What are your close calls with low fuel?

[federicoaa]

Small sat going into Minmus orbit. Finished burn with 0.47 units of fuel left

http://imgur.com/4Q2NySl

Edited March 17, 2016 by federicoaa

[seaces]

Constantly having a close call with Mun lander that is supposed to dock with Mun station, refuel and go to another biome. It did not have enough fuel to get back into orbit so every time I had to use RCS and once I made it to station I would have like 10/20 units of it in tanks. Did this 3 times and finally had it enough and sent a ship with 2 small extra tanks and did upgrade.

[Aladran]

Some time ago, I went to Mun, but missed some fuel for the trip back.

Jeb had to exit the capsule and push it with his suit RCS.

[Jaeleth]

When docking with a ground station with a large tanker, I spent the last of my monopropelant Some 10 meters above the station port... Gravity did the job but the ports weren't fully aligned, since the terrain wasn't level, and I had to yank the tanker around, luckily, pushing the ports into the correct alignment.

there was another... An SSTO returning, overshooting kerbin space port by too far, out of fuel, barely dragged it, gliding, to the dirt runway on the abandoned base, but made it.

of course... There was that one of a 2000000 credit worth of spacecraft lost in space due to too little fuel and too steeper angle of approach on Eve, but that wasn't a close call, it was a catastrophic miss...

[RizzoTheRat]

SSTO "training bus" designed to take a crew of 6 to the Mun, minmus, and solar orbit to get them all up to 3 star.  

Landed on the Mun a bit further from the refueling station than I'd have liked but happy to get down in one piece as it ran out of fuel about a meter above the surface. 

[JoeNapalm]

 

This is the Buckaroo Mk I:

 

Don't give me that look, I know you've built something similar, just for larking about. Now, Adnand there is having a lot of fun. So much fun, in fact, that he's not paying attention to the Apoapsis or fuel gauge, and ends up out of go juice...in Munar orbit!

With the luck of the Kerbals, however, he orbits the Mun...twice...skimming the edge of the Kerbin SOI, then catches a return trajectory.

Of course, the first thing out of Adnand's mouth once he'd landed was "Let's do it again!"

 

-Jn-

Edited March 17, 2016 by JoeNapalm

[pandaman]

I very nearly looked a complete idiot at work for trying to cut the throttle to save  the last bit of fuel - on a screen shot. 

Does that count?

[OhioBob]

On ‎3‎/‎15‎/‎2016 at 1:49 PM, KerbonautInTraining said:

How close have you come to running out of fuel while still succeeding? Or, how close have you gotten only to run out of fuel?

It is not something I keep track of, but I can recall being within just a few kilograms on the sides of both success and failure.

[Xyphos]

I don't have a video of it, but one time, my space shuttle flipped over during re-entry because I pitched up too much, and it only had 200 m/s of fuel left after deorbiting;
I tried to regain control, but the shuttle was aero-locked in the retrograde direction the whole way down, despite the twin tails, wings, and airbrakes being pushed all the way to the back of the vessel (KSP physics trolling)

at 2000ish meters above sea-level, the shuttle was pointed almost completly radial, so I locked the SAS to retrograde and max-thrusted to 12 meters above water before the engines flamed out at 8 m/s. Jeb became a legend again, having saved himself, his crew and passengers.

[Guz]

 

i had some very close calls here:

my single stage to minimus shuttle

 

[Xyphos]

Glad to see I'm not the only one fed up with the small, weak air-breathing engines and RAPIER short-comings.
Rocket planes are the future my friend, who needs fancy efficiency when you can use raw power?

Great video and LMAO at the ending

1 hour ago, Guz said:

 

i had some very close calls here:

my single stage to minimus shuttle

 

Edited March 17, 2016 by Xyphos

[KevinW42]

On my first and so far only Eve return my ship ran out of fuel while the periapsis was still just barely within the atmosphere. It didn't have a docking port anyway, so I just had Jeb hop off and use the EVA pack to boost himself into a stable orbit where I was able to maneuver the mothership to come pick him up.

[max_creative]

4 hours ago, Guz said:

 

i had some very close calls here:

my single stage to minimus shuttle

 

You did... The ultimate challenge... With an ssto?!? +rep tomorrow! (I'm out today) also at the end with the shuttles exploding I bet mort saw that and had a giant fit and was like "YOUR PAYING FOR THAT MISTER!!!!! "

[Senormeens]

I recently used a small-er plane for a "crew report" mission that had three areas that needed to be looked at all below 16,000m.  I added an extra seat with the handy inline 1 passenger module to bring a scientist, just bcuz it was early career and i wanted to advance quickly.  Did a single test flight, took off the tests flight emergency evacuation parts (which was just a decoupler and sepratrons attached to the cockpit with a parachute, if i were to use that system pointing the wrong way it would've ended even more badly than just crashing.)

After the single test flight i green lighted the mission, got my pilot and scientist geared up and took off from the KSC... directly over the ocean.  All three locations were out over the ocean South East of the KSC. I noticed that the fuel would be close after getting to the first location, but was confident that it would be fine.  Got to the second zone a little more skeptical of my fuel usage, but made the decision to head to the third area anyway.  At the third area is where i'd like to say the red light started blinking, i got the crew report and beelined straight for the closest coast.  The plane was not a glider, it would fall out of the sky if we ran out of fuel bcuz i wanted it to be stylish, so attempting to land in the ocean wasn't an option.

After a few minutes of anxious flying, checking the fuel over and over again, i finally spotted land on the horizon. immediately went into the most efficient flight route i could eyeball to get me to this peninsula, i wouldn't be able to glide very far, and came into a bumpy landing a few hundred yards after the beach with only ~3 units of liquid fuel left. Needless to say more disposable underwing fuel tanks were added, cuz i liked the design.

[Vermil]

It just hasn't happened to me.

...much.

Which says a lot of the tentative way I play this game, with explorative small steps.

There's just been one time. That was when Bill became temporarily marooned. But he was slingshot-ed away by Mun, because I burned blind in those days (didn't understood or use navigation node). Besides that, margins were very narrow for the return of my unmanned probes to Eeloo and Moho. But that's all. Narrow margin which worried me slightly at the time. And J,B&B had to make a rather hard approach and re-entry to Kerbin after my first manned Laythe surface mission. That's all.

 

[SorryDave]

My closest was a return from a moon of Jool, no fuel left - but I made it.

Far more often I get out and push because I pushed the space bar when I wanted to fire my rocket to de-orbit.

[samstarman5]

I never looked at the fine details, but I have had a number of launches where I had lost control and used extra delta V to regain it, and was pretty dang sure I wasn't going to make orbit for that.  Once, I had to actually used my lander to break Kerbin orbit for Munar injection.  With every mission I follow the words of Sailor from Uncommon Valor: 'You don't ever quit, boy. Not when it's for real!'

I've lost count of the missions to the Mun and Minmus that have successfully returned with the bare minimum because they started with failures that would have normally ended with aborts at the start.  (I've even made orbit after a surprise loss of one engine making the thrust profile asymmetric. With how touchy KSP rockets can be for balance, I still don't know how I pulled that off.)

But I digress. I more wanted to share the reminder that Neil Armstrong brought down the Lunar Lander with what most folks tend to call 'running on fumes.'  (It was 25 seconds but anybody experienced here knows what that can and can not allow)

[FancyMouse]

Just had my Duna ascent ship (~7t) docked to orbital refuel station with <50kg fuel (<6 LF) left. Makes me feel good tonight.

[suicidejunkie]

It wasn't fuel per se, but I had a moonbus carrying 5 Kerbals to Minmus.  The main rockomax sized lifesupport tank had been swapped out for a food-only container to top up the non-renewable resources on the colony, and then at the last minute the seats were packed to bring more engineers to help with industry.

However 35 days of supplies in the small LS tank divided by 5 Kerbals = NOT ENOUGH for a Minmus trip.  I got the low water notice (4h and counting) while they were 3 days out from the minmus intercept, and the oxygen supply was only a few minutes behind it (thanks to Kerbin's breathable atmosphere during the start of the launch)

There was lots of fuel on the bus, since it is designed to go to the surface and return to Kerbin on one stage, so I spent 800m/s to blitz for Minmus and reach an SOI intercept with 15 minutes to spare.  Unfortunately, it would take a bit longer than that to reach PE, the speed at PE would be over 1100m/s, and I'd spent half my dV budget already; without assistance the bus would be going into a Kerbol orbit shortly after the crew died.

 

With under 3 hours to go, Bill at the Minmus colony started assembling a rescue ship.  Using a LFO hopper as the base, he bolted on two extra 400 tanks to the top of the 3-way symmetry 100 tanks, giving it a lopsided 9.5 tons of fuel storage, and pumped the colony dry to fill it.  (I couldn't add the third tank without blocking the capsule's entrance door)  Adding a supply canister for water and air, and making sure to pack the power screwdriver, he then had to wait nervously for the launch window.

The final rescue involved eyeballing a suborbital hop that would leave him hovering in the path of the hurtling bus, and then struggling to maintain attitude control with just a gimballing 909 and the capsule gyro during the entire flight.  The Bus used its remaining fuel to decelerate as best it could before contact (a good 900m/s all told), and then Bill had to rush towards it and match escape trajectories.

Flying across on the jetpack, he slapped down the can of air with just 9 minutes left on the clock, giving them all a good 3 days more to live.

The rest of the rescue mission went quite smoothly; docking the rescue ship to the bus' nose and then doing a joint landing on the flats next to the colony using the extra fuel delivered.

[LittleBlueGaming]

I had a return trip to Kerbin that I just *barely* dropped Pe into the atmosphere. Off the top of my head, I think it was something like 15 orbits to finally land.

[Stratzenblitz75]

Here is my most recent close-call:

Literally used all of my fuel in this mission, mainly because I didn't include solar panels and thus, had to run the engine during reentry to get electric power.

[Curveball Anders]

As many others, my most "oh, <rude word> no!" was during a suicide burn landing at the Mün.

Landing engines cutting out due to lack of fuel just close enough to the surface to actually survive the landing.

I haven't had that rush playing a game since successfully landing a Eurofighter with one engine dead and missing half my starboard wing ...