We'll rescue you, we just won't land... how high can you jump? (Lots of screenshots)

[leithreas]

Jeb's historic Mun landing was somewhat hampered by the small detail of not having enough fuel to get back. Whether this was due to bad piloting or bad design depends on who you ask (most likely it was both) but poor Jeb was stranded on the Mun without even enough fuel to make it back into a Mun orbit.

A rescue mission was quickly planned. At this point, while we had a successful Mun landing on the books, nobody was sure if we were capable of building a craft that could both land and come all the way home again. To avoid the risk of having another craft stranded on the Mun, an unmanned rescue ship was dispatched without the capability of actually landing. It would arrive at a low orbit around the Mun, at which point Jeb was to wait until it went overhead, fly as high as his remaining fuel would take him, jump really hard, and hope for the best.

Jeb on the Mun:

Rescue ship launch:

Rescue ship arriving in Mun orbit:

Jeb's ship launching and promptly running out of fuel:

Jeb performs an EVA, and while it takes over half the fuel in his jet pack, he manages to achieve our first shipless orbital insertion.

Jeb orbits, while his ship falls back down to the surface and the rescue ship orbits behind.

I don't think he can believe he actually pulled that off...

The rescue ship finally catches up.

He makes it on board the rescue ship. (Is that a look of relief?)

The rescue ship takes him home. (He seems quite happy about this.)

[Deejay2000]

Of course it's Jeb doing this kind of stuff...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

So they even planned this sort of thing by having a Kerbal icon to display in orbit in map view!?

[Dynamo]

The Kerbal icon has been in the map mode since the beginning of EVA's; of course they planned for stupid stunts like this. Danny2462 even deorbited a kerbal using just the EVA pack.

I must laud you for this difficult feat!