What is the most HORRIBLE way one of your kerbals died

[septemberWaves]

Testing an abort sequence with that mod that adds personal parachutes for kerbals. Needless to say, the mod didn't quite work for all of the kerbals present.

[Mike Mars]

I remember vividly.  Just like where I was when I heard JFK got shot.

I was just beginning to build and test SSTO's.  I launched a test flight and all was going smoothly.  As I was passing 20,000 meters and about 1,200 meters per second, I decided to switch to cockpit view.  I hit the "EVA"  button instead of the "View" button.  I got a quick visual of Jeb clinging to the outside of the spaceplane, and then whoooosh!    Gone!

I remember being so upset. This was before I learned to F5 frequently.

Anyway, happy ending since Jeb came back just a few hours later.

MM

 

[p1t1o]

I dont remember the exacct circumstances, but I remember being shocked and saddened the first time I let one die. I had started to suspect they were indestructible at that point.

I do remember a particularly bad death though - I had to abandon a kerbal in space on a Mun mission. On attempted rescue, he had glitched into a weird tetrahedral framework shape several kilometres to a side.

It was a bit..."event horizon"

[Julian.]

Being In A Reactor Core While It Was Running. (Note, It Was Just 2 Reliant Engines Near Each Other With The Kerbal On The Bottom One.)

[ShawnPhillips]

I put 48 Kerbals in external command seats on top of a space plane, With 2 in the command pod for a total of 50. Attempted to land on Eve, there where no survivors.

[Xemina]

Umm... when I launched my very first rocket, that I called a space station, though it was no more than 2 solar panels, a command pod, a fuel tank and an engine. I set Jeb out for an EVA, but I was new so I couldn't control him via RCS, so, he was left in orbit, until I tried to use hi jetpack again, and he burnt up in the atmos. 

[DunaManiac]

Definely the "Sub Orbital Incidence" I was finishing the reentry on a sub orbital hopper when I realised that I would not slow down in time. So then I got out, and somehow smacked into the capsule at 300m/s. Poor Guy. His head would be sore even in the afterlife.

[ArtemisAZ]

I intentionally for personal satisfaction by complete accident kraken'd some poor Kerbal across the observable universe when I was testing out a new Spaceplane.
I can only imagine he slowly descended into complete insanity after being exposed to mind shredding existential dread knowing he's probably a few parsecs away from Kerbol with literally no possibility of ever being saved.

He technically didn't die but hey, an eternity floating around in an empty black void with no ability to interact with anybody or anything for an eternity could be considered it's own form of death I guess.

 

[Goddess Bhavani]

Not performing an unmanned test for a BACC booster with a Mk1 capsule on top. The thing had no steerable fins so went up very high like the recent North Korean missile tests.

Well, it came down just as steeply, and the chutes were ripped off.

[Alpha_Mike_741]

On 1/12/2016 at 10:45 AM, Dnaha said:

This happened to me recently. Rocket just lifted off the pad and had to abort so I used the Launch Escape System I designed. It was suppose to take them to safety but instead took the capsule into the ground at a very high speed...

A.K.A Life Escape System

[nascarlaser1]

I tried building a space taxi to take 13 Kerbals to orbit and back. Yeah..... problem was it never left the atmosphere. 2 minutes after lift off it flipped over and fill throttled it self (using three mammoth engines) straight into the mountains next to the space center. Only 1 kerbal out of all 13 manage to actually survive due to me having the eva parachute mod that caught him in time.

 

... that was the end of me playing ksp for a little...

[Chel]

My first time when trying to get into orbit. I had ran out of fuel just before the apoapsis and periapsis met, and the rocket was falling back into the ground. I didn't have parachutes (because I was a complete noob), and got Billy-Bobdan out of the rocket. Poor guy, he burned up in re-entry. The next day I held a ceremony outside the KSC, and planted a flag for him. I now have 2 more flags there, after failing a landing and sending the plane into the ground, and from testing my rover down sand dunes. The 'dune' turned out to be a massive canyon...

[septemberWaves]

On 8/20/2017 at 3:20 PM, Alpha_Mike_741 said:

A.K.A Life Escape System

The stock launch abort system part is horribly underpowered. It's acceptable for the Mk1 command pod, but useless for the Mk1-2 pod which it seems to be designed for.

[joacobanfield]

Well, there was this time when I built a Kerbal Launcher, but I guess it was when I hyperedited poor Jill into Grannus...

[Tweeker]

   Jeb got his giant, bulbous head wedged between the capsule and the booster once. In .21, I think. All he could do was spin round and round, head over heels. 

      I eventually got him unstuck, but he was.......... unresponsive.

 

[KerbMav]

Ejected from an airlock while leaving via a mod (that bugged out seemingly) at such a high speed that the poor guy instantly went poof as he conveyed his kinetic energy onto a nearby part of the space station which started to shake and wobble dangerously from the 1-inch-punch despite its strutted 100tons.

[cratercracker]

Dying in the mountains.

I, back then installed a few mods that can allow that.

I have been climbing the highiest point on Kerbin.

And suddenly came to realization that i am out of hinges.

Jeb stuck on a steep edge,.

I decided for a slow descent down, using the leftover hinge.

I made it not so slow, so Jeb slipped on a cliff and fell roughly 300 meters down.

I call that mountain K3.

 

[guesswho2778]

 .

Edited August 30, 2017 by guesswho2778
comment i was replying to disappeared can i delete this somehow

[MinimalMinmus]

I sent Jeb to investigate a glitch fault in the terrain of Minmus. He tripped, and fell in it. He was pulverized. Ow.

[Ethen Sun]

Threw Tamsie into the sun to see what the EVA report would say.

Fired a missile, forgot about it, smashed into the rover Bill was driving. Never even saw it coming.

[Holy Smoke]

one of the kerbals on my mun missions got squashed trying to stop their rover from rolling down a crater.... oops 

[Geonovast]

Most of my dead Kerbals came from me hitting > instead of / and them warping straight into a cloud of dust in an upper atmosphere.

[Theysen]

I "launch-escaped" the poor astronaut during first suborbital in RP-0 career into the launch tower and the whole capsule exploded. I rotated the sidewards thrusters next launch   

Mispushed the 5 button (the LES) instead of Z  (german keyboard) 

[wumpus]

On 8/13/2017 at 10:48 AM, carmenara said:

Not performing an unmanned test for a BACC booster with a Mk1 capsule on top. The thing had no steerable fins so went up very high like the recent North Korean missile tests.

Well, it came down just as steeply, and the chutes were ripped off.

That sounds like most of my early 1.0.0 experience (there may have been some issues with Steam only updating *some* of my files).  Even a bare Mk1 capsule often couldn't slow itself down enough for parachutes to stop it in time.  I'm sure I've killed kerbals worse, but the first time I remember "Jeb's gone" was when I gave him far too much delta-v and lost him on an escape trajectory from Kerbin.  He might have been alive, but it would be a long time (and more than a few restarts thanks to a new and improved version) that I could dock with spacecraft, and I'd still think twice before trying to dock with a spacecraft orbiting Kerbol  (a multi-decade mission).

[covertCon]

Got lost in an orbit a few hundred million miles outside of eve...36 years of time warp didnt get them close to anything.