Narrow escapes?

[Ant P]

The first time I landed on the Mun, I forgot the separator between lander and pod. On re-entry, my lander exploded and sent my pod spinning - luckily the weight of the heatshield brought the spinning to a halt just in time.

On my trip to Duna, I panicked during landing, blew most of my fuel and used my pod's chute instead of my lander's (there was no engineer on the ship). I wound up aerobraking my way back to Kerbin with empty tanks and landing upside down in the desert.

What are your narrowest escapes? Bonus points for stupidity.

[richfiles]

Skip to 3:55 to see an EARLY MechJeb screw up... I eventually figured it out, and these days, rarely use Ascent Assistant. I tend to manually launch, now that I've had practice. I've even launched (and Landed on Minmus) a 250 ton torus with the cabin rotated 90 degrees from the launch trajectory!

But this is about narrow escapes... Enjoy! (again, Skip to 3:55)

[FungusForge]

Descent stage on a 2.5m Mun lander touched down with less than one entire unit of LF+O combined.

[T-Bouw]

I had a close one where I forgot to add a separator between the capsule and orbital-insertion-stage.

So for re-entry, the craft was too heavy to land safely.

Either the last stage would burn off, or I could use the engine for a power-assisted-landing if I had enough fuel left after retro-burn.

It became the last option. Phew!

[SpaceplaneAddict]

Miscalculated Duna transfer using my new SSTO. Planned trajectory wanted a 18km pe to aerocapture, didn't go well. Trajectory ended up looking like a lithobrake, very steep angle into the atmosphere. Successfully managed to pull out of dive, crash landed safely in pieces. Valentina had to go get them in a rescuer craft, which I forgot to add solar panels on.

[Alshain]

On my third ever successful Mun landing I forgot to bring landing lights and came down in pitch black on a surface with ~45 degree incline and still nailed it. Of course back then the Mun was a cakewalk compared to how it is now.

[samstarman5]

When pilot controls were first implemented, they were set to stay at the setting they were on upon landing or docking. I discovered that going with a retrograde setting made landing on the Mun a lot easier, since it kept the tail down and I can do a quick override for course correction. Landed like a mother catching a baby, did the science stuff, flag stuff, eva stuff, and waved back at Kerbin, then got back in the lander and hit the throttle to return....while it was still set for retrograde piloting. The craft did a neat turnaround to do its best lawn dart impersonation into the moon, and after some serious freaking out and fighting with the controls, I realized what was going on and set it to stabilization. I think the craft came within 5 meters of plowing into the ground before I got it upright and headed for space. I think I forgot to breathe for a while there.

[Teutooni]

My latest Tylo landing was a bit more tight than I liked. The lander was a 6.8-ton external seat lander with full science, and just barely enough delta-v to make it if the landing was close to optimal. Descent went fine, but ascent was a horrible mess. First the ascent stage had a slight centre of mass issue, making the thing a nightmare to keep on course. Second I had to launch on a slightly inclined orbit to make rendezvous. Ended up running out of fuel 3/4th the way up. Went EVA, picked up the science and finished circularizing with the jetpack. I think I had ~5% EVA fuel left after succesfully grabbing on to the mothership.

[magnemoe]

I also had an very narrow escape with an Tylo probe rover.

Sort of skycrane with two boosters on the side of rover, run out of fuel just over the surface, and hit ground hard, this destroyed the boosters and their landing legs leaving the rover free to drive away unhurt

[AndyMt]

My very first Kerbal-Into-Orbit mission... I made it into orbit on the first try! I was so happy... only to discover that there was no dV left at all for de-orbiting.

At the apoapsis I decoupled the upper stage retrograde... which brought periapsis down to 70'002 m! Just not enough! I almost wanted to "revert flight", but ... as it was a sandbox game back then (0.24?)... Jeb did an EVA and RCS'ing bumped into the pod as often as necessary to push the periapsis down to 69'something. And after a few weeks Jeb was back on Kerbin.

[cicatrix]

Heavy station (120 tons), made a mistake on ascent, fuel tanks emptied at Pe being still in atmosphere. Achieved orbit 70.1 x 72 km literally on the last drop of monopropellant (used RCS to gain the last few m/s) - ended with dry fuel tanks. Docking with it to refuel was another exercise.

[LostOblivion]

Descent stage of one of my Mun landers ran out of fuel 1 meter above its desired landing spot.

[A35K]

I was flying a large SSTO, powered by 3 large B9 Sabre engines, when I lost control at high altitude, and I was spiraling towards the ocean, and I only regained control when I was 200m above the sea. I lost control at around 26000m. I managed to pull up and return to the KSC.

[moogoob]

Descent stage of one of my Mun landers ran out of fuel 1 meter above its desired landing spot.

I'll see your "just in time" Mun landing, and raise you a Tylo landing.

[Daripuff]

Just this morning I had a pretty close call with my brand new crew trainer Mun lander. (Eight Kerbals to the surface of the Mun for flag planting xp gain)

I started the final landing burn too late, and even at full throttle, I slowed down to safe landing speed barely in time. Hit the ground at ten m/s, still at full throttle.

Lifted right back off, and came down for a proper landing after bouncing a hundred meters or so off the surface.

[Motokid600]

I remember once I had a lander with a science bay underneath it. Radial engines would land the craft with the science bay underneath then seperate and take off.

I had deorbited with the ejection stage. Then found out the radial engines thrust wasn't passing through the science bay. Going to crash hard. So I ditch the science bay, then thrust upwards. Science bay impacted while I cleared the ground by what must've been inches and made it back to orbit.

[Torgo]

My first time landing Kerbals on the Mun, I screwed up the planning of the return trip, and ran out of fuel with a PE of 45km.

It was about an hour into my KSP experience, so I had no clue what to expect, but my 4 year old was watching and had become attached to Jeb, and told me I had to save them.

It took 5 orbits and half my heat shield, but I finally splashed down with no casualties.

[StrandedonEarth]

I just started a new career (after my old one developed a minor bug that I didn't want to work through) with Kerbal Construction Time and TAC-LS. On my first Mun landing Val didn't have enough dV to make orbit again, but she had lots of supplies, so she settled in to wait for the rescue ship to be built. Then she discovered that she didn't have enough battery power to make it though the long Munar night. So she disconnected the pod battery, only turning it on for a few seconds every 115 minutes to clean the air and then turning it off again. I lost track of how many times she had to wake up to briefly power up the LS during that long, cold Munar night.

The rescue drone ship, with extra boosters and batteries, is currently rolling out to the pad.

[Endersmens]

I must have dozens of these.

My most recent was an precision landing attempt on Minmus. Since the gravity it so low, its fairly easy to get a precision landing. A very precision landing. I realized I was going to land on top of my home base. When I killed vertical velocity the base was sitting ten meters under me. Very scary indeed.

Then there was the time I accidentally hit shift while docking. XD

[Just Jim]

My closest escape happened after landing my first big Mun base. The landing went fine, but when I tried to eject the skycrane parts, they went up in the exact wrong direction and smashed together just feet over my Munbase!!!

It was a huge fireball, and I'll admit, I freaked out a bit.

After it rained skycrane parts, and I lost one of my rovers, but by some miracle my Munbase survived

[samstarman5]

My closest escape happened after landing my first big Mun base. The landing went fine, but when I tried to eject the skycrane parts, they went up in the exact wrong direction and smashed together just feet over my Munbase!!!

http://i.imgur.com/CqvTT8w.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/kfqAQ61.jpg

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

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

It was a huge fireball, and I'll admit, I freaked out a bit.

After it rained skycrane parts, and I lost one of my rovers, but by some miracle my Munbase survived

On the upside, that did take care of debris concerns.

For future designs, though, I definitely recommend tossing a reaction wheel to such modules. The little one would have kept your cranes more vertical to clear the site.

I can also probably point out the main culprit, which would be the Structural Pylon. I have used those on enough ships to be convinced they do not have a center of gravity. Instead, that thing is hollow with a bowling ball rolling around inside and mucking up any stability you may think you have.

Edited October 21, 2015 by samstarman5

[richfiles]

I must have dozens of these.

My most recent was an precision landing attempt on Minmus. Since the gravity it so low, its fairly easy to get a precision landing. A very precision landing. I realized I was going to land on top of my home base.

You say that like it's a bad thing! When I forget an antenna... or sufficient batteries... or sufficient solar to charge them... I just stack up, up, and away!

Nello and Teddo thought their landing was cool too!

[FyunchClick]

Just now: transfering from Duna to Ike and totally misjudging my intercept burn after alligning orbital planes (boy, that Oberth is a doozie). I know I won't have the dV to make it down if I do a parking orbit first so I'm having to go straight in. Front wheel touches down with just 5 m/s left in the tank. Luckily, it's pretty abundant in resources, so I'm going to be back up and going home before too long.

Yeah, I know, totally ripped this ship off from Kuzzter, including, as it turned out, a bingo fuel landing on Ike.

[RocketBlam]

Landing on Minmus with the transfer stage, because I had screwed up the design and the lander engines would not work.

[SlithyTove]

My very first Mun landing.

I was feeling pretty proud, standing there on the moon looking around. First moon landing in Kerbal is such a cool experience. Had a big grin on my face.

Then my wife comes in and says "You should go to sleep" and walks out.

I'm sitting there going... do you SEE me ON THE MOON? I mean... THE MOON. I'm ON IT. Who wants sleep? Sigh. She'll never understand.

So then I walk my kerbal back over to the lander and realize that with the lander legs out he isn't tall enough by any stretch to get to the ladder. Hrm. I didn't know about the whole jet pack thing at this point in time.

I scratched my head, then tried a jump. Hey, some height there. So I jump him to the base ladder and start climbing up.

But.... the lower ladder and the upper ladder don't quite connect so he can't get back up to the pod.

Hrm again.

It's a rather tall skinny rocket. Not the easiest thing to land on this slight hill side, but it got the job done. I notice that if I jump from the side with the taller ground, the apex of the jump is right above the point where the ladder is disjointed... So if I can make that I should be able to crawl up.

So I start getting running jumps and shooting for that. Takes a couple tries, but then I nail it.

I breath a sigh of relief....

And then I notice that a kerbal hitting a tall rocket on a hill on the mun at running speed is juuuust enough to knock it off balance. And it is now beginning to plummet to the ground.

I frantically crawl up the short ladder between my kerbal and the pod mashing B the whole way, then mashing z the moment my kerbal is in.

At about 5 degrees from perpendicular with the mun the rocket, and salvation kicks in, though I do have some more panic trying to avoid the hill that I was then hurtling to.

But, in the end, I prevailed and all was well.

I build very squat landers now and test the ladder on the launchpad before every mission.

Edited October 23, 2015 by SlithyTove