That did not go as expected... it went better than expected!

[Holoday]

It all started out as a normal (albeit quite modded) mother-ship-style mission to Eeloo, the rocky hard planet at the far reaches of the Kerbin system.  My ship was a large, inefficient but cool cryogenic fuel ship (no pun intended), and after a few gravity assists, I had my intercept.

But in my joy and happiness from the mission ending out so well, I failed to notice that my intercept had in fact brought my precious ship's Periapsis several thousand meters above the ice-cold surface.  As typical to any KSP player, overzealous time warp is often the end to many missions- but they just revert to a quicksave. What was that? Quicksave? Aw, I wish I had thought of that. You see, I broke the Kerbal Kode and failed to quicksave. After a bit of panicked tea consumption, I adressed the situation. The mothership did not have the fuel to raise it's apoapis enough nor the TWR. So my ship shuddered it's way through about two thirds of it's precious fuel reserved slowing itself down right over the surface of Eeloo. Yes, I was going to land the mothership. Luckly, I hadn't discovered the mod RCS thruster placement helper (or whatever it's called) so the engines and RCS thrusters combined had a TWR of 1.05, just enough to land.

The only problem with this plan- well.... motherships don't land. They stay in space. So with out landing gear (not that that would have been much help COUGH COUGH KSP DEVS), my massive 500+ part vessel descended to it's doom. Or... sort of.  Two strange coincidences helped this doomed vessel survive it's decent. One, that there was a rear docking port, and two, that it had three Kerbin reentry pods. So I did what any sane person would do, I took the pod and placed it outside on the rear of the vessel to act as a landing cushion. And that it did. It blew apart to fragments in a magnificent stock explosion. So I had done it! I had landed my overengineered, silly, and kraken-prone vessel on Eeloo. 

Getting back was another issue... *que blunderbirds intro*

[Kerbalstar]

Great little story @Capitalist Kerbal! I look forward to the return home!