The Closest Shave: Reentry Uncontrolled

[ProjectXMark1]

Very recently (pretty much right before posting this) I had one of my most hair-raising moments in KSP.

It was like a normal mission, an unmanned flyby of the Mun and a return to Kerbin, hopefully for a high science yield. The launch, insertion burn, flyby, and return burn (to bring the periapsis into Kerbin's atmosphere) went smoothly. Then I realised a potential problem: The time to return to Kerbin was going to push the limits of the onboard batteries.

I was nervous at this point, and activated the parachutes in the hope that they would deploy automatically without charge, then I found that due to a Subassembly gaffe I only had one parachute rather than the intended three. I was now quite uncertain that the little probe would make it back, and all of this would have been a waste. I could only hope at this point.

A time-warp later and the probe was re-entering, it was going at something like 3 kilometres/second when it hit, and at 20 kilometres up..

The chute deployed, the gamble had worked!

The probe landed safely, and was free to be recovered.

What made this even more awesome was the fact that I was playing FTL: Faster Than Light's soundtrack, which couldn't have summed up the atmosphere better.

In the end, I gained 102 Science from the mission, well worth it in my opinion.

[RocketTurtle]

Now try with deadly reentry.

[RocketPilot573]

One time I had a 200 ton ship returning from Jool. It hit Kerbin's atmosphere at well over 6000 m/s...