Your most unusual case of killing Kerbals

[Alchemist]

Well, everybody has such moments when a mission goes in unintended direction and you lose some little green guys.

My own list includes such occasions as: rapid unplanned disassembly destroying chutes, landing on a mountain (and rolling down), various chute failures, losing control of aircraft, landing aircraft at tricky survey locations, landing aircraft too fast, staging issues (checklist, damnit!), perfectly aligned rendezvous at like 50 m/s (well, there was no relative velocity indicator in 0.14), too low orbit (update the minimum safe altitude...), life support failure, Tylo (just Tylo), Kraken attacks, experiments going wrong, driving too fast on the Mun, pressing wrong button, trying to do commentary during a landing...

Probably most people here can make a similar list.

But what was your most unusual case of killing Kerbals?

 

I once stumbled upon some video on Youtube. It was KSP 0.15 or something around that. The player sent a craft equipped with solar-powered life support system on escape trajectory out of the solar system... Suddenly, the life support started running out of power to support 3 crew members. So they started turning blue and suffocating. One by one... My involvement? Uh... I made those solar panels. Never thought of killing someone else's crew by implementing inverse square law.

[dangerhamster]

Mun rescue contract, landed near enough to the victim stranded Kerbal but due to my underwhelming EVA skills couldn't get them up to the capsule. Sudden flash of inspiration and they jumped into the service bay for the hop back to Mun base. DOA.

Next time bring a ladder numbnuts.

[LordKael]

I brought a lander down on the edge of a crater, right on the lip. Was going to pose it for a cool screenshot and then take off again. The lander tipped, and in my panic to save the crew, I fired the main engines. While pointed down. 

[pandaman]

When Thomfurt's lander ran out of fuel during the descent he had to bail out and use his jetpack to give himself a fighting chance.

He fought well, luckily his trajectory took him into the Mohole so 'ground level' was a lot lower than it would have been so he had a lot longer to lose that extra velocity.  He rattled off the sides a bit on the way down and probably soiled his spacesuit too, but fortunately KSP doesn't simulate everything (now there's an interesting idea for a mod) but was able to descend to the bottom alive and intact.

Then the polar terrain glitch kraken got him...  He bounced around like a pinball in the bottom of the Mohole for ages and I just couldn't get him stable enough to use his pack to fly him out, eventuality he settled in the bottom, half in and half out of the terrain and laid still in typical ragdoll fashion.  Whenever I tried to switch to him in an attempt to save the poor soul it crashed the game, all I could do was go to the tracking station and terminate him.  He is remembered by a flag plaque placed by the next visitor, who landed properly, but stuffed his take off big time and piled into a mountain.

[InterCity]

One of the denizens of my Duna base got smacked with a lander when I forgot that chutes will no longer cut it. But that only happened once. One of the less usual, but way more common (pre- 1.0.5) causes of death of my kerbals are takeoff tail strikes on heavy transport planes (The N-series SSTO being the biggest offender here due to its tiny wheels, long tail and high takeoff speed). The thing took off and crashed into the ocean a few meters beyond the runway threshold, killing most of the crew.

But the funniest thing I have had was an unusual survival that happened before the heat system revamp. I thought I'll get a high atmo EVA report, but... well... nope. Poor Lanski plummeted to his presumed death. Except that he didn't. 

I was well aware of the diamond-reinforced helmets they were wearing, so I landed him on his head. He bounced about a hundred meters to the air upon impact, landed on his head again and... survived!

NASA, you guys really need that stuff.

[Scotius]

One of my guys just fell off the ladder of the experimental Mun lander sitting on the launchpad. It wasn't even a tall lander, and it wasn't mounted on the launcher, so i wasn't worried at all...until *POOF*. Instant dustification Poor dude must have landed on something really vulnerable.

[Guest]

I once had an entire mission flung out of the Kerbin system by a Mün gravity assist...  I also once forgot about life support.

[Wjolcz]

I Gravity'd my kerbals into a station a few times.

[the torturer of kerbals]

i sent a kerbal to stand on a gravity repulsor and he glitched went faster than light and got killed

[DMSP]

Deflated crewed module with crew inside, deorbited space station with someone in a cupola, spacecraft bent too much, parachute got deployed at 67,000 Meters, deorbited a second stage into my station, (Not even kidding on this) one of my Kerbals at my Mun station went EVA and got hit by a Jumbo Munar Insertion stage from some of my earliest mun missions, flew a jet into the VAB, the list goes on!

[wumpus]

I tend to reload to avoid dead kerbals, but at least one time I was stuck with Jeb in a dead capsule (out of electricity, probably) while being batted around by the Mun's gravity.  By that time I could dock and rescue kerbals, but doing a docking in under one orbit was (and still is) beyond me.

I have no idea how I managed that orbit.  I'm also guessing that there was some other issue (perigee was inside the atmosphere and had to recover since no electricity - no deploying parachutes).  Most things like that you can simply wait (or time accelerate) out.

[Randazzo]

I can only recall one time in recent memory that I had resigned myself to the utter failure of a mission and loss of Jebediah. I accidentally set my Realchute desired velocity to 40 instead of 4 (or at least I presume that is what happened), I could not revert, and had quicksaved after setting my pe at 30km and dumping the engine.

After a couple of reloads I realized there was nothing I could do short of save file editing, so I gave up and had Jeb bail out at 30km (this was 0.90, you could do that). He landed on his head and bounced a few times, but was otherwise unharmed and undeterred.

But the strangest case would have to be the station that simply vanished from existence with four kerbals on-board.

 

Edited January 11, 2016 by Randazzo

[Slam_Jones]

Made a 'Moon Train' in one of my early games.  Got bored and drove it off a cliff.

It actually lasted a lot longer than I expected.  A couple of Kerbals were still alive at the bottom of the valley, and a few 'cars' of the train were still functional.

[r_rolo1]

I'll tell my story in the form of cautionary advice:

Never launch anything while there are still debris from a failed launch falling on the KSC ...

[KSACheese]

I once forgot to put a chute on a scientific mission from Mun orbit with Jeb and another kerbal inside. The other kerbal survived after jumping out of the craft and landing on her head (thx danny2462 for that useful piece of info) and Jeb almost survived, had it not been for HELL KRAKEN! He landed on his head and caused a kraken attack. RIP JEB

[Overland]

Forgetting to set the locomotive brake on an unbraked 5 car train that I thought was on flat level..

 

 Only to hear the traction motors slowly spool up behind a kerbal planting a flag.. The train was slipping down a slight grade.. Over 5ms by the time she got intercepted by a kerbal and increasing speed..

 

Traction motors now buzzing in unison like a chrous of bees happily dancing around a hive.. The cold dark loco with headlights and markers off proceeded with her own mind away on a different path..

Kerbal now in running mode trying to catch up and grab hold of the ladder..slipping off.. Trying again... Slip off again.. 

 

Finally the locomotive bit her driver

 

The kerbal nothing more than an intricate collection of arms and legs went whirling to his own destruction

Under 5 left side wheels of a locomotive.. Hit by every coupling between cars.. And hammered by each wagon wheelset..

 

Arms became long..legs no longer resembled a kerbal.. Head..disjointed and alien..rolling with each impact

Finally.. A cloud of dust came from the rear passenger car.. The train had her fun..

44 class 1, Kerbal 0

 

[Reactordrone]

Landed near a Kerbal for a Mun rescue contract and when I switched to them I found the Kerbal was buried up to the neck in Munar regolith and a few seconds later exploded.

 

Totally not my fault.

[Madrias]

Flying across Kerbin in a command chair airplane, collecting science as I go along.

You know just how close that "leave seat" button is to the ones you actually want to click?

Yeah, I found out just how close.  One good engine flameout caused me to eject Valentina Kerman from her pilot's chair while trying to find the last handful of science points on Kerbin before heading elsewhere to fill out my tech tree.

Now, we all know that you can bounce Kerbals off their helmets.  I tried.  Instead, I managed to hit the wrong bit of dirt and got a big poof of dust.

 

At least it's a better fate than Jeb got, who somehow managed to get stuck at the bottom of the ocean in his command pod.

[Kaos]

My most unusual case of killing a Kerbal was a kraken attack: I just walked around with a single Kerbal in KSC, then he exploded.

[SERPERNTINE]

I was doing my first Mün landing... I landed safely, then I planted a flag, but when it was placed, it killed the Kerbal placing it...

[cubinator]

One of my Kerbals did an EVA report just below space, then when she went to go back into the hatch, *poof*!

[Kenobi McCormick]

I rarely kill kerbals(<3 'Revert to Launch and Revert to VAB), but I did lose jeb a few days ago. To an odd glitch.

 

I was testing an aircraft out. Twin recips, two seat cockpit from a mod that's basically a twinned up EAS-1 with a windscreen. So he and Bill were 'docked' to this thing rather than properly in it. Jeb was, well, being Jeb, and trying to see how well a twin engine recon craft would work in a low altitude dogfight(Against what? He won't tell us). He clipped the right wingtip on the side of the runway and cartwheeled it into the ground. Both him and Bill were ejected from their seats and pinballing around in the cockpit until the remains...the cockpit, fuse back to the wing root, and left wing...came to rest in a twisted, crumpled heap in the grass to the south of the runway about a 100 yards or so(<3 Kerbal Krash System). Bill was fine. Upsidedown, but fine, and he was able to clamber out of the wreckage. Jeb was MIA. He isn't in my tracking station, he isn't visible at the crash site. but the crash log never mentioned him going poof! Wierder still, the hiring center does list him as KIA and he has yet to respawn over several Kerbin years(I have since launched an unmanned Eve rover) despite 'Killed crews respawn' being enabled.

 

 

I have a feeling the only way I'm getting him back is with editing the persistence file.

 

 

I also left the wreckage where it came to rest, as a memorial, for some time before recovering it.

Edited January 18, 2016 by Kenobi McCormick

[Nansuchao]

In my heavy modded 0.90, I landed on laythe with the lander of a interplanetary mothership, but sadly the landing didn't went as planned.

Neidon survived but the lander not. I had not a rescue lander on the mothership, so I built fastly a rescue mission using the Interstellar Warp Drive that I unlocked with the Science sent back from Jool. The rescue ship landed in the sea at less than 3 km from Neidon.

I began to make him walk to reach the ship, but a Kerbal walks really slowly, so I used Phisical Time Accelleration and suddenly Neidon felt to the ground and... POOOF!

Edited January 18, 2016 by Nansuchao

[Overland]

5 car passenger train on a crew transfer mission to bombo outpost.. 8 passenger pods per carriage with an early D class BoBo engine

Fully loaded.. Started the locos engines.. Clamped my wheel to the desk.. Set some music and made a chai tea..

 

The traditional thing at the start of a long drive

 

Turned on headlights.. Station flashers

Blew the horn and advanced the throttle with a smile only land trains heading into the world can bring

 

BANG! Fire!! Explosions..the can windows filled with orange.. 

The locos nose blew off.. Wheels went flying..kerbal count dropping

 

4th carriage rear wheel got momentaryly caught on the invisible bump that mounts the tiny thresshold runway lights and sprang down onto the runway.. Wheels back then weighed 1.5 ton for momentum and physics reasons

 

The runway exploded..

A perfect moment ruined.. The mood shattered and squad got cursed..

 

WHY U MAKE RUNWAY EXPLODE????

[RizzoTheRat]

In my early days of KSP when I'd just about got the hang of docking in orbit.  Tweaked a manouver node so my ship would rendezvous with the station 180 degrees later, did the burn and accelerated time for bit to get them close, didn't start the burn to match velocities soon enough and crashed in to the station, from the other side of the fricking planet!  Its not even like I'm any good at pool!

Edited January 19, 2016 by RizzoTheRat