Do you have any abandoned ships?

[Wallace]

I did have an abandoned docking test ship sat in orbit. It was just a 1 kerbal lander can with a clampotron, a coulple of solar panels a small engine and rcs it was just to practice docking and doing EVA to another ship, after testing it was left abandoned for a while, until I noticed it was just close enough to my new space station to rendezvous, it managed to make it there with about 3 drops of fuel and monopropellent left and it is sat docked there where it might be handy if any kerbals on board need some alone time.

[McFarnsworth]

I have a fully functional return craft for 5 kerbals sitting on the surface of Duna, because I'm an idiot.

My very first Duna mission was a relative success. Everyone was alive and the lander was still in one piece. It was both an inefficient lander and and inefficient landing on my part though so there wasn't even enough fuel left to reach orbit. A manned rescue mission was sent, landed near the original ship, and then for some inexplicable reason the pilot of the rescue mission went on an EVA. Much to his embarrassment he soon discovered there was no way to reach the pilot seat again so he had to join his disgruntled friends waiting for another rescue ship.

Years later, another rescue ship was launched, but landed 50km away from the original one. So the original ship was used to hop over the rescue ship. Jeb's flying skills were a bit rusty after years of camping on Duna however so he destroyed it while (crash) landing. Everyone survived however and the second rescue ship brought them all back safely. On the way back the pilot of the rescue ship remarked to Jeb "Too bad you guys didn't have jetpacks, would've been real easy to reach the command pod of the first rescue ship that way". "... uh, yeah" Jeb replied.

[DisarmingBaton5]

I sent two rescue missions after this one (dry) lander in a very eccentric orbit. They ran out of fuel as well, so they are now marked as debris.

[Cartz]

I have/had 2 rovers in orbit around Dres. (0.20)

Jeb and Bill misjudged their vertical velocity when landing a skycrane on Dres, on touchdown they accidentally initiated a rapid unplanned disassembly of the entire skycrane, which in turn detached the crew compartment from the ascent engine. With the crane destroyed, and the lander pod separated from the ascent stage by over 500m, they appeared stranded.

Thankfully for them, the ascent stage engine had 2 radially mounted rovers (which Jeb/Bill never did quite figure out how to detach successfully without at least one landing upside down) and neither the ascent engine nor the rovers sustained any serious damage in the 'landing'. Bill hopped in one rover, and Jeb hopped in the other (they didn't know if their mass would upset the CG of the stage). Using the onboard RCS systems and torque they were able to face the assembly up a hill and then were able to limp into orbit on the remains of that ascent engine and rendevous with Bob in the Kerbin return craft.

After Bill had eva'd into the return craft, Jeb thought it would be funny to turn the rover's lights on and seperate them from the ascent engine. Leaving them there for future generations to wonder how not one, but two rovers ended up in low dres orbit.

[darkstrike]

I've got a few abandoned ships. Most of them are on/around Duna. I apologize for the long post...I like providing a "backstory" for my space program in cases like these!

I've got two ships, the 'Spirit of Duna' (480km orbit) and the 'Essence of Duna' (100km orbit) orbiting clockwise around Duna from very early on in my space program when I was experimenting with "Long Distance" stages. Essentially that meant the ships, themselves, (both of differing variants of my 'Griswold II' class series of ships) couldn't get that far as they had regular engines and a few fuel tanks, but they had a nuclear engine stage attached at the back that was used for most space travel. Because I didn't know what I was doing as much in KSP back then, I let them enter Dunar orbit orbiting the "wrong" way. The crews are safe as I sent rescue ships to retrieve them, but the ships were abandoned in total working order and it's never been feasible to re-fuel and return them due to the fuel required to re-burn them back to the "proper" orbiting direction of counter-clockwise. They've been used once or twice as impromptu refueling stations for other ships though, so what little fuel they DID have left is now long gone...

I've also got an abandoned lander on the surface of Duna called the 'Spirit of Duna Lander', which was actually the lander that the 'Spirit of Duna' ship mentioned above brought to Duna. Oversight means the lander doesn't have enough fuel tanks, (even if they were all full of fuel!) to get the lander back to orbit, so it remains on the surface and the crew were rescued by a rescue ship. Sitting RIGHT next to it is the 'Red Rover', which isn't actually a rover vehicle, but the ship that BROUGHT my Dunar rover vehicle to the surface...once it got there however, even though it has quite a bit of fuel left, it isn't enough to get it back to orbit, so it's abandoned on the surface for the time being. The 'Red Hab' base is about 1km away from both of them now, so I still send exploration crews to check on them from time to time. This photo shows the 'Spirit of Duna' lander on the left, the 'Red Rover' in the middle, and the 'Dunar Rover' rover in the foreground: http://img23.imageshack.us/img23/3453/lckd.png The 'Dunar Rover' actually came to the surface docked underneath the 'Red Rover' and can be attached/detached using it's top docking clamp. The 'Red Rover' was an early variant of it's type - later/current models have more fuel tanks.

I've got a few temporarily abandoned ships as well...there are 2 'Ike Mini' class mini-ships, the 'Soltek 1' and 'Soltek 2', in orbit around Vall for when they are needed again. (Those side tanks are detachable to save weight - only the 'Soltek 2' was taken to the surface, so that's why its side tanks are missing in that screenshot - the 'Jool Special' (a 'Moho Special B' class vessel) that brought the mini-ships is in the background of that shot). I've also got another 2 'Ike Mini' class mini-ships, the 'Sandisk 1' and 'Sandisk 2' in orbit around Eeloo for the same purpose - that way the next ships to visit those planets won't need to waste fuel hauling their own landers with them, they can just re-use those. (Here's a better screenshot of the full 'Ike Mini' design during a test flight to orbit with Jeb around Kerbin - later variants, like the 'Sandisk 1 & 2' can be identified by the Telus-LV Bay Mobility Enhancer ladder, rather than the basic Telus Mobility Enhancer and Pegasus 1 Mobility Enhancer combo found on older models: http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/6389/hymr.png)

I've also got a 'Mini-lander B' class lander in orbit around Dres for the same reasons as above that has been down to the surface and back once (this is my favorite screenshot I've ever taken so far! ).

Finally, there's also the original 'Griswold II' crash site on the Mun too (it was named the 'Griswold II' as it was the very first prototype for all my 'Griswold II' class vessels ) - one of the landing gear broke off on landing and it tipped over, other than that it's undamaged but also out of fuel. so my Space Program uses it as an impromptu "weather station." The crew was rescued only to be killed along with the rescuing crew in an explosion in orbit when an engine overheated...a memorial flag stands near it now, and my Munar base is within a km away.

Yes, my naming systems are odd, lol...

Edited August 7, 2013 by darkstrike

[Rainbow-Dashie]

I recently built a VTOL (Vertical take off and landing) Lander called Pegasus-6 (the first 5 failed to get off the ground), which I had planned to use for my first mission to Duna. I was taking it out on a test run to the Mun and back and well.... the "Vertical Take off" part worked well enough, sadly the "landing part" was slightly less useful.... there was trouble when i switched from the horizontal engines, to the vertical ones for landing.

The horizontal ones were supposed to turn off as the vertical went on, but didn't work out that way, so the ship was sent flying forward until i manually shut them down.

Long story short, it crashed but survived (it was one heck of a cool landing, skidded on the ground for a few meters, shedding debris behind it). so got the crew out, and sent one of the boring old, tried and tested Mun Landers to rescue em.

The ship still has power, and enough fuel to re-orbit ( if 3 of the 4 engines weren't destroyed) and it is capable of taking off ( for about 5 meters before it skids the ground again). Pegasus-7 will hopefully not have this problem.

[Millitron]

I have a few dead probes in Minmus orbit. They were all trying different methods to de-orbit a space station module I wanted to replace, and bugs with KAS or robotic arms damaged them all beyond recovery.

[T-Pilot395]

My Mini Lander's design had one flaw: Not enough fuel for return trips.

I sent out a rescue lander to get Jeb out of the cockpit, but once reaching orbit it's engines died (Again from not enough fuel)

Although I managed to send out a refuelling probe to rescue the rescue lander, the Mini Lander itself is still stuck on the Mun's surface, acting as shelter and free fuel for anyone who visits, along with the flag that marked its first landing by Jeb.

[KSPbro]

My ship is creepy mainly because of how it got to be abandoned.

 

So I was getting ready to land my new ship, it would be the 3rd mün landing, as I was  making my final decent, the ship suddenly sped up! It was suddenly going crazy fast in a frenzy to not crash i put all thrusters on full to slow down, but it was no use, the ship exploded on impact, sending debris for miles, the poor kerbal survived the crash, but is now stranded alone with nothing..but his old home watching over him.

 

Fast forward to the present were I now have named the area were the ship crashed "The Krakens Ocean"

[KSPbro]

I got a new one.

 

So after I got used to docking I decided to build something amazing! A big fueling station!

My mind was set and I got right to work, after weeks of building the station was almost done. unfortunately all construction was halted do to a cluster of debris getting dangerously close to the space station, so the crew was immediately evacuated for safety reasons 

After that I never went back, ever now and then a satellite will get close enough to take a picture, but do to the amount of debris around the station it's to dangerous to get close 

 

It is just up there...half built...one of the construction ships are still there...

[lodger]

In one of my 1.0.3 savegames there's this Duna lander concept I sent to Mun for testing purposes. While it was orbiting Mun I scrapped the whole design and built a new one, basically because the first design was too heavy, too fuel inefficient. Never bothered to get the old one back.

Edited October 17, 2016 by lodger

[NotAgain]

I sent a Münar Emergency Return Vehicle a while ago in this save. I haven't come close to needing it, so it just sits there, being slightly radioactive. (Blame the RTGs.)

[RX2000]

I've got probes sitting on the Mun & Minmus, just in case I get any "Science from surface of xxx" contracts. I try to roleplay as best I can when I play KSP, so I'm not gonna send any actual Kerbals on a one way trip anywhere. Even on my space stations I rotate the crews out every now & then just to keep realism up a tad.

[ThatHomelessGuy]

Once had a kerbal driven rover on the Mun exploring some craters when Pop went the kerbal. Forgot to give him enough life support to go for a drive on the rover and well now there is a non robotic rover in a crater somewhere waiting for a kerbal to find it. Well that was until I updated. Other than that I've lost track of the amount of satellites I've lost to botched transfers and such.

I remember also having a command capsule with a piece of truss and a material bay stuck to it with jeb in it wooshing though the solar system from a kraken attack on the very first launch on one save. I put the ship on the launch pad and it just went bananas and ripped itself to bits before crashing the game. I reloaded the game and couldn't find the debris or Jeb and since I play with kerbals die on I figured he had died. That is until I eventually went to the tracking station and found him on an escape trajectory out of kerbin and then out of kerbol about 20million meters away from kerbin. Since I wasn't using life support I figured I'd just leave him to his fate and kept playing dropping in every so often to see how small kebol was getting. I wonder what he was thinking when it happened. "What did bob put in that SRB? Can we use that energy to rescue me?". I never would have been able to catch up with him with the kerbal tech of the day though.

Though it would be awesome if there was a reliable way to harness the kraken to launch an entire colony ship that way without reducing it to large space faring shrapnel.

 

Edited October 17, 2016 by ThatHomelessGuy

[Spacestronaut]

During one of my first Mun missions, my lander tipped over and Jeb couldn't right it. After trying to take off sideways (and destroying the bottom half of my ship) I had to leave him there.