Craziest Ways Your Kerbals Survived An Accident

[Program Kerbal Space]

I want to know what accidents your Kerbals somehow survived.

Edited December 14, 2016 by Program Kerbal Space

[Allocthonous]

I once had a slight parachute mishap with a basic capsule on re-entry in 1.13. You know, one of those things where you find out after the parachutes have deployed and then been destroyed by aero forces that no, you didn't change the pressure settings when you added them (I love that this is fixed now). So Jeb's falling at terminal velocity towards the ocean. Figuring I had nothing to lose, since I couldn't revert at that point, I waited until he was almost down and had him go EVA. I don't remember if I tried using his jetpack or not, but it probably doesn't make much difference at sea level pressures. Anyway, he splashed down just fine. Apparently Kerbals are sturdier than spaceship parts. Or maybe that's just Jeb...further testing may be required.

[paul23]

Kerbin *heads* are sturdier than anything. Well known that you can do a reentry without spacecraft so long as you dive in head-first to the ground.

[Alpha 360]

After a minmus fly-by, I was experiencing reentry when at ten thousand feet I pressed the stage button and my parachutes deploy to get destroyed at 500 meters a second. And I was in the mountainous regions as well. I got rid of my heat shield and swerved about like crazy, bringing my velocity down to 90 meters a second. Since I was playing with 120% reentry, the atmosphere got thicker and that is what saved Jeb. I Evaed him out, very-very unfortunately, I didn't get the science experiments. Jeb bounced once he hit the ground at fifty meters a second, but he survived! Woho Jeb! 

[Wjolcz]

I've recently landed a shuttle without wings. By going backwards. I'll post the pictures when I'm on laptop to prove it.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Veeltch

[magnemoe]

Deorbiting and land an Mk2 cockpit back in 1.13, don't remember if it was an inline or standard.
Short storry had to recover kerbal and his pod from duna orbit. Added docking port and battery on back with KIS and docked it first to duna lander to take it to Ike orbit then to mothership for return. 
Sent up an shuttle to get crew down, plan was to use shuttle to dock to cockpit do an burn for deorbiting it, burn to get back to orbit and I land the MK2 first. 

Had brought up two extra parachutes with shuttle but forgot to put on cockpit.I noticed this then I was flying, however my speed was around 70 m/s who is not so far from its maximum impact speed so I tried to land and it worked, destroyed the docking port

[Aragosnat]

Back well before 0.9 was return some Kerbals from Duna(? or was it Mun) to Kerbin and when their shoots went to deply... The parts with the chutes where ripped off at like 800+m up and the rest of the craft (one with the Kerbals in it) kept going down... What saved them was the 4 landing legs going boom and one cocking port.. With the MK2 lander can surviving and even founf the picture too:

 

[kBob]

My favorite was after a tricky Mun landing, I had Jeb plant a flag and I was busy composing a nice pic, and not paying attention and didn't notice my rocket was very slowly sliding down the not very steep hill and it knocked down Jeb flattening and trapping him: I than had to wait while it slowly slid over him, but he was fine once the process was done.

Edited November 3, 2016 by kBob

[suicidejunkie]

Bill once KAS-cannibalized the Minmus junkyard (I'd left a ton of transfer/descent stages piled up because I didn't want to waste anything) to hand-assemble a terribly lopsided rocket with extra fuel and an emergency can of air.

He then popped up into space flying manually and hovered at AP while a bus full of Kerbals blasted into the SoI at 1000m/s.  They'd brought a few years worth of snacks but had 5 days of water and air when they left LKO for a nominally 9 day trip, and discovered the problem when supplies hit 10%.

Bill slapped the supply can on to the bus with 9 minutes to spare, then brought the ship in to dock and transfer fuel, and they all made it down to the surface base intact.

 

[Jhawk1099]

I was launching the first manned munar lander and return craft in a new hardcoreish career when all of a sudden the untested craft started flipping about like a pencil thrown through the air. Since i hadn't yet setup an abort sequence so i just burned when i was pointing up. After only the upper stage remained the instability went away and orbit was achieved. But at a cost. I did the maths and there was just enough delta v for  Valentina to land and return to orbit around the mun. Since i had  contract to launch a satellite into an equatorial munar orbit i decided that she could wait in orbit for a while. (Part of me making this decision was i didn't have enough money to launch another one  these crafts  but i would after the plant a flag on mun contract got fulfilled) 

The next mistake came after landing. Insertion and landing were both smooth as could be. Val got out to plant a flag but for some reason she decided to put the flag right next to the craft... so when the flag sprung up the craft went flying off landing on its side. Once she climbed back in takeoff proved to be truly terrifying. At the moment before actually lifting off the surface Val was scraping against the mun at 20ish m/s. I looked at my fuel levels to see that i had 7 units of lf left. I still had long way to go to orbit so Val got out once more and got to a 12 km orbit with .8 jetpack fuel left. It was quite an interesting flight. 

[Leafbaron]

I was trying to do a suicide burn with a very low TWR on the Mun. My landing sight was poorly planned and i was headed straight for the side of a mountain. By the time I realized what was happening I didn't Have enough time to do much and i quicksaved. A very poor choice on my part. It was the 2 man lander can and i kept exploding but trying again and again. Eventually I ended up burning as long as i could to slow my velocity and jettisoning the two man crew. By the time they stopped sliding around they were a couple Km apart. 

[klgraham1013]

Considering how invulnerable kerbals are, I always thought it would be a good idea to have them remain after a command pod explodes.  It would not only provide hilarity, but also maintain the real fact that, in ksp, kerbals are harder than metal.

[Program Kerbal Space]

3 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Considering how invulnerable kerbals are, I always thought it would be a good idea to have them remain after a command pod explodes.  It would not only provide hilarity, but also maintain the real fact that, in ksp, kerbals are harder than metal.

nah they're harder then kryptonite

[Leafbaron]

5 minutes ago, Program Kerbal Space said:

nah they're harder then kryptonite

Id say they are more ducticle and tough. The harder things become the more brittle they are. Good for compressive strength but not for bouncing. 

[Clipperride]

Bit of an old one, but the craziest survivable accident is definitely.......

Spoiler

Once a long enough ladder was found, the crew made it home in time for snacks and medals.

Edited November 3, 2016 by Clipperride

[Ultimate Steve]

Well, I had a fifty meter long mothership with a crew of around six. And it sort of fell from orbit...

And I managed to "glide" it in and all of the crew survived!

[DrunkenKerbalnaut]

Accidentally triggered my chutes a little to high and fast, and decided to ditch the pod and go EVA at about 1500m over water. Little dude hit the water, big splash, but no "Catastrophic Failure" window. On closer inspection, my kerbal was sinking into the ocean at about 4m/sec. Finding this hilarious, I finished my beer while Bill Kermin became the first to walk on the ocean floor. It was surprisingly bright down there. 

[Sharpy]

A big airplane-like contraption; meant to launch payloads much bigger than what MK3 cargo bay can fit: a "catamaran" with two hulls connected only by struts, with a wide gap between them, where the payload would go. The idea was "two stages to orbit", the moment you normally switch to closed-cycle engines in SSTO, this thing would release the cargo plus propulsion meant to bring the cargo to the orbit; meanwhile, using FMSR mod, I'd turn the airplane back and return empty to KSC.

Well, besides the two hulls, it had the cockpit/escape pod, an absolutely minimalistic micro-airplane, suspended on struts, above the payload, in the middle.

I came in for landing too fast. The plane tumbled, but I managed to release the rescue pod. 20 meters above ground and good 250m/s there was little I could do, a single drogue deployed, opening right before impact... the pod began rolling, losing its parts.

From the airplane of roughly 200 parts, the cockpit with the kerbal was the only part that survived the crash.

 

[AeroGav]

I was lucky enough to catch these two incidents from this week on camera

Val getting lucky 

Gerlass and Haylinn had their SSTO start to veer off the runway on takeoff.   Abort takeoff?  Nah continue, everything will be fine i'm sure :-)

 

[munlander1]

I have saved Jeb several times when I first started playing. So I accidentally destroyed the parachute so what I did was go Eva and gave Jeb some roll and this worked! He fell from the highest i think was 2km. 

[Program Kerbal Space]

Your submissions are nice! also @AeroGav I killed by Val by accident...

Edited December 6, 2016 by Program Kerbal Space

[NSEP]

My plane cockpits always survive water impact. Even at 100m/s.

I still remember when water in KSP was like acid, you could get your entire craft destroyed while falling down at 5m/s

[Freds]

The saddest moment was when an aerobraking on Eve gone wrong. The transport ship has 6 Kerbals onboard: 2 on the MK2 cockpit and 4 on Mk2 Crew Cabin. Due to the atmospheric pressure, FAR destroyed a decoupler holding a Droptank. The tank crashes in the wing, ripping it off the spaceplane. Without the wing the ship lost all control, and broken in a lot of pieces. The Mk2 Crew Cabin was destroyed, separating the cockpit (with 2 canards) from the rest of the now falling debris. I managed to 'land' in the middle of Explodium Sea 4 kerbals died, and the 2 who survived will never return do Kerbin A sad moment for the Kerbalkind

 

 

[foamyesque]

On 2016-12-07 at 10:03 AM, NSEP said:

My plane cockpits always survive water impact. Even at 100m/s.

I still remember when water in KSP was like acid, you could get your entire craft destroyed while falling down at 5m/s

I remember when water was the world's biggest flattest runway. 'course, that was before we had wheels...

[Andem]

This actually happened yesterday in a 64K save.

 

So, I was doing a test for a crew vehicle, when I realized that the launcher would not send it to orbit. I was about to stage to orbital stage to use the heat shield, but then remembered that distinctive lack of parachutes on the capsule. I decided to reenter the atmosphere with the orbital module in order to use it as a landing system/cushion. Then I noticed the craft start to flip the wrong way, and the capsule began to overheat. The G forces were going up, Bill and Bob were already knocked out and Jeb was about to follow. I staged the OM about a second before Jeb went as well. When they finally woke up, the capsule was at about mach 1 heading toward the ocean, and then I remembered: I had vanguard technologies installed! I EVA'd Jeb, then Bill, then Bob, and they all parachuted gently into the ocean.