Have you had to push your ship yet?

[RedPandaz]

Have you used the time-honored, tactical maneuver known as "Getting out and pushing" on any of your spaceflights yet? When?

 

My first time was just now. Built a basic orbiter, sent it to Minmus with a Mun rendezvous that sent it almost out of Kerbin's SOI. I almost had enough fuel to deorbit, but I was about 15 m/s short. So I got out and pushed, and got it on a happy deorbit

[purpleivan]

Two or three times I've had that "you've gotta be kidding" moment and had to get out and push.

Did it once on a trip to Mun and back in a challenge. The vehicle had 8 kerbals in command seats on the outside of the vehicle, so when one of them got out to push, the other 7 just sat back, taking in the view.

Edited October 25, 2017 by purpleivan

[DrLicor]

7 hours ago, purpleivan said:

The vehicle had 8 kerbals in command seats on the outside of the vehicle, so when one of them got out to push, the other 7 just sat back, taking in the view.

 Poor guy haha. 

In stock I've done it quite some times I think. Now I overdimension my crafts a little more. 

Edited October 25, 2017 by DrLicor

[B-STRK]

Yes, but around, so I could get the solar panels to face the sun after a completely drained batt leaves me with no other way to move the vessel.

Definitely not a push to the next gas station, but a push nonetheless, I guess?

[NSEP]

Yes, i had those moments, especially painfull when the Apoapsis is above 100km, and it takes hours to fully decay. And i also dislike landing at night.

[Atkara]

Didn't have to, so far. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I guess I'll reach that point eventually

[Geonovast]

2 hours ago, NSEP said:

Yes, i had those moments, especially painfull when the Apoapsis is above 100km, and it takes hours to fully decay. And i also dislike landing at night.

I see your 100km..

Pushing to de-orbit a 9,900 km x 4,900 km orbit... This was at least 30 trips, even after realizing I didn't need to be pushing the lander module and went to just pushing the CM.

[Johnny Wishbone]

Yes, many times. 

Not necessarily because I underdesign my ships, but more so because I try to do more with them than I originally planned to do. For example, in my stock career game, my fifth mission is a manned landing on the Mun with a single Kerbal in a ship that should be able to land and then launch from the Mun to return to Kerbin. Last time I did this mission, I spotted an arch on my way down to the Mun surface and decided to change my landing site to land near it. This cost me enough delta-v that i barely had enough left to get back into Mun orbit and do my escape burn. I ended up with a periapsis above Kerbin at about 100k and needed to get out and push to lower that 50k or so into Kerbin's atmosphere to capture and reenter. It all worked out, and Jeb was safely recovered.

FYI, for those of you who might not know this, you can warp time to 4X while doing an EVA push, which makes it go a lot faster. This is especially helpful if you need to do a lot of pushing and not just a short burst.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Not often, but it's happened.

I feel like infinite pushing is a little cheaty personally. (Not judging anyone who feels differently.) So I try to restrict my pushing to one full fuel bar per Kerbal on board.

Which means for me it's only useful if I'm really close to where I wanted to be in the first place, like just shy of de-orbiting. Oh, and recently I used a Kerbal to push a Mk1 Command Pod I was rescuing into a space shuttle bay so it would bump the Klaw in there, what a pain in the butt lol!

Spoiler

 

Edited October 25, 2017 by Rocket In My Pocket

[wumpus]

Guilty.  Can't remember doing it remotely recently, you need a Pe that is very close to the edge of the atmosphere.  Also I don't think I've ever pushed to get into orbit (although I've tried the jump free and use that 400m/s to get into orbit and wait for a rescue, but never successfully [other restrictions meant I didn't have enough delta-v for that]).

[Helmetman]

Only when the ship is very light.

I went to Eeloo orbit from LKO with a mk1 lander can using only EVA propellant.

It took some time for sure. Basically it's unlimited fuel. This was in 1.05 I think.

I never really need it because I overdesign my vessels.

[Kevin Kyle]

Yep, back when I was pretty newbish. Would do again if I had to. lol

[Curveball Anders]

Twice, both pretty early.

The experience might be why I tend to over-fuel my designs

[Ty Tan Tu]

Only once when I was de-orbiting a capsule. I play sandbox and always over engineer my crafts.  I can't remember exactly how it happened, but I was pointed prograde when I staged my final rocket. The force was just enough to lift my Ped above 70,000. D'oh! No engines. No RCS. Just a capsule with a heat shield and a parachute. I nudged it just enough to get below 70,000 and did a long series of air-breaking before I could open my chute.

[Eldrad_Ulthran]

Once. When my stupid lander was on it's side and I needed to fly off the surface.

[dvp]

4 minutes ago, OwenM said:

Once. When my stupid lander was on it's side and I needed to fly off the surface.

Man. What I wouldn't give for a Halo-style "Flip Vehicle" button. But I guess this isn't that kind of game.

[Eldrad_Ulthran]

Just now, dvp said:

Man. What I wouldn't give for a Halo-style "Flip Vehicle" button. But I guess this isn't that kind of game.

I know how you feel. If I was a plugin mod developer I know what would be made first...

[katateochi]

I've definitely pushed craft in the past, mostly when being just short of enough dV when returning from Mun, but now I always make sure the CM (once detached) has it's own set of RCS thrusters and some extra monoprop which is normally locked.
While the get out and push technique does technically provide infinite dV, the trade off is the TWR is slow low and the process is kinda tedious so I think it cancels out the "cheaty" aspect.  Also there is the chance of stranding the Kerbal doing the pushing if you forget to save enough thruster fuel for them to get back into the command pod.  I've had that happen before and spent ages using another Kerbal to try and push them towards the crew hatch and as the craft was out of RCS fuel all I could do was try and angle the ship so the hatch was pointing at the stranded Kerbal while his crewmate attempted to gently shunt him towards it. Took several attempts. I think it was after that that I decided all CMs must have their own thrusters and spare RSC fuel. 

 One thing I often forget with spaceplanes is to put solar panels on their underside, so I still have the need to perform the solar-boop maneuver to get the dorsal panels pointing at the sun. 

[kraden]

 Only once, and it was recently. It was made extra difficult as I use the persistent rotation mod and my craft was in a tumble without power when I had to get out and push. 

[dvp]

10 hours ago, katateochi said:

While the get out and push technique does technically provide infinite dV, the trade off is the TWR is slow low and the process is kinda tedious so I think it cancels out the "cheaty" aspect.

See, if I'm going to cheat, I'm going to cheat and just enable infinite fuel. It's easy to justify, too, when you're just a few m/s short of your goal - "IRL, the people planning this mission would have been smarter than me. This is like a handicap in golf." or "Well, if I hadn't insisted that my first orbit be perfectly circular, or if I'd used a gravity assist better when I left Kerbin SOI..." or "Well, I'm not as good a pilot as Scott Manley."

Making the "cheat" tedious is just punishing myself, and a game is supposed to be fun.

[roboslacker]

I haven't used it to push my vehicles, but there was a time I ran out of electric charge and used EVA propellant and time warp abuse to re-orient for re-entry.

[Helmetman]

In Soviet Russia rocket pushes Kerbal. 

 

[HeliosPh0enix]

I was coming back from my first (mostly) successful Mun landing and got stuck in a highly eccentric Munar orbit when I ran out of fuel for my Poodle.  That was back when I still put RCS on non-docking ships instead of reaction wheels, so I used all of my RCS fuel and got back into Kerbin's SOI, but with a 2000 km periapsis.  I then decided it was time to get out and push, so Jeb left the capsule, flattened himself against the heat shield (I had jettisoned the fuel tanks and engine at this point), and lit up his EVA jetpack.  It took him a good 2 minutes to bring our orbit sufficiently inside the atmosphere, but it worked out!

[Mister_Casual97]

Yes, I have had to do that. Well, once I didn't HAVE to per say, but I did to lower Pe so it didn't have to take extra, pointless aero brakes.

[softweir]

Been there, done that, found it really ... boring! But it got the crew home after a spent stage from a different launch hit my orbiter near the engine end and took out the engines and fuel tank. (Yes. I belong to the Kessler Syndrome club.)