Kerbal Darwin Awards Thread

[Haruspex]

...Or -- A Stupidest Death When Least Expected

Have you ever had that howl of fury moment when a kerbal dies in a most idiotic way without the ability to reverse to a previous save, taking loads of precious science data with him into the grave and sometimes making the entire mission useless? Or just an unexpected and funny -- but irreversible -- crew accident of less than heroic nature that you feel like posting here? Then do it.

1. Skydive Classic

...As the Eve lander opened its chutes, I collect a set of atmospheric flight data from all the sciencey gadgets and switch to IVA to make a pretty screenshot with the sun rising over Eve horizon from 10 km altitude, but click on the EVA instead. Farewell, Lanwin Kerman, we'll name a weather satellite after you.

2. Martian Fail

Deslo Kerman lands on Duna succesfully and goes on mandatory EVA to collect rocks, plant a flag and whatnot. His mass-produced lander was tested kazillion times under all conditions possible and made countless trips to Mun, Minmus and Ike; what could possibly go wrong?

Instead of spawning on the crew hatch, the pilot somehow gets ejected, falls down like a rock, awkwardly faceplants, goes poof.

That death looks pretty realistic though: kerbonaut slipped on the dust-covered steel ladder and broke the helmet. Derp happens.

3. Moving Parts

I finish constructing a grand space station of some 300 parts in low Kerbin orbit. The only crew on board is a scientist manning the lab. As a shuttle approaches the station at 2.4 km to dock, the whole giant structure begins to fiercely shake and wobble. Bits and pieces fly off. Finally, a chunk with a docking port, large probe core and a battery is torn off and disappears into the dark, wildly spinning. Ouch.

The Kraken backs off and I survey the damage. Most of the station is intact with labs and plenty of other ports, i'll just dock to them the replacement of what was destroyed. Time to clean up the rubble. I go to the tracking station and begin to terminate all the "Station Debris" until there's only a "Station Ship" left...

...Yes, as you might have guessed, the piece with the probe core was the "ship"; the 120-ton main body of the station with the three-star scientist and like 600 data in the lab from all of Kerbin was, technically, a piece of debris.

4. Gravity Syndrome

After a successfull landing on Gilly, I plant a flag, collect samples and switch to other things while the lander still rests on the surface. Of course, I've noticed that the gravity on Gilly is so low that the movement of the rotating asteroid sometimes raises the lander's legs a few centimeters above ground and then, after a while, it comes to rest again. Fool me thought that the state of "Landed" is enough...

...Five minutes and one tiny timewarp later, the lander, with its inhabitant and all the science in it, is nowhere to be found. The game decided that it has crashed into Gilly. All that's left from the folly of Tomner Kerman is a proudly standing -- and absolutely useless -- flag.

[Evanitis]

Two scientist went on a long long career Duna mission. They had the first science lab we ever built. They landed on Gilly and Duna. They gathered all science data from the planet's SoI and the interplanetary space. They couldn't really process it there, as all the space-program had at that point were the most basic solar panels. But everything was packed for the return, they only had to wait a few hundred days for the transfer-window. Even the manuver node was set.

When the alarm clock goes off, nothing's there, the crew listed as KIA. I believe the silly guys parked on an orbit that intersected Gilly's. Totally their fault.

EDIT: I meant Ike of course. Gilly is someone else.

Edited July 29, 2015 by Evanitis

[Goddess Bhavani]

How about the time where I said "Hold my beer and watch this!!!!!" attempting to skydive from 10,000 ft, without parachute, onto a fishing boat off the KSC coast?

Oh and btw I was showing KSP in my office too!

Suffice to say, Valentina was most displeased at both the sight of random Kerbals falling from the sky, and her fishing boat being utterly destroyed.

[Bev7787]

Valentina lands a plane in the highlands. Gets on Eva, falls to ground and dies