Where is YOUR stranded kerbal

[Archgeek]

In either .235 or slightly later, destined for a Project Bring'em Home series, one of my saves was centred around a collabarative attempt at an Eve land/return mission with a 2-kerbal pod (stack of two lander cans) that finished making orbit with ion engines (and thus idiotically brought a pair of gigantors with it).  A test of the super-heavy lander revealed it to be an excelent craft for running out to Duna, whereupon the pilot got stranded due to landing error destroying most of the vehicle.  The other two, are predictably, stuck on the surface of Eve, as the lander was designed with KER's help, which had quietly been showing Kerbin TWR.  Post-failure analysis has indicated that the lander would've worked if two early-stage skipper engines had been mainsails.  The associated Project Bring'em Home entry will heavilly feature the automated rescue vehicle, which will not carry ion engines and gigantors to the surface of Eve.

[wumpus]

In my first "start new game" (or possibly first career: it was a long time ago) I managed to launch Jeb into an escape trajectory orbiting Kerbol (I couldn't rescue him then, even now he would likely die of old age (in-game time) before brought back to Kerbin).  In a later save I managed to trap Jeb in some sort of oscillation that between Minmus, Mun, and Kerbol (while I could rescue kerbols by then, he didn't manage to complete a full orbit before being batted into a different orbit by one of the moons.  Now that I think about it, I should have waited for it to stabilize (preferably with Jeb still in the SOI, being flung out was fairly likely) and then rescue him).

My favorite rescue involved a kerbal with insufficient fuel to reach Mun orbit (after landing).  He bailed out and made orbit via RCS, and I then picked him up all without needing F9.

[The_Rocketeer]

My feeling is that, being immortal, no Kerb is every truly stranded... they just haven't got home yet.

[53miner53]

Technically, none of mine are stuck yet, just 9 are in one of 3 2 man rovers or a mk 1-2 capsule about 10 km west of the KSC. The last 2 are in orbit in a space plane prototype that was supposed to be unmanned for this flight, but they jumped in anyway. They could easily come home, but I should probably finish my first space station's assembly. 

[RandomGamer123]

On 6/26/2016 at 8:50 AM, Just Jim said:

I have 2 currently stuck on Eve, but they're making the best of it... 

 That is MUCH more better than my 2 crew stuck on Eve...

I sucessfully launched 1 unmanned probe and a 1 man mission to Eve, I wanted to collect more science, so I decided to send a 2 man manned mission with a small rover and drill to Eve with a probe as well... I got the mining station set up... And the probe worked to send fuel up to my small space station in Eve Orbit, but I didn't have enough fuel storage on my manned lander and I have decoupled the probe and I forgot to put a KAS/KIS module on the ship... So they are now stranded with *infinite* fuel from mining and a rover and 2 HG-55 antennas and a station, but they still can't get up to Eve Orbit (I miscalculated the weight of the manned portion of my ship) So I put enough TWR on my probed lander, but not on my manned lander. 

Is there a way to solve this without sending another spaceship down there?

[Zeiss Ikon]

Well, in saves I no longer have, I stranded Jeb in an elliptical, too-high Kerbin orbit because he didn't quite have enough dV to get home from orbiting Mun in a demo sandbox vessel -- I was a little surprised he even got a Munar capture, seeing the kludge it takes to just get to LKO in demo (as I recall, that booster was 50 of the 20-unit 1.25 m tanks feeding a cluster of 5 Reliant engines, second stage 6 of the same tanks, and third stage 4 tanks -- and a lot of struts to keep it from being too much like pushing spaghetti).

Also, in sandbox in the full game 1.2.2, I managed to strand all three of my pilots in Munar orbit, two of them in their space suits with dry maneuver units, after Jeb's lander came up short on dV even to make Munar orbit after a badly managed landing, and Jeb bailed out and used his maneuver unit to get a high enough orbit to miss the terrain.  Then Valentina made multiple failed rescue attempts, the last time winding up with too little dV to even escape Mun, never mind get into atmosphere back at Kerbin.  Finally, Bilus came up in a Mk 1-2 on a much larger rocket to get them both -- and ran both his RCS and his transfer stage dry trying to rendezvous, while Valentina went EVA and flew her maneuver unit dry trying to get to Bilus.

Since deleting that save and starting fresh, I've done a lot of rendezvous and docking practice...

[TheEpicSquared]

Well, Geldren and Carl are stuck in a highly eccentric solar orbit, with an apoapsis past Eeloo and a periapsis below Moho.

 

Due to the difficulty of a potential rescue mission, Kongress decided that the two kerbonauts would have to fend for themselves...  

[LameLefty]

Well, these three are stranded at Moho. Had plenty of dV to get to orbit there but they will need a tanker to get home. I've been playing this game nearly 4 years and still can't be bothered to really plan out a sufficient Moho trip to make it in one shot. 

Edited January 22, 2017 by LameLefty