What was your most epic disaster averted moment?

[GeneralVeers]

In theaters now: InterKerber!

(omigod, that title sounds like a baby food)

 

It was my first-ever mission to Minmus. My plan was to do lots of Minmus landings and get lots of science in one mission. So the lander was an over-engineered monster with six Terrier engines and a huge fuel reserve. This was back before scientists could reset Goo Canisters and Materials Bays, so this lander had six of each. (the fact that it was an old version of the game will soon turn out to be a HUGE problem!!)

On the whole, the mission went well. The lander performed admirably, and I got landings in six different biomes, just as I'd planned. I loaded up with tons of science. Then it was time to pack up and head for home.

Only then did I discover I'd done one landing too many. This was not a "mothership" mission. The lander had been intended to land, do science, take off, and return home. But the fuel reserve ran dangerously low even as the ship struggled to make orbit. Panicking, I finally got the Minmus escape node, and the ship exited Minmus orbit. Fingers crossed, I began the retro burn to return to Kerbin.

The fuel tanks ran out--with Kerbin periapsis still at over six million kilometers.

It was hopeless. The mission was doomed. Even if a rescue mission could be scrambled to retrieve the crew......remember that huge problem I dramatically alluded to earlier? In this version of the game, science couldn't be picked up by Kerbals on EVA! The science was stuck in the dead lander. There was no way to get the science home.

Jebediah saved the day. With no other options, he went EVA, flew around to the back end of the ship, planted his face against it, and fired his jetpack until it was almost empty. Then he hopped back in the lander, refuelled his jetpack, and did the same thing again. And again. And again.

Literally half an hour passed. Mission Control was going nuts. Some wise guy asked where the hell Jebediah was getting all this jetpack fuel from, and everybody else in the room told him to shut up and stop breaking the Fourth Wall. Finally, the lander's periapsis passed below 70 kilometers, and the mission was saved!!

Cue epic music.

 

 

[Darth C3P0]

I was going too fast as in 10 m/s and hit the surface of the moon and exploded in my noob days.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Knowing what I know now, it wasn't that big of a deal, but at the time...

i was coming in to a landing on Minmus... I think maybe it was even the very first time I'd tried to land on Minmus.  I was trying to max out my science, and over-reached... sent Jeb out EVA to get an EVA report, *while the lander was maneuvering*.   He lost his grip, and try as i might, I couldn't get him back to the lander.  So I flipped over to the lander, aborted the landing, flipped back to Jeb, and decided to see what his jetpack could do.  As it turned out, quite a lot... killed all forward and downward velocity and realized "who needs a lander?"  So Jeb landed on Minmus sans lander, which did a once-around and then landed to pick him up.

I know now that Kerbal jetpacks have an awesome amount of dV in them, particularly with regard to Minmus, so it wasn't actually that big a deal, plus Kerbals can take a surprising amount of punishment and survive.  But I didn't know that then, and I thought he was a goner for sure.  When he managed a safe stand-up landing, I was virtually capering with glee!   

[AbacusWizard]

I had a similar problem but going the other direction the first time I successfully landed on Mun. I collected a bunch of science and got back in to the lander, which didn't have much fuel left, but I figured maybe I could get it into orbit and then send a rescue ship to pick up the kerbalnaut later.

Turned out it didn't even have enough fuel to get to a low orbit. Near apoapsis I had the poor pilot get out and try pushing with his jetpack, but it was clear that that wouldn't reach orbit before lithobraking... so I had him get back in to refuel his jetpack one more time, hastily transmit all science data (at the time I didn't know kerbalnauts on EVA could carry science), and abandon ship. The empty lander crashed, and the poor guy used all of his jetpack fuel to get himself into a stable orbit.

I then spent a lot of time learning about rendezvous techniques (thank you, Buzz Aldrin!) and fine orbital maneuvering, and finally sent a rescue ship with a lot of monoprop and plenty of ladders--since the kerbalnaut was out of EVA fuel, the rescue ship had to maneuver to put the ladder within his reach!

[gtmattz]

I had a good one this weekend..  In a new-ish career I decided to send Bob on a flyby of eeloo, during the process I ended up sending him by jool and duna as well (lucky positioning, zero planning XD), well, after the grand tour, and 17 years in space, bob is ready to come back home.  I get my encounter with Kerbin, hit the atmosphere and decouple everything only to notice that I had forgotten to put a heat shield on the pod... *facepalm*..  Of course Bob dies in a firey explosion, so I reload the quicksave I made before decoupling and try to figure out how to save Bob... I ended up, via trial and error, finding the lowest point in the atmosphere that I could take bob without blowing up, using the leftovers of the craft as a disposable heatshield of sorts.  This maneuver managed to slow the capsule enough that his ejection from Kerbins SOI maintaned an orbit that was between Duna and Kerbin. So I slapped together an unmanned rescue ship and managed to get Bob and all his juicy science back to kerbin.  All told, Bob was in space for around 25 years, and returned with just shy of 3500 science.  Mission Accomplished!

[Emoss55]

I was landing a probe on Ike when I got impatient and timewarped a little too far.  I ended up slowing down to survivable speeds at less than 100 meters above the ground.

 

[KerBlammo]

Botched a Mun landing.  The initial burn resulted in a lower than planned Pe, and I was distracted and started the landing burn late.  I was the side of a mountain rushing up at me and thought that this was not going to end at all well.  Kept burning and actually came to a stop about 2 meters off the surface at which point I just cut the engine for an almost perfect landing.

[ShadowZone]

Okay, I actually got a few, but this one probably takes the cake: My launch device exploded during ascent (as did many before...) but the payload's cockpit stayed intact.

So here are Jed and Bill, 12000m above sea level, no parachutes, no airbrakes, no landing legs, no nothing. A sure death sentence, right?

But then I realized, the Mk2 cockpits are lifting bodies, which means they possess rudimentary aerodynamic properties. I managed to convert vertical to horizontal velocity by angling it into the airstream. And then... SUCCESS! A few parts still attached exploded, but Jeb and Bill survived. Just another day for a Kerbonaut

 

 

[Floker]

During booster separation those sneaky little things ripped off one wing of my shuttle. Knowing there was no way of safely returning the glorious crew managed to still reach orbit. A second shuttle was standing by and could be used to safely bring them home. No Kerbal got left behind :-)

 

The Kerbals call it their most successful failure and a hell of a mission.

http://imgur.com/a/SjFGQ