to survive.

But reentry in a command seat? Why not?

[katateochi]

I've done this in previous versions (0.90.0), but not tried it again in 1.0.x. But a kerbal can survive re-entry sitting in a command chair that's shielded by some regular (non-heatshield) parts in 1.0.4 (tried that recently), so....I would have thought it could still work.

Aside from the heat aspects there are other issues;

- you can't timewarp with a Kerbal on a ladder, so you have to let go and get a close to 0 relative velocity and then timewarp.

- burning engines can be problematic, too much thrust will push the kerbal off.

- during re-entry you need to be focused mainly on the poor guy rather than on the craft, because forces will try to push him up the ladder and you need to keep walking him back down a bit. And the lower you go the more walking force is needed. To start with you just tap down every few seconds, by the end you're desperately holding the key down! (you could try putting strut cubes at either end of the ladder as blocks, but I did this before unlocking those).

- because of that the recovery craft needs either a pilot or probe core that's able to maintain its pitch. and you must come in so the Kerbal on the ladder is as close to perpendicular to the line of descent as possible.

- also as you can't switch back to the craft in the low atmo (or the ladder rider will just fly off), the chutes need to be in reach of the guy on the ladder so he can EVA deploy them.

This is a shot of a 0.90.0 Kerbal on re-entry (sorry it's a dark shot)

The other funny thing about doing this for rescue missions is you get the Kerbal back to land before completing any aspects of the rescue contract.

[322997am]

I have returned kerbals home on EVA (like when I make a rescue mission and the game auto inserted a pilot I climb by pressing f and glitch myself between the pod and the heat shield

[Cairol]

This is a shot of a 0.90.0 Kerbal on re-entry (sorry it's a dark shot)

http://i.imgur.com/bwpK0g6l.jpg

Haha. That's exactly how I imagined it. ^^

Unless I'd go with a large heat shield and let the command pod fly freely.

I never force my atmospheric re-entry stage into a specific position with SAS,

but make sure at design time that the CoM will let it go heat shield first in free fall.

(Had too many bad occasions with flipping re-entry stages within the atmosphere when forcing it into position...)

[Fenris]

Does this work? I remember once I accidentally hit EVA instead of IVA while ascending to LKO and the Kerbal was promptly ripped off the hatch. I assumed it was too much drag from the atmosphere but maybe it was being under full thrust while ascending.

EDIT: Come to think of it that may have been during the time when there was a bug that made Kerbals let go of the command pod as soon as you had them go on EVA.

[Geschosskopf]

In 1.0.4, I'm not sure this would work.

This is Tenemmy returning to the mothership with pockets full of Moho science looted from his otherwise 1-way lander. As you can see, he's not happy about it, and if you look closely, you can see why. He's got a temperature gauge on his tummy. And that's just from the sunshine at Moho (he was that way on the ground, too, before the engine started)

The bottom line is, Kerbals can't take much heat these days. Either that, or the temp gauge is really for the chair he's in. But it's bothersome either way. Failure of the chair isn't healthy during reentry

Edited July 1, 2015 by Geschosskopf

[Goddess Bhavani]

I think it is possible to stuff a Kerbal into a 1.25m service bay. I am going to try using my 2-man micro shuttle to carry 4 kerbals and see what happens!

[Sharpy]

Pandoras: Yes, it is. There was a challenge of "least weight to orbit", and a command seat in the service bay was the basic method.

[annallia]

The bottom line is, Kerbals can't take much heat these days. Either that, or the temp gauge is really for the chair he's in. But it's bothersome either way. Failure of the chair isn't healthy during reentry

Nope it is indeed for the kerbal, when they get too hot they explode which leads me to believe they are a sentient form of popcorn.

[Geschosskopf]

Nope it is indeed for the kerbal, when they get too hot they explode which leads me to believe they are a sentient form of popcorn.

LOL . And here I'd been thinking all along they were fungi.

Anyway, we now have to worry (a little) about just sunshine getting things too hot. I hadn't considered this at all when I went to Moho so no radiators (I'm still not in the habit of even thinking about them), no thermal protection at all. Nothing overheated, not even Tenemmy here, who had to wait for several orbits to be picked up by the mothership. But in the future, contientious players might equip chair-based scooters and rovers with roofs, and provide retractable awnings on the sides of their Moho landers. I won't--what doesn't kill 'em makes 'em stronger--I'm just throwing this out there.

I wonder how well unprotected Kerbals can stand the heat on Eve? Haven't been there since heat became a thing.

[Foxster]

Not tried i in 1.0.4 but the little guys certainly cooked in 1.0.3. Occlusion was changed in 1.0.4 and its possible you might get away with it now.

Try it, let us know how it goes.