Your Most Clutch Landing?

[Awesomegamegeek12]

I was wondering the other day, I wonder what some people have done in KSP to simple get their ships to the target and on the ground and more importantly what skill and planning it took to get there? this reminded me of one of my first manned interplanetary landings, to the Joolian moon of Laythe. Anyway, this thread is about my before mentioned curiosity, what have you done to get your ship safely down on your target, or to simply get there?

My Story:

The interplanetary transfer was as normal, getting to Jool etc, but what happened in the Joolian system was more exiting, i had ran out of fuel on my exterior nuclear engines, these were supposed to be used for inclination changes and innitial capture, I only had my landing stage engine left. I had to be really fuel efficient so I did some calculations took my time and managed to get an aero-capture followed by an encounter with Vall, I then lowered my orbit to meet up with Laythe and set up an unintentional direct crash with laythe, luckily I packed parachutes, unluckily I didn't pack a decoupler to detach my decent stage 'Just in case' I had an absolutely minuscule amount of fuel to set up a trajectory that would hit land and to slow me down, My kerbals landed safely, but to this day await a rescue ship.

I'm interested to see your feats of ingenuity below! (Pics as well if you so please.)

Also, clutch means close...

[Edit: Fixed Image, Minor Grammar corrections, [2] Clearing things up.]

Edited June 30, 2013 by Awesomegamegeek12

[Fried]

um I just half-a#@ every thing and some how it always works

[regex]

Your Most Clutch Landing?

What? I wasn't aware that landers had a clutch, or that rocket engines even needed one...

As far as just getting my **** to the ground safely, I usually build my ships with more delta-V than they need, gives a good safety margin and lets me half-ass it like Fried.

E: Recently I dropped a rover carousel on Minmus, nearly ran out of rocket fuel before I could tell where the ground was but I had plenty of RCS to supplement the braking.

[Kosmo-not]

Something like this, I suppose:

[Amphiprion]

I built an Eve, Zero Bypass, Kethane Turbine craft to take down and back up to rendezvous with "the Kethstral" Kethane mining ship. (weighs 3,600tons fully loaded with fuel. Needs low G moons to be able to land and take-off).

This lander took alot of trial and error to get to work.

The landing was really hard, keth turbines only kick in when you are about to crash, quickly get the airspeed down, CLUTCH IN, deploy chutes, keep descent speed around 10m/s then last kick with middle rocket engine if needed for final landing.

Edited June 30, 2013 by Amphiprion

[SuperWeegee4000]

I've never heard the word "clutch" used like that before.

[Schweehog]

I've never heard the word "clutch" used like that before.

I heard it all the time when I used to play Call of Duty.

[Awesomegamegeek12]

I've never heard the word "clutch" used like that before.

I picked it up from forums, Reddit and other things like that.

[thestookem]

Excessive use of the quick save and quick load keys.

[purpletarget]

I've never heard the word "clutch" used like that before.

Check the definitions 1-5 here.

Unfortunately I have no suitable stories, since I tend to plan ahead.

[Uberick]

I don't have any pics I don't think(will check later), but when landing on Ike, I didn't kill all of my horizontal speed properly, and when I "touched down" my craft bounced and proceeded to spin end over end over the landscape. Luckily, it was JUST above the ground, so nothing was damaged. I managed to regain control and point it skyward, but it bounced AGAIN on the second landing, and did two complete spins before "landing" a third time for good. All in all, nothing was damaged, but I almost gave myself a heart attack.

Now I use retro RCS to plant my landers onto low grav planets to prevent that from happening.

[Scotius]

I came closest to a "clutch" when i've accidentally knocked off one of three engines on my Mun lander. Still managed to land that piece of junk, but since it was barely stable with all engines in place return was not an option. Rescue mission used older, field-tested design and was 100% successful. With long range missions i use two simple steps:

A. Overbuild all ships. Up to the point they have more than enough dV to get the job done, and carry hefty reserve in case something goes wrong.

B. And if it's not enough, every manned mission is accompanied by a backup in form of automated tanker with even more fuel

[Whackjob]

I managed to do a low-angle approach to the Mun once. Low enough and the trajectory perfect enough to approach a previous landing. Which I then accidentally struck with the bottom of the new lander, knocking the poor kerbalian inside a few hundred meters away. He landed in a crater and I assigned myself some imaginary points.

[SkyRender]

I can't recall any collections of eggs being involved in any of my missions, actually. Though as for gripping landings, my first Kerballed Duna mission was quite something. I had not yet learned that Duna's atmosphere is not well-suited to aerobraking with large parachutes exclusively, and so had to do a powered landing with too little fuel to actually accomplish one safely.

Amazingly, the crew and both of their rovers survived without any major problems. The rocket was totalled, of course; had to send a rescue craft up to save their butts.

[korda]

Well, at one of my first Munar landings my rocket ended up landing on side (I didn't managed to kill horizontal velocity on time) but I actually managed to take off and get back to Kerbin this way. I don't even remember what version of game it was.

Recently I had that plan of sending my rover (for kerbals waiting at Mun base) in fairing that will land on it's belly. Obviously that was rather hard thing to balance, but I've spend lot of time at it and was pretty sure that my 'lander tug' which was send as separate ship will be able to land it right. Problems started when I saved at 5000 meters. Soon after it it turned out that I didn't make it perfectly balanced and I had to load save. Whats worse while I've had disabled 2 RCS's tanks on my rover before saving they were active after loading again and this destabilized it even more. I made a lot of tries and when I was ready to give up I crashed in way that keep rover intact and able to drive out of fairing. Lander tug fell apart and was ripped of from top of fairing. You can see whats left of it (but the most of parts simply decided to explode).

[Travisfv]

Well I don't think you're using the word clutch correctly, but here goes.

My most umm... "clutch"... moment was my last takeoff from Minmus. I forgot to move the ascent stage below the descent stage on my lander. Loaded up Jeb and Bill, pressed space, and was quite shocked. The poodle engine was rocketing me off to interplanetary space. I managed through some quick maneuvering to keep flipping from prograde to retrograde. It eventually fell off and I regained control. Luckly Minmus doesn't have much gravity to fight off, so I circularized, switched to the command module, and got home easy.

[maackey]

Tried to do a suicide burn on the mun, was off by a fraction of a second. Literally nothing else survived except the command pod. (only an armored solar panel flew off perpendicularly 1000km north and exploded)

[lobsterbark]

I plan everything ahead, and never overbuild, so I don't have any moments like this.

[maackey]

I plan everything ahead, and never overbuild, so I don't have any moments like this.

If you never overbuild, wouldnt *every* moment be on the knife's edge between failure and success? One small misstep and BAM not enough fuel! you orbit forever or crash into something.

[Budgie]

Lobsterbark, ace spaceman, comfortably on the edge...

[Giggleplex777]

My first Vall landing. I had to use the lander's fuel to complete orbital insertion and it ran out of fuel less than a meter away from the surface.

There's also a RCS rover on top.

[NASI Director]

I just throw a metric s***-ton of fuel on there.

EDIT: That's probably why I've never gone farther than Duna or Eve...

[msyblade]

"Clutch" is a common American term used in sports, indicating last second ability to come through "In the clutch". (Bottom of the ninth/Final minutes of a basketball game)

I also was unable to kill my horizontal velocity upon landing on eve one time. Just knicked the ground but instead of nothing being damaged, it tumbled HARD, destroying every single piece of equipment except the lander. Those kerbals are still there also, because instead of planning a rescue mission I decided that would be the beginning of my eve colony. So they will likely never come home, but now they have lots of company(and a rover).

[Flixxbeatz]

Using the fuel reserved for landing oftentimes lead to this.

Thank Squad for docking, I'm now leaving Kerbin with more than the amount of fuel that I need, thus no more clutches and unnecessary pressure. Better to bring more fuel intended than running out somewhere in between...

[Awesomegamegeek12]

I'm pretty terrible at docking xD I tend to under-fuel alotl and just hope! (And skill of course... if I have any...)

[Edit: Spelling dammit!]