Your "HOW DID HE/SHE SURVIVE" moment

[322997am]

Explain:title

1. Once I bailed out of a plane at 10 km and survived

2. Hit the vab with one wing, bailed and survived because hit the flagpole on launchpad.

 

[Vysionone]

Crashed into water with a supersonic jet going 1431 m/s. The MK1 cockpit managed to survive the onslaught of machinery.

[coredumpster]

Same as your #1.  Had a plane flying about Mach 2, doing some temp surveys for a contract.  Had it in phys warp to get there faster, forgot I was in warp and tried to turn.  The forces on the plane tore it apart and it broke up about 15,000m.  The cabin detached from the fuselage which had my chutes.  Since I was over water, I managed to bail my 2 kerbals out around 10,000m and both survived the fall somehow.  Those helmets have some really awesome strength properties.

[Madrias]

This, admittedly, was back in 0.90, but I was having fun land-skimming in a motor-glider and mis-interpreted my wingspan.  That bit of debris up there in the first picture, at 1.3 km away, that's my other wing, or more specifically, a couple solar panels and a control surface.

Landing wasn't so great, but then again, you try landing a plane with one wing and keyboard controls.

 

(As for the parts, the cockpit was from the SXT mod, the engine and tail boom are modified derivatives from it by duplicating and config bashing.  Needed glider parts that were sturdy, and I wanted a small electric propeller engine, and a battery-laden tail boom made more sense than having one full of liquid fuel.  Made for a decently fun land-skimmer provided I didn't do that.  Apologies for the craptastic lighting, I wasn't intending on crashing my plane, I was enjoying a last-minute just-before-dusk electric flight.  I just figured I'd take screenshots when it happened.)

[septemberWaves]

Mine is somewhat by design, but even so I never planned to use the system I implemented in that way.

Basically, most of my capsules have an integrated LAS composed of several sepratron rocket motors near the bottom of the capsule (the number depends on the capsule mass). They are there exclusively to serve as an emergency system, and I have parachutes and backup parachutes for landing.

Once on returning from Minmus I accidentally misfired the parachutes, causing all the main chutes to be destroyed (my backup was mis-staged with the primary chutes for some reason; I still had two drogues but the velocity was far from anything survivable). So I cut the drogues and somehow managed to hit the abort button at the last possible moment, which fired the SRBs. I still have no idea how the capsule survived the final impact velocity; I suppose the heat shield must have acted as a shock absorber. In any case, the command pod itself was the only part which (thankfully) was not obliterated.

The incident has, however, inspired me to use the sepratrons in conjunction with the drogues to slow down during re-entry, which has consequently allowed me to save some time on returning capsules from orbit by using steeper landing trajectories.

Edited June 27, 2016 by eloquentJane

[TotallyNotHuman]

2 hours ago, eloquentJane said:

Mine is somewhat by design, but even so I never planned to use the system I implemented in that way.

Basically, most of my capsules have an integrated LAS composed of several sepratron rocket motors near the bottom of the capsule (the number depends on the capsule mass). They are there exclusively to serve as an emergency system, and I have parachutes and backup parachutes for landing.

Once on returning from Minmus I accidentally misfired the parachutes, causing all the main chutes to be destroyed (my backup was mis-staged with the primary chutes for some reason; I still had two drogues but the velocity was far from anything survivable). So I cut the drogues and somehow managed to hit the abort button at the last possible moment, which fired the SRBs. I still have no idea how the capsule survived the final impact velocity; I suppose the heat shield must have acted as a shock absorber. In any case, the command pod itself was the only part which (thankfully) was not obliterated.

The incident has, however, inspired me to use the sepratrons in conjunction with the drogues to slow down during re-entry, which has consequently allowed me to save some time on returning capsules from orbit by using steeper landing trajectories.

Now THAT's what I call a Soyuz-style landing! 

In all seriousness, congratulations. I usually jettison my heatshield when it is no longer ablating (less deadweight for the chutes), and thus I never would have survived in your situation. Was this in 1.1.x or before that?

[Gaarst]

Ran out of EC during a spaceplane reentry (RSS). Half of the shuttle (including the cockpit) overheated and exploded, still not sure how the other half and its passenger made it back.

[Brownhair2]

Every time I've bailed a ship. Including from the Mun (this was before 1.0, so no re-entry. Otherwise Jeb probably wouldn't have survived ). I swear their spacesuits are made out of Kevlar or something.

Edited June 28, 2016 by Brownhair2

[moogoob]

This was a few versions back. I made a gallery and typed the whole thing up already so here you go! Though remembering the mission now and what I've learned since then it was probably my piloting and not the instrumentation that caused the problem.

 

Edited June 28, 2016 by moogoob
blame

[Bill Phil]

Landed on the Mun. Not enough fuel for return. Launched anyway. Jeb got out and used his jetpack to get home. Landed perfectly. He survived.

1 hour ago, Brownhair2 said:

Every time I've bailed a ship. Including from the Mun (this was before 1.0, so no re-entry. Otherwise Jeb probably wouldn't have survived ). I swear their spacesuits are made out of Kevlar or something.

Like real space suits?

[septemberWaves]

15 hours ago, TotallyNotHuman_ said:

Now THAT's what I call a Soyuz-style landing! 

In all seriousness, congratulations. I usually jettison my heatshield when it is no longer ablating (less deadweight for the chutes), and thus I never would have survived in your situation. Was this in 1.1.x or before that?

It was in 1.1.2 I believe; it's only really since 1.1 came out that I've been implementing that type of LAS into my capsules regularly. The habit arose after messing around with liquid boosters on capsules in a manner inspired by SpaceX's Crew Dragon.

[Mister Dilsby]

...they survived

[max_creative]

Apperntly the Infinity II can withstand a Kerbin reentry, and if the Laythe Base and Planes are loaded in and you use the parachutes, it can actually mostly survive impact! On the other hand, it mostly cannot survive a 25 m/s impact with a class A asteroid... Grr...

[AbacusWizard]

 

(Of course, in this case, the answer to "How did he survive???" is "It was an older version and re-entry heat hadn't been implemented yet.")

[Corona688]

I was sending Bob to the north pole for science reasons, and his lander decided it wasn't stable going heat-shield first.  I had to leave the engine section, which had fins, still attached on re-entry and force the entire craft to tumble to spread out the re-entry heat enough nothing important exploded.

[LaytheDragon]

This stubborn truck I built is so hardy that it and its kerbals just won't die.

The Transport Trucker can even survive (to save its kerbals, though if it lands on its side on Kerbin, it is staying that way) a failed launch, and has come out with all of its kerbals alive, from deliberate stage testing launches that are guaranteed to cause explosions, multiple times!

 

Edited June 28, 2016 by LaytheDragon

[Corona688]

OK Laythe, that is a screenshot to do Michael Bay proud.

Oh, one more time:

This was way back in 0.8.x when the stage editor lied.

I built a massive mis-staged rocket and the top stage lit first, destroying everything beneath it.  Hitting space caused a massive explosion which all but froze the game for several seconds, during which it showed nothing but a 1FPS slideshow of atomic flame.

When it was all over, the orbiter stage was just kind of hovering there.  Everything else was gone.

I landed it.

Edited June 28, 2016 by Corona688

[AbacusWizard]

1 hour ago, Corona688 said:

I was sending Bob to the north pole for science reasons, and his lander decided it wasn't stable going heat-shield first.

Don't worry, Bob; you don't need a heat shield for this particular re-entry... it's cold at the north pole!

[theend3r]

Pfff...

 

[Znath]

I had one where I crash tested a rover, the kerbal flew out of the cockpit and onto the top of the building I rammed into.

[Brownhair2]

1 hour ago, theend3r said:

Pfff...

 

I'm wondering why this happened in the first place...

[theend3r]

14 minutes ago, Brownhair2 said:

I'm wondering why this happened in the first place...

It was a challenge to see if one could survive a free fall from space with no parachutes or lifting surfaces. I had more designs but my Balls of Steel project was the most Kerbal.

Edited June 29, 2016 by theend3r

[RA3236]

I smacked Jeb into the water at 300m/s. He more than lived, he swam back to KSC.

[kiwi1960]

OK, I see a lot of "I" statements like " I bailed out".... "I survived"..... listen... its not YOU surviving, its the little Kerbals that did all this and survived. OK?

I'm enjoying this thread.... a whole new meaning to "The Darwin Award"... or.... "The Karwin awards" as the case may be.

 

[Mycroft]

So I was about 7,000 meters above the ground after a successful reentry, had just gotten the parachutes out safely, when I realized that 7,000 meters is a very long way when you are going 4 meters per second or so. So, per the norm when I have a boring decent, I attempted to go to the IVA with the intention of warping from there. As luck would have it, I happened to hit the EVA button, and of course the poor Kerbal fell off since, the parachutes being still in drogue mode, the ship was going way faster than his terminal velocity. So I'm trying to slow down with the jet pack (far from boring), when I remember how Danny2462 discovered that if Kerbals fall on their heads, the odds of survival are much improved. Bad for Danny, good for me. Anyway, I tried it, and, astonishingly, it actually worked. Wow. Then I decided to plant a flag to commemorate this survival, and literally as I'm writing the plaque, my ship gently comes in not fifty meters away and performs a feather soft landing out of pure spite . Anyway, it was picture time and, unfortunately, my Kerbal fell over [sob] and [sniffle], and.... no. Ha! Kidding! What really happened was I realized I forgot a ladder. I hate it when I do that.