What is the most HORRIBLE way one of your kerbals died

[SheVa Nine]

How about going EVA to try to transfer from one craft to a rescue craft in a lower orbit, missing, and burning up?

How about going EVA to try to transfer from one craft to a rescue craft in a lower orbit, missing, and burning up?

[Cryova]

I was launching a very expensive rocket on a manned mission to Duna. Conveniently, a certain Jebediah Kerman (stranded in EVA on LKO in the previous mission) decided it would be a brilliant idea to come whizzing along at orbital velocity and shred my rocket to pieces, killing himself in the process.

[TheLoki]

Scientist trying to save the gathered science information from the equipment via EVA before ditching the stage while at 2000m/s in upper atmosphere. He burned to death in a second after leaving the pod.

[A35K]

I was testing a Mun Shuttle, basically a small craft that brought Kerbals from the Mun station to explore various areas of the Mun, but did another landing without refueling. After landing, Jeb realised there wasn't enough fuel to make orbit again, but they blasted full throttle up, hoping to orbit using their packs. At apoapsis, they both got out of the capsule, grabbing the science, and spent their entire pack fuel trying to hopelessly make orbit. But there was no chance, and they both crashed head first into the Mun at several hundred m/s, as they witnessed the surface rapidly approaching their faces.

Edited December 11, 2015 by A35K

[NoPanShabuShabu]

Bob was just trying to get into this spaceplane on Laythe.  All I could think was "Oh God!  Stop twitching!"

 

[GarrisonChisholm]

1 hour ago, NoPanShabuShabu said:

Bob was just trying to get into this spaceplane on Laythe.  All I could think was "Oh God!  Stop twitching!"

 

That is Horrible!  *shudder*  ...watched helplessly by mission control from 20-odd light minutes away...

[The Optimist]

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.

[Vermil]

I don't have much to contribute to this thread. I haven't suffered any 'real' fatality in any of my two serious games.
I'm careful and cowardly hold my precious Kerbals close to my bosom. Safety first, second, thirdly and fourthly. I'm paranoid about this, and actually it makes the game more fun for me.

However...: There are some confessions to make. The thing is that many of the losses described in this thread are not losses that I would accept. If I think the loss has been caused by some kind of bug, - I reload a save. If I think the loss is in some ways "unfair", - I reload a save. So I sort of allow myself some kind of cheating.

Examples: During EVA Bob fumbled boarding his pod in a ballistic trajectory and fell all the way to Kerbin surface. I was certain he would die. But he didn't. Apparently he landed on his head and bounced mightily. And he lived.
I was astounded of course and concluded that the Kerbals were indestructible when outside a vessel. Later Jebediah tested ladders and fell to his death. I was astounded again and decided it was "unfair", because I had relied on the false notion that he was indestructible. So I reloaded a save. I'm sure something like this has happened maybe a couple of times more, though I can't remember details of any case except the above.

I do remember when Bill was trying to return to Kerbin from Minmus though, and got slingshot by Mun into an orbit he couldn't recover from. I pretty much wrote off Bill, but in some kind of desperate effort I accelerated time to see if there would be another slingshot. And behold, there was. A new Mun encounter flung him straight down into Kerbin. Since this was the pre-v1.0 atmospheric model and no heat model, this went very well indeed. It was found that Bill had survived by licking condense from the walls and eating lice and old potato chips some mechanic had hid aboard. Much celebrations and rejoicing.

 

 

Edited December 13, 2015 by Vermil

[Jeanjvs]

^^ My situation is the almost the same. I say almost because i can't even accept the deaths that were my fault. Let's just say that F5 and F9 are my favourite keys...

[Vermil]

26 minutes ago, Jeanjvs said:

^^ My situation is the almost the same. I say almost because i can't even accept the deaths that were my fault. Let's just say that F5 and F9 are my favourite keys...

We are in exactly the same situation, since I haven't accepted any death yet. Upholding the notion that I will accept a "fair" death is important for my game though.
It drives my relentless testing and also gives me that knot in the stomach during dangerous missions.

...But whether I actually ever will accept a death, is not something that I know with certainty.

 

Edited December 13, 2015 by Vermil

[nosirrbro]

When I bailed out of a spaceplane at safe speeds, but Jeb was the possesed by the Kraken when he hit the water with the new boyancy model and accelerated to such a speed he was ripped to pieces by the air.

[322997am]

Accepting a death and experiencing it is two different things. I've killed many kerbals but when they die and I can't reload then I edit the save file.

[michaelsteele3]

Worst way one of my Kerbals has died? Heh.

Have you ever heard of my "HyperEdit shenanigans"???

Well, I put two planets (Jool and Kerbin to be exact) a "little" too close to each other, and tried launching a rocket.

I'm not kidding you when I say I hit the end of the solar system in under a second.

[Geschosskopf]

Being splattered into the side of the SPH at 1500m/s while trying to drive a rover powered by about 250 Sepratrons wasn't so horrible.  The driver no doubt blacked out from the G forces before impact and even if not, it was all over in a fraction of a second.  What was horrible was that all the other members of the 318th Penal Battalion had to witness this happen before taking their own turns.  By the end of the day, that unit was redesignated as the 318th Penal Squad and amalgamated with other depleted units :D.

One of these other units was the 223rd Penal Battalion, which had been decimated a few days before while testing a rocket-powered trebuchet, the purpose of which was to lob Kerbals from the launchpad to the VAB roof.  Another remnant unit was the 175th Penal Battalion, which had been expended testing Panjandrum rovers.

But still, most of these Kerbals died quickly and cleanly, and rode to Kalhalla on glorious explosions.  For real horror, you need a slow, miserable, unspectacular wreck.  For instance, crashing to the bottom of the Mohole, surviving in the capsule, but the capsule is upside down and the hatch is blocked by the wall of the shaft.  Or falling through a crack in the ground surface and plummeting to the center of the planet where the Kraken steals your soul.

[Hary R]

I think my most horrible death was on my first mun fly by in 1.0, those poor kerbal was hopping to go home, survive multiple aerobreak (not enough fuel for a power break) hang out there for some time, finally the final aerobreak. The hope was so high, they even easily survive reentry.  But when they realize that the craft speed didn't want to go under the threshold of 200m/s at less than 800m from the ground they knew they were doomed. 

[gogozerg]

A suggestion to developers: Every time a Kerbal dies, add a tombstone in a graveyard somewhere near KSC.

"Jebediah Kerman - Dead for science - Killed by a vicious Kraken somewhere near Jool" (free text input possible, like flags)

Edited December 14, 2015 by gogozerg

[Skorpychan]

Smashed to a paste on Eve due to his own laziness.

Bill and Jeb managed to land. Or, at least, 'land'. They ended up in the ocean, a little ways from land. Jeb got out and swam. Bill? Bill was lazy. Bill decided to use the lander's rocket to lift up and hover over to land.

Bill forgot how high the gravity was, cut the engine to trim his ascent, and plummeted back down suddenly into the remains of the rover to a tragic death.

Spoiler

There's Jeb looking out over the wreckage.

[Inverurie Jones]

Well, a rescue contract ended in disaster after the ships bumped, sending the casualty vessel (a Mk. 1-2 command module) into an extremely rapid tumble. The occupant tried to bail but the capsule had essentially become a centrifuge and he was flung 'upward'. He was last seen reachibg escape velocity from Kerbol, heading for deep space....until I reverted.

Three kerbonauts were recently perma-killed on return from a crew change at Mun Base Alpha. The mission went well until something went badly wrong on re-entry and the command module was torn away, taking Jeb with it. He could only watch from his safely-parachuting capsule as the rest of the ship became a streak of red light in the sky.

Landing gear, sensors and parachutes were stripped away in a series of explosions lasting less than two seconds and the outer skin began to glow yellow as the remaining crew tried to control the stricken vessel's descent. Eventually, with the ship breaking up around them and the cabin temperature nearly lethal, they elected to jump. The ship was still trailing fire when it struck the mountains West of KSC at a height of 1500 metres and a speed of over 1000 m/s.

Apart from Jeb in his command module there were no survivors.

 

[Mitchz95]

There were two ships, K.S.V. Edford (crewed by Will, Haddas, and Sidbal Kerman) and K.S.V. Lulo (crewed by Chadwig and Burbles Kerman). Both were sent to Duna, with contracts to run seismic scans on both Duna and Ike. Edford did a landing on Ike and completed the contract as planned with a rover, then returned to Duna's orbit and transferred some fuel (and Sidbal, and the rover) to Lulo, which then landed ... about two hundred kilometers short of the south pole, where it was supposed to touch down. Worse, the ship then did a belly flop and I couldn't stand it up to take off again. So three Kerbals were stranded on the surface, on the other side of the planet from where they were supposed to be. And neither ship had enough life support to last until a rescue mission could arrive from Kerbin.

I eventually decided to make their sacrifice count for something, and sent Burbles off in the rover to make the trip to the south pole. Which he pulled off with forty minutes of oxygen left, out of a supply for eighteen hours. So the contract was complete, but now Burbles was dead and Chadwig and Sidbal were still stranded.

Edford was supposed to make its way back to Kerbin at the next window, but instead Will and Haddas elected to go back for their friends. They managed to land very close to Lulo, and brought Chadwig and Sidbal aboard with a load of life support supplies. They then took off and managed to crawl back into orbit, completely out of fuel but with just enough life support to await rescue.

I got a bit ambitious at this point, and decided to attempt to rescue Lulo herself from Duna's surface. In addition to a big tank of life support, the rescue craft (christened K.S.V. Burbles, of course) was designed to land on Duna and allow Haddas to strap some 24/77s onto Lulo and lift her back into the correct orientation. From there Haddas took the battered cruiser back into orbit and docked with Edford again. The five Kerbals now had plenty of life support and the resources of two cruisers, as well as just enough fuel to get home.

They made the transfer as planned, but I unfortunately aimed too shallow for the aerocapture and I didn't get the ships into the planned LKO. Instead, it stuck them into a Mun encounter which then dumped my Kerbin perigee below 500km. And I had 24m/s left to counter it and save the ships (still docked together).

With no other alternative, I launched a tanker to rendezvous and deliver fuel. Which it did exactly ten minutes before impact, and it wasn't enough. In the end, both Edford and Lulo were completely destroyed and only Sidbal survived on one of the command pods that thankfully had a parachute built in just in case.

TL;DR: Saved a stupidly-overcomplicated dual mission to Duna and Ike, only to lose both my ships and all but one of my Kerbals to the fiery atmosphere and the G-forces of Kerbin.

Edited December 14, 2015 by Mitchz95

[panzer1b]

I think i just had the absoluteley worst death ever!

Just finished landing a capital ship sized refueling tanker on minmus.  i pulled the crew out, and just as i landed the last guy in front of the ship to post for a screenshot, the whole thing tipped over with over 500t of ship crushing the crew of 5!

Edited December 14, 2015 by panzer1b

[GoSlash27]

My most recent hard career startup, I killed Val on reentry during her first flight. I *thought* I could do without the ablative shield because it was just barely orbital and the material bay has a high temp tolerance, but nope. It turns out that the materials bay is too draggy to reenter tail- first. It flipped and exploded instantly. Dead Val, no revert

 

Edited December 15, 2015 by GoSlash27

[Bubbadevlin]

I dont often have kerbals die, as i quick save often, and usually play sandbox, However, one of the cruelest, and perhaps funniest deaths was when i had a kerbal EVA out from my massive (110m) rocket. Lets just say they fell... I SWEAR I DIDNT MEAN TO HIT THE SPACE BAR!!!

[KatzOhki]

On a combined training mission / solar outpost contract mission, 9 Kerbals launched straight up into a solar orbit. Having completed the contract, the trainees returned. Their return vector took them directly into the Kerbin atmosphere at a velocity of over 3000m/s. At this velocity heat caused the command pod to vaporize and kill Gike Kerman instantly, but she was the lucky one. The intense heat and G forces caused the remaining crew to FUSE into their fellow shipmates and parts of the ship ala The Philadelphia Experiment.

 

so yeah, pretty gruesome.

Edited December 15, 2015 by KatzOhki

[Geschosskopf]

15 hours ago, gogozerg said:

A suggestion to developers: Every time a Kerbal dies, add a tombstone in a graveyard somewhere near KSC.

"Jebediah Kerman - Dead for science - Killed by a vicious Kraken somewhere near Jool" (free text input possible, like flags)

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

 

[Atlas2342]

I had a trip to the Mun, and  I lost control when I tried to land. I EVA'd Jeb and guess what? He was accelerated by my lander engine's exhaust and crashed into a mountain. Meanwhile, I was able to control the lander back to safety