Your Most Clutch Landing?

[Tw1]

On Moho, I was landing with a lander designed for lighter planets. It had the Delta V and TWR, but used VTOL thrusters to bring itself down on its wheels.

My Vtol thrusters weren't that well balanced, and could only be used at about 60% thrust. Moho needed more than that. This meant that the vessel would go into a kind of death roll before crashing into the surface.

My solution was to hold on to the top drop tanks long past when they were empty, to maintain balance and come down on the main engine (a poodle).

At the last few seconds, I turned it to use the VTOL thrust, and as you can see, I made it.

Only lost the one RTG off a rover-probe, and that had backup power systems.

There where some kinda "clutch" (never heard the expresion before) landings in the mission that I made into a story.

They did require a rescue mission that time.

Edited July 1, 2013 by Tw1

[bobert577]

When I was landing my Kerbin Artik Research Station (KARS) I deployed the 4 chutes I had on the craft (would land horizontally), but realized it was upside down. I had to rock it back and fourth, but I got it to flip the right way up seconds before landing. Oh, and it landed at 10.8 m/s

[arq]

After awhile of messing with SSTO's, I finally made one that could get to Minmus and back. Unfortunately, my aerodynamics were not great on re-entry, so it insisted on flying backwards. After wrestling with it for awhile and giving up the runway, I decided my only option for a landing was to put it down on the tail vertically. But most of my fuel was gone from repeated efforts to land forward. I ran out of fuel 30m up and dropped from there, came down hard on the tail and wrecked half the craft, but the pilot survived. I called it a win and have since gotten much better with designing planes to behave on re-entry.

[Joshington]

One time I was trying to land next to a Mun arch. This particular Mun arch is right next to a hill, and I was landing when it was dark. So obviously I ended up on the wrong side of the arch and end up trying to land on an almost 45 degree hill. I eventually landed, but I had to full throttle and try again twice.

[magnemoe]

"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).

Non US player will probably think of the clutch you use to disengage the engine from the wheels on cars.

I had an series of SSTO who always run out of fuel some meters above the ground then returning, yes this is because mechjeb default wanted to land very gentle

However this beats everything

Landing this orion based ship with 1200 ton yes more than an million kg of rocket parts on Minmus.

This is an picture taken right after hitting ground.

Now the cargo was delivered and both of the crew survived, crew compartment fell off at first touchdown and the second caused the small parts to fly everywhere, probably because of the heavy orion stage transferred the impact out to them.

[andisheht3]

Something like this, I suppose:

**** man you made me remember how much I miss Doctor Who :'(

Still, that was pretty awesome.

[acealeam]

Space plane started to stall. Fell for a few thousand meters, managed to pull up at 70 meters

[Merinsan]

All my missions go smoothly or fail miserably. The closest I came to anything like that was getting satellites around Moho. The ship had 6 in total, and ran out of fuel during the capture. I deployed the satellites and tried to get them to capture on their own fuel. 1 made it, but on a highly eccentric orbit. The rest ended up in solar orbits.

[asae]

Sorry to say that I have no pictures but my most clutch landing does not involve a ship but a kerbal. After a complete staging failure over the moon I eva'd jebidiah out of his doomed craft and used his pack to bring him to a hard (but livable) landing on the mun. The reason that's clutch? .1% pack fuel remaining.

[Van Disaster]

Have docked a ship ( well, gigantic spaceplane ) at a station successfully when it ran out of both propellant and rcs from about 100m away. Final desperation manoever aimed it just right... felt awesome when they connected.