What is the most HORRIBLE way one of your kerbals died

[CorvusCorax]

My bravest late test pilot, Jebediah Kerman, managed to land his reuseable rocket in the hills overlooking the KSP on its tail (under parachute) after a picture perfect science mission and reentry.

Unfortunately the ground was not even and the rocket tipped over and landed on its side (or rather its cockpit - it was using the Mk1 spaceplane cockpit instead of a capsule - and the tail fins kept the tail in the air) - but with no damage.

After it came to a rest, Jebediah decided to leave the craft - in order to take a surface sample from this biome and take a snack in the scenic location, as that hadn't been done before. However the craft was literally laying on its crew hatch.

Clicking the EVA button spawned the Kerbal in the space between the hatch and the ground - except - there was no space there. His sudden presence rocked the craft a tiny bit, which caused it to break loose and slide a few meters further down the hillside -- leaving behind a smudge!  Poor Jebediah got squished under his own rocket as he tried to climb out.

There was no damage to the vessel, only a scratch and a few stains. A flag now marks the tragic spot, where the recovery team also then took the surface sample. The biological composition was "interesting"...

[Tw1]

 

Had quite an accident. 

His head left his helmet, his face was exposed to vaccum. His neck twisted in a most unnatural way, causing his teeth to enter his shoulder. .  

That's got to hurt. 

He popped apon reload. Didn't have a quicksave. 

From a very old Apollo recreation. More images,  full story here ttp://imgur.com/a/vdR5f

 

Edited December 15, 2015 by Tw1

[Der Anfang]

I would consider stranding a Kerbal on Eve as being pretty much dead. I won't send a Kerbal onto the surface of that planet until I am sure I have an optimal lander.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

One of my Kerbals just .... popped.... as he got out of his Capsule and his foot touched the Surface of Eeloo...

 

Edited December 15, 2015 by MalfunctionM1Ke

[MaverickSawyer]

14 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

It's much more moving if you do this yourself.  Driving a rover all the way from the runway to the flagpole between Admin and the Astronaut complex, then getting out and planting a flag in the grass there with the appropriate epitaph, will bring a tear to your eye or a smirk to your lips, depending on how you run your space program

 

My plan is to place a single flag, and just update the description as the casualties occur...

[ForsakenVoyager]

I have enjoyed reading these very much! Keep them coming. 

[ForsakenVoyager]

On December 11, 2015 at 5:40:54 PM, The Optimist said:

Bill was strolling around on the mun, taking some surface samples. A few seconds later, a stray FL-T400 which was apparently in a very low orbit, smashed into Bill's shuttle, which contained 10 other Kerbals on a field trip. They were seated on the external command chairs, in a cargo bay. Basically, my beautiful space shuttle became a Kessler bomb made of kerbals. It took me 20 minutes to get the survivors to my conveniently placed backup ship, and another 30 to stuff them into the 2.5M service bay. Finally, Bill started the engine, and as he escaped the mun, a trail of Kerbals fell from the open service bay doors to their hopefully quick deaths.

Haha, this is one of my favorites. So many lives lost. 

[Kaiser82]

Racine was going to Minmus to retrieve Ralie and Sonbree so Ralie could pilot the upcoming Laythe mission. after packing the two into the science pod they took off, but apparently Racine was jealous about being passed over for Laythe. on ascent I discovered that 1 of the 4 engines was shutdown as the ship pitched into the ground and broke apart. Racine's command module skipped a little bit and easily survived. Ralie and Sonbree however, still had a burning engine attached for their piece of debris, and went whooshing out of control until running out of fuel. they survived another impact, and began their high speed "downhill oil drum" ride, until finally exploding. 

[Feradose]

My deorbit stage hit my 10+ kerbal landing capsule. The capsule survived it, but with one side losing the radial engines, giving me asymmetrical thrust, and sending the capsule tumbling down onto Ike at 500m/s. Funny thing is I used the deorbit stage on Duna orbit.

[richfiles]

"Columbia Titanic Fitzgerald"... My very first launch, playing sandbox mode...
I failed to do a proper gravity turn at the right time... As in, at all. oops! 

So, Jeb, Bill and Bob are now in a relatively circular Kerbol orbit, drifting... drifting... I also had no RCS, cause I TOTALLY expected this to be a sub-orbital "hop". It was the reason i did no gravity turn. I had no idea I'd used the sandbox to SO over engineer the vessel to have enough ∆v to blow the Kerbin SoI. No one took photos of the first launch, because Kerbals invented Moar Boosters™ before inventing photography.

I built this to rescue them... The "Columbia Titanic Fitzgerald II". No one speaks of it, because it ended up somewhere in the void between Duna and Dres... And no one speaks of Dres. 
I switched to Career mode before ever rescuing them... They're still out there. I did continue trying to rescue the "A-Team" before I switched, though.

Behold the "Columbia Titanic Fitzgerald III". It was a complete success... In that no one was lost... Of course, no one was recovered either. I got to within 1400 km of the pod, but hit my "point of no return" fuel level and overshot... Had to burn for home and leave them. Neilmon would have gone on to be part of the first Mun landing crew... But alas, the apocalypse occurred and time stopped, only for the universe to be replaced with one where science and money actually matter. Wilsy went to the moon in this new "alternate reality"... but that was yet to come... (aka, I later switched to that afore mentioned career mode so my Mun landing would have MEANING... Still, I had to rescue the A-Team before I did that. B-Team can still wipe Dres dust off their viewports though!  )

Then I decided, my problem was clearly in the name. I repurposed my station launcher and put up the Kolumbia Gassburgers II (South Park reference). The original launch put up a pair of Kerbodyne tanks with all sizes of docking port and a science lab + habitat module. It was suppose to be place where you could stop to eat snacks and get gas.  I ditched one of the Kerbodyne tanks in favor of a -TON  TONS of RCS and XENON and RTGs. i think there was 78000 units of Xenon alone on this thing, and enough RTGs to run it all without solar. I forget how many ion drives were on it. I figured, once I had my captures, I could burn off any remaining RCS, dump those tanks, and finish the fine tuning home by ions. I had also installed MechJeb, to help guide me to my destination... which was now TWO destinations... You see, Bill got out to push... He had trouble getting oriented to the hatch, and ended up running out of EVA fuel and drifting... drifting... Jeb got really bored with Bob... And Bob ate all the snacks. 

This was the final rescue vessel, once it shed all that asparagus staging. It still carried some of it's station traits, such as the docking ports. I figured I'd leave them, incase i needed to top off any fuel before I left... I didn't... I actually had some orange tanks left to burn. Note the Klaw at the end... That was for catching the pod. I decided to go after Bill first. So, I know some people rip on MechJeb for being cheating. Others say it's fair game, since REAL space ships have navigational computers and aides. I actually learned more from using MechJeb than I did from any in game tutorial. That and Scott Manley videos!  Regardless though, it taught me HOW to properly perform a rendezvous... and how not to...

You see, quick saves are your friend... the reason is that that wonderfully sharp "Klaw" skewered Bill into a poof of space dust! MechJeb had my aim true... but the vessel was so big and bulky and the burn times didn't take time to slow into consideration.

I hit Bill at over 150 m/s. 
With the Klaw. 
And he poofed. 

45 years of waiting... and the first ride blows passed him without stopping. 96 years waiting... and he's impaled by a 129 ton vessel with 4 sharp grabbery bits aimed at his torso. THANKFULLY, Bill paid his health insurance, and they came through with a quicksave policy. Tried it a second time on zombie Bill, back from the dead, and... couldn't get him to stick to the Klaw. I literally could not make the claw attach to him. I had hoped that by him "joining" the vessel, that it'd restore his EVA fuel, and I could then EVA him to the capsule. No such luck... I had to bring the door of a 129 ton vessel TO HIM... In the CORECT orientation for him to grab... 

I eventually did it!
Here we see zombie quicksave resurrected Bill VERY happy to have -kerbal contact  snacks once again, for the first time in 9 decades! 
Lanfall is just happy there was a large enough supply of snacks in the habitat module to keep zombie Bill from eating his brains!
Remember kids... Bill was impaled for those snacks!

Remember that 78000 units of Xenon... Well, I ended up with 400 units left by the time I'd slowed down enough to get captured into an orbit around Kerbin that I could aerobrake off of!

After that, I abandoned the one vessel we don't talk about anymore, switched to a Career mode game, and launched my first Mun mission after spamming science at the KSC. Here we see the Columbia Titanic Fitzgerald IV. The first of the series to not only NOT fail... but to exceed it's goals. The vessel was supposed to use ions to fulfill a test contract, and get an orbit around Mun. After collecting science from orbit... I realized I'd barely used any fuel, and decided to go to Minmus... And after seeing how slow orbital velocity was, and doing some math... LANDED the vessel ON Minmus, using only RCS and ions! Set her down right on the ion engines themselves. No ladder... She was never meant to land. Fortunately EVA can fly up to the hatch. Collected science and planted flags in 5 biomes on minmus. Ran low on EVA fuel with a botched 30 km hop... set weights on my keyboard's W and Shift keys, did a quick calculation and set my alarm clock so I could sleep. Alarm goes off a few hours later, and I'm about 150 meters from the vessel. use my little EVA fuel to get back to the hatch and fly home, taking a metric buttload of science home in the process!

And my learning to fly orbital space vessels proficiently ONLY took impaling Bill with a 129 ton vessel with sharp stabby bits on the nose to teach me!

Edited July 9 by richfiles

[Gibranrl]

Lithobraking on Eve at 1.6 times the speed of light with warp drive.

[TopHeavy11]

Gyro Kraken...Watched Jeb die right before my eyes.

[InterCity]

Highly eccentric Jool orbit passing through the atmosphere. Tried to make an atmospheric pass for science, but couldn't make it back to space. The periapsis was really high, though, so it probably took several passes to de-orbit and get crushed by Jool's atmosphere. This is the only time I actually went to VAB and hit the "Terminate" button with a live crew. Even the ground control couldn't take it... 

Three stars were added to the memorial board that day. May your souls find peace, Sune Kerman, Seedo Kerman and Billy-Bobfred Kerman.

[RocketSquid]

On my old computer, parachutes suddenly started bugging the game out some time between beta (when I got the game) and 1.0 (right before I got a new computer). Unfortunately, Jebediah was in orbit when this chute-breaking update occurred. He would have been safe, albeit trapped, if I had played it safe, but unfortunately one stray click sent him warping to the ground. No part of him or his craft was ever recovered, and I never played that save again.

[tg626]

All 4 elites at once in a kraken attack on a shuttle.  

[322997am]

I killed another one"so I was flying a private jet and I might have taken it too high. It was a Juno powered jet and I was not paying attention when one engine started to machine gun sparks and flamed out but the other stayed on. The plane started to spin and as I mashed my roll just as the cockpit flew off and slammed right into the wing killing the pilot,mitgas and then jeb and Bill who were in the passenger compartment had the compartment violently slam into the fuselage killing them too. After this day I always have engine ejectors if this happens again."

[Guest]

I've strapped plenty of Kerbals onto SRB's.  It's a very Kerbal amusement ride, which sometimes ends in death.

[Aetharan]

I never feel too bad about the kerbals who die in exploding ships and the like, because however painful it may be, it's only that way for an exceedingly short time-frame.  Probably too short for their neurons to realize it's happening.  The ones that always get me are the life-support failures.  Hunger and thirst are bad enough, but the most horrifying on a visceral level is when something goes wrong with the air.  My most poignant in recent times was the saga of Glenica Kerman, who managed to set a course home for her ship knowing all too well that she would have been dead for over a year by the time it went through its re-entry sequence.

I don't know why it hits me so hard, but the simple thought of just sitting there, helpless, as you watch the gauge on your oxygen tanks slowly drop to zero, leaving you with the knowledge that you now have only what's only in the cabin with you.  Every breath robbing you of more precious oxygen, ensuing that the next one you take will be that much less effective.  Did she go mad in those final hours?  Was she resigned to her fate, writing some inspirational words in the captain's log?  Did she, perhaps, time her final sleep cycle so that the oxygen would finally run out in the middle of ship's night, so that she could go peacefully while dreaming instead of gasping desperately?

However the poor woman handled it, I can at least say this much:  She got a seriously Kerbal burial.

[Venusgate]

I first learned how dangerous the engine exhaust damage was at the expense of Bill....

[Dnaha]

Surviving launch, going to distant planets and moons, surviving reentry only to realize there is no parachutes on the capsule. 

[Inverurie Jones]

I managed to get the ship and its crew home, only to have the lander parachute down onto the top of a slope, slowly topple over and then, having jettisoned it's 'chutes, begin a roll down the mountainside to explodey doom. I bailed out the crew but the tourists on board refused to leave the vessel and died as a result.

[kotomikun]

On 12/11/2015, 3:40:54, The Optimist said:

Bill was strolling around on the mun, taking some surface samples. A few seconds later, a stray FL-T400 which was apparently in a very low orbit, smashed into Bill's shuttle, which contained 10 other Kerbals on a field trip. They were seated on the external command chairs, in a cargo bay. Basically, my beautiful space shuttle became a Kessler bomb made of kerbals. It took me 20 minutes to get the survivors to my conveniently placed backup ship, and another 30 to stuff them into the 2.5M service bay. Finally, Bill started the engine, and as he escaped the mun, a trail of Kerbals fell from the open service bay doors to their hopefully quick deaths.

Are you sure that was really Bill and not Zapp Brannigan?

[322997am]

But jeb is a kraken tamer?

On December 17, 2015 at 1:28 PM, TopHeavy11 said:

Gyro Kraken...Watched Jeb die right before my eyes.

 

[Geschosskopf]

12 hours ago, 322997am said:

But jeb is a kraken tamer?

Noone tames a Kraken.  At best, one can get it seemingly to cooperate for a short while, which is just the Kraken's subtle plan to lull you into a false sense of security before it eats you

[Fred Cop]

Possibly the 'most horrible' way one of my kerbals have died is the death of Valentina in my Career Mode save.

 

I would describe what happened, but I can't. You see, last time I left her, she was falling to the ground with the parachute deployed, and since I had to leave I assumed that when I returned she would be safe.

However, when I came back, I completely forgot that she was still re-entering Kerbin.

 

A while later, I realised that Valentina was still entering the atmosphere, and when I checked the Tracking Station, her craft was not visible. I checked the Astronaut Complex and, according to it, Valventina was 'Killed In Action'.

So the reason I dub thee my most horrible Kerbal death, is that I never saw what happened. Wether Valentina was burned up in the atmosphere, or if she crashed into Kerbin's surface, I'll never know.