100% Pure Kerbal Epic Awesomeness!

[Scoundrel]

After playing around with rovers in .20 for the last few days, I decided to do a Mun landing and plant a flag. Unfortunately, like everything I do (including somehow managing a Jool transfer while trying to get to Duna), nothing ever goes according to plan. I should have aborted at launch, but no, I decided to "Manley" my way through each disaster as they popped up.

The first sign it was going to be a rough trip was when a booster on my asparagus stage mysteriously separated for no reason, leaving its opposite to burn happily away. Quickly I jettisoned its twin and... everything was still good! I had hoped that was my mission glitch and the rest would be smooth sailing.

But no, apparently the fickle rocket gods had other ideas.

As it turned out, the booster had nicked one of my nuclear engines when it went loose, though it didn't destroy it or anything. So when I went to throttle up my nukes as I started my Munar descent, something strange happened: my ship started wobbling like crazy then spinning. I throttled down, fixed my orientation, and tried again. This time the spinning happened almost automatically and bits started flying off of my ship! Luckily I got it sorted out and deactivated it and its twin.

But oh no, my troubles weren't over yet! My two remaining engines were all I had, and I had wasted so much time dealing with the crappy engine that I had overshot my initial landing zone and would now be landing in darkness with half the thrust I started with.

Of course, that wasn't the only problem. While I had been spinning, I had thrown off half my lander legs, but because it was dark and I had also lost my landing lights (which were on the external fuel tanks that had flung off) I didn't realize they were gone until I touched down!

Incredibly, I managed to fight the rocket's desire to pitch all over the place and rotate in mid flight (the fuel tanks were imbalanced but I didn't have time to fiddle with fuel transfers to fix it) and touched down almost perfectly vertical on the side of a hill at about 40m/s or so. You can imagine what happened next. Yet, despite all odds, somehow my kerbals survived! So, fast forward until sunlight hit the area and while taking the screen cap to commemorate the event, this happened (click the pics to go to my imgur album with full resolution pics):

An explanation: While I was using RCS to go from the pod to the flag (for the standard 3 kerbal pic) I accidentally tapped V and went from free camera mode and rotated into orbital camera which threw my kerbal into a bizarre spin. Still high on the adrenaline from the landing, I stupidly turned RCS off thinking I would just use pod torque to correct... which would have worked if it was a pod and not a kerbal. Seriously, I wonder sometimes if my brain still works.

Anyways, while he was spinning I realized that he was close to the same orientation as the kerbal in the flag I made, so I switched to a different camera position and tried to get a screen capture. Unfortunately there was lag between hitting F1 and the actual capture, so I missed it and the better composition it would have made.

To give you an idea of the lag between shots, this was the next screen cap (where sausage fingers me also hit F2 while hammering away on F1):

Apparently the other two kerbals thought it was as funny as I did.

FYI, these guys are Jeb, Bill and Bob (for some reason they never have the orange suits in my games)... can you tell who is which?

Afterwards, I started wondering if there were any other players with epic kerbal stories. Anyone else care to share?

[Schweehog]

You are one good pilot. All my failures just destroy everything and make the mission a failure. Kudos to you for being able to think quick enough to jettison those boosters and continue the mission. Falcon 9 style!

[Scoundrel]

Heh, thanks. All my skills come from a constant string of failures that somehow culminate in the odd success. Mostly I keep going to see how I stack up against some of the really good players... which is to say I'm probably somewhere between Jeb and a lab rat as far as skills go.

[Wayfare]

Upside-down off-world flag posing should be the next big on the internet, methinks

[The Jedi Master]

"And THAT, kiddos, is my story. Now run along!"

--Jebediah Kerman

This is VERY Kerbal!

(man, I like that smile too much...)

[Scoundrel]

Upside-down off-world flag posing should be the next big on the internet, methinks

That would be awesome! If it weren't for the fact that it was pure fluke I got the pic in the first place, I wonder if I could juggle 3 kerbals upside down around a flag...

"And THAT, kiddos, is my story. Now run along!"

--Jebediah Kerman

This is VERY Kerbal!

(man, I like that smile too much...)

Yeah, you can tell its Jeb from that huge grin he had the entire time he was spinning out of control. I'm glad there was still some vestige of it when I got the pic. Oddly his face went to a mere smile once he bounced off the ground, and even normally sour Bob smiled. I made a wallpaper of it simply because it looked too good not to. I wonder if I can make my own custom loading screen with it.