How close have you come to failure? Me: 7 units of RCS fuel left

[leax256]

That's badass!

thanks, I'm gonna have to send a refueling mission there soon. but first, Moho and it's northern hole.

[acealeam]

I was creating a spaceplane, and I'm still pretty bad with spaceplanes and wanted to practice landing it. So I go up a few thousand meters and start turning around. My plane started stalling and I was going pretty fast. I stopped stalling at about 4k meters, then I burned retrograde and I was still descending very quickly. I had a little escape pod thing ready, but I was only at 200m/s at 1k meters, so I took a risk and didn't deploy. Well, it pulled up at around 70 meters and I flew back. I didn't quite land it successfully, but hey.

[Awaras]

Establishing an orbit around Moho with an unmanned ion powered probe. 6 units of xenon left...

[cesarcurado]

Bouncing off right after my first landing on Minmus.

Fortunately for me, the bounce was quite high and I could correct it before crashing.

[SargeRho]

running out of fuel 3m above the surface of Eeloo, landing barely slow enough.

[Merinsan]

I had a Duna mission which dropped 6 probes to land on the surface. None of them had parachutes, I figured I could use engines to soft land. 5 of those probes crash landed. The 6th one ran out of fuel about 1 meter off the ground and landed perfectly.

[TheDarkStar]

Two things:

1. I once managed a perfect successful suicide burn when landing on the Mun. I finished decelerating from 600 m/s to 0 m/s just as I hit the ground.

2. When I was returning from Bop, I ran out of fuel just before getting a Kerbin intercept. Luckily, I still had RCS fuel left. I got my periapsis low enough to aerobrake successfully, and then I saw that I had < 0.5 units of RCS fuel left. This was before the RCS change, but it was only enough fuel for another fraction of a second of use.

[RedDwarfIV]

Okay, so my Duneshot 1 mission managed to land a rover in the large South Pole crater of Duna. I spent hours driving it out only to find that it would take too long to reach my actual target. So, I sent a second mission - Duneshot 2.

For Duneshot 2, I added a research base to the payload, consisting of a crewtank and a cupola on landing legs and with a pair of solar panels.

Because I'm not particularly accurate with my transfer windows, both Duneshot 1 and Duneshot 2 required massive burns to get a Duna intercept after leaving Kerbin via Mun slingshot. In theory, if I actually put effort into transferring at the right time, I could send full Jumbo-64 tanks to Duna. But I'm not, so I haven't. Anyway, I had to make a 2500m/s burn, and because of the heavier payload, the spacecraft ended up with about the same remaining fuel as Duneshot 1 had, despite Duneshot 1 having required a 3500 m/s burn. This messed things up badly when it came to deorbiting the spacecraft over Duna. I had to use the interplanetary stage to slow the payloads, but there wasn't enough fuel to either make them go straight down, or make them go sideways.

After several retries of the reentry, I finally managed to do it - I got the rover lander down intact, and I was able to get the rover off the lander. The base was not so lucky. The cupola and one of the solar arrays was destroyed, and it had landed upside down. The commander of the mission had been in that cupola.

But still, it's an operational Duna research base close enough to the pyramid anomaly that I can drive the rover to it. Hopefully, future missions will have more fuel to work with. I'm definitely going to be researching Duna transfer windows.

Both primary and secondary missions succeeded, though not without casualties.

Edited June 17, 2013 by RedDwarfIV

[jwenting]

let's see. Ran out of fuel about 10m over the surface of the Mun yesterday, trying to land a small base there (2 hitchhiker containers, a panoramic thingy, and 2 docking ports I'll probably never use, some solar panels and landing engines).

Bounced a few times, nearly tipped over, but now sitting on the surface even if not quite where intended.

Also yesterday, my first return mission from Duna ran out of fuel in a highly eccentric orbit around Kerbin, 65 by 2000 kilometers, barely enough to start aerobraking. Took several hours (with time acceleration) before we got a suborbital trajectory and a safe landing.

[kookoo_gr]

1. When i first got to Jool i was going for Bop, first time to aerobrake on another planet and after many failed attempts i managed a Jool orbit, luckily i managed to have a pretty good plane alignment with Bop along with an encounter. At the time i didn't know about fuel conservation techniques and when i got at Bop's SOI i realized that i might not make an orbit but went for it, when i run out of fuel i started using RCS and managed an orbit, after that i used RCS to make a polar orbit (the entry orbit was about 30 degrees off from polar orbit). That thing is still up there with less than 10 units of RCS after mapping Bop.

2. At my early interplanetary journeys to Eve where i run out of fuel while making a polar orbit in order to map Eve, used RCS to complete it and was left with 3 units of RCS. That thing is still up there.

3. At the Val landing about 100 m from the surface i ran out of fuel at my rover's skycrane, after waiting for a few secs and the speed went just above 10m/s and just before crashing i separated the skycrane with the help of sepatrons, it appears that the boost from the sepatrons slowed the rover enough so it would tilt to one of the Probodobodyne RoveMate's corner. The landing was a success with only one busted gear.

4. At my Tyllo landing when i managed to land a rover with fuel remaining for a couple of secs, pretty much like an Apollo 11 landing, my lander was going for a steep hillside, and barely managed to steer away form it, then i had to throttle up to cut vertical speed and barely managed to land with a speed below 10m/s. The lander fell on its side but after releasing the rover i used the landing gear to upright the lander

[inigma]

1. When i first got to Jool i was going for Bop, first time to aerobrake on another planet and after many failed attempts i managed a Jool orbit, luckily i managed to have a pretty good plane alignment with Bop along with an encounter. At the time i didn't know about fuel conservation techniques and when i got at Bop's SOI i realized that i might not make an orbit but went for it, when i run out of fuel i started using RCS and managed an orbit, after that i used RCS to make a polar orbit (the entry orbit was about 30 degrees off from polar orbit). That thing is still up there with less than 10 units of RCS after mapping Bop.

2. At my early interplanetary journeys to Eve where i run out of fuel while making a polar orbit in order to map Eve, used RCS to complete it and was left with 3 units of RCS. That thing is still up there.

3. At the Val landing about 100 m from the surface i ran out of fuel at my rover's skycrane, after waiting for a few secs and the speed went just above 10m/s and just before crashing i separated the skycrane with the help of sepatrons, it appears that the boost from the sepatrons slowed the rover enough so it would tilt to one of the Probodobodyne RoveMate's corner. The landing was a success with only one busted gear.

4. At my Tyllo landing when i managed to land a rover with fuel remaining for a couple of secs, pretty much like an Apollo 11 landing, my lander was going for a steep hillside, and barely managed to steer away form it, then i had to throttle up to cut vertical speed and barely managed to land with a speed below 10m/s. The lander fell on its side but after releasing the rover i used the landing gear to upright the lander

Total save!

[ManaaniWanderer]

I had a Munar mission return with only around a combined 10 units of fuel left after a return to direct reentry burn. Might not of been the most efficient, but a parking orbit would of taken way more fuel then I had in my tank.

[Odo]

I returned from a munar mission with only 4 liquid fuel units I was freaking out. xD

[AllenM3]

Spent all evening making this craft to send 3 Kerbals to Eeloo, cause Iits the only planet I havent visited. Didnt really look up the math or see how much delta-V I needed.

Well upon entering Eeloo's SOI and making a highly eccentric orbit. As I was heading toward my periapsis @ 20km, I noticed I had only about fuel enough for about 500 delta-V. I was so twitchy and biting my lip. No margin for error. Rather than try and slow my decent with low throttle and lots of time. I decided just to suicide burn. Burned at Periapsis killed all lateral velocity then waited til about 500m to burn by last droplets of fuel to keep me from making a huge crater and killing kerbals. I didnt even get to cut my throttle. Was at 100% thrust all the way til I hit the ground at about 12m/s, but it landed after a bit of floating around. Luckiest thing I've ever done in any game. I had to plant an epic flag for this trip. Surprised how much delta-V I needed for Eeloo. Although I did leave kerbin at a bad time.

Upon reaching Eeloo, I now feel so happy. Yay

[ForumHelper]

I returned from a mission to Tylo with almost no fuel at all. After arriving I found out it would take me way more dV than I had to land and return so I moved all the fuel I had left from my 4 landers attached to the main ship and returned to Kerbin. I have also managed to secure every lander and have docked them to the orange fuel tank that you can see on one of the pictures. It's currently orbiting Tylo, waiting for another mission to arrive.

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Edited June 17, 2013 by ForumHelper

[PaleoGamer]

I accidentally jettisoned my main engine instead of throttling it back up when trying for a Munar orbit. Tried to make it with my return stage and wound up in this orbit with no fuel.

Burned RCS thrusters for several minutes until my periapsis dropped into Kerbin's atmosphere and got the crew back home.

[Zorro_347]

My kethane miner ran out of fuel 2 meters above the surface. I'll newer try to land on mun from clockwise orbit again...

[Budgie]

After a textbook-perfect mission with Bobcat's Constellation pack, on a visit to the moon, I decouple the ascent stage on the lander and put myself in an orbit right by the Orion craft. After I dock the two and transfer the crew and valuable monopropellant, I undock and translate backwards with the Orion. I then notice that the Ascent Stage had enough fuel to deorbit it, so I line up in retrograde and begin to burn..... right into the Orion that I hadnt quite cleared. Luckily, the crew survived, but I lost the parachutes and docking segment on the Orion, as well as one solar panel. To further this disaster, I ran out of liquid fuel while trying to circularize my orbit at a low enough altitude on Kerbin so I could rescue the crew later. I finished the circularization burn with whatever monopropellant I had left. Now Bob and his crew will have to wait up for a rescue craft that can accommodate 6 crew..... hrrrrrmmmm

[DChurchill]

On a return from the Mun and my lander had 0 fuel but like 260 units of RCS fuel. I was using the RCS to get the ship back home. I think I had enough, but hit the spacebar and separated the capsule from the CSM, so I'll never know.

[asae]

Just yesterday I was trying to land on the mun with what I thought was a tried and true rocket design... problem is the staging got messed up about a thousand meters up and jeb had to bail. Managed to land jeb instead but he had no pack fuel left. How close did I come to failure? .1% of a kerbal's EVA fuel.

[spacelemming]

In one of my early Mun missions I had enough fuel to escape from the Mun, but not enough to lower my periapsis into the Kerbin atmosphere (I didn't know the best places to burn at that point).

I didn't have any RCS and so had to get my Kerbal out and push the capsule.

With the eventual help of another Munar flyby I was able to get him home safely.

[tipsyMJT]

My scariest mission yet would have to be when I docked my space stations battery module to the solar panel module. The solar panels were already in a nice 120x120 orbit so I went to launch the battery modules. I launched at the worst time, by the time I got to the same 120x120 orbit I looked at the map and solar panels were on the absolute opposite side of the planet.

I decided to see what would happen so I increased my orbit and went to high time warp. After many orbits (probably about ten or so) I was finally able to start thinking about docking and then I realized, I left rcs and ASAS on while taking screen shots and such and was now left with just 30 units of rcs to close in the 10 Km I had left. I had to use my very unwieldy orbital stage to adjust my pro and retrograde vectors after that was all done I was hurtling toward my target at a scary 75 m/s (yes that's scary when you have barely any rcs).

So, with my orbital stage empty and barely any rcs I had to decouple the orbital stage and hope to sweet baby jesus that I was inaccurate enough to have it go off course and avoid collision with my target. After that had been done I got my little battery module pointed staright at the target but I had to tweak my prograde vector (it was just a tad off.) I swear I yelled at myself for only putting a set of rcs blocks on one side of the CoG. So after struggling with barely any rcs and an unbalanced pod I was finally able to get within 20m of the target and as I closed in at too high of speeds I started translating retro to get down to safe speeds and I was bareluy able to get it to .8 m/s before my rcs ranout and luckily it ran out right when the docking magnets kicked in.

Closest call I have ever had.

[ScottyDoesKnow]

How's this for close? This is just after hitting 0 monopropellant, and the only two engines that stayed on are opposite each other.

[inigma]

My scariest mission yet would have to be when I docked my space stations battery module to the solar panel module. The solar panels were already in a nice 120x120 orbit so I went to launch the battery modules. I launched at the worst time, by the time I got to the same 120x120 orbit I looked at the map and solar panels were on the absolute opposite side of the planet.

I decided to see what would happen so I increased my orbit and went to high time warp. After many orbits (probably about ten or so) I was finally able to start thinking about docking and then I realized, I left rcs and ASAS on while taking screen shots and such and was now left with just 30 units of rcs to close in the 10 Km I had left. I had to use my very unwieldy orbital stage to adjust my pro and retrograde vectors after that was all done I was hurtling toward my target at a scary 75 m/s (yes that's scary when you have barely any rcs).

So, with my orbital stage empty and barely any rcs I had to decouple the orbital stage and hope to sweet baby jesus that I was inaccurate enough to have it go off course and avoid collision with my target. After that had been done I got my little battery module pointed staright at the target but I had to tweak my prograde vector (it was just a tad off.) I swear I yelled at myself for only putting a set of rcs blocks on one side of the CoG. So after struggling with barely any rcs and an unbalanced pod I was finally able to get within 20m of the target and as I closed in at too high of speeds I started translating retro to get down to safe speeds and I was bareluy able to get it to .8 m/s before my rcs ranout and luckily it ran out right when the docking magnets kicked in.

Closest call I have ever had.

Definitely a close call. I would have deorbited the mission and started over.

[inigma]

How's this for close? This is just after hitting 0 monopropellant, and the only two engines that stayed on are opposite each other.

Four out of six landing legs resting on solid ground ain't bad. Jeb would say "You only need three."