What's your closest shave?

[ArmchairGravy]

I did a Mun return today using a T200 fuel tank and a 48-S motor as the ascent stage. Get down smooth, only had to use a smidge at landing just to get rid of the descent stage. I'm kind of in a hurry, so score my science, pop open map view, and blast homeward. As soon as I hit Kerbin orbit, I lowered my periapsis down to 24k, and speed on home. Mind you, I'm in map view all this time. So I hit atmosphere and finally come out of map view. I have .99 fuel left.

What's your narrowly avoided disaster?

[xzxvrx]

The first time I sent Kerbals in orbit around the Mün (pretty much like Apollo 8), I had to use RCS to complete the burn back to Kerbin.

[boomerdog2000]

My first stock Duna landing and return, they made it back to Kerbins SOI but they had to use the RCS on the lander to actually hit Kerbin. That ship was however redesigned and sent on a very successful Jool mission so it all paid off.

[RSF77]

Sometimes when leaving kerbin I like to do mun flybys as close as possible, one time I actually came within about 300m of one of my kethane units sitting on the surface then almost hit a slight hill. Did some quick maneuvering and avoided that, but it would be interesting to see if I can get close enough to take a solar panel off or something one day at kerbin escape velocity.

[Gojira]

On one of my more recent Mun landings, on return to Kerbin we ran out of fuel and had to use Jeb's jetpack to push the periapsis low enough to reenter and land safely.

[lajoswinkler]

It might be one time when I detached a lander from a station orbiting Duna and went down, planted a flag and tried to return back. It required a loooong RCS burn just to stabilize the lander's orbit and then it was Kerbals alone coming back to the station and using the station to rendezvous and dock to the lander. I thought I wasn't going to make it.

[manatee321]

I ran out of fuel when getting off the Mun's surface, I jumped out with some Kerbal and used its EVA pack to get into a stable orbit

The Kerbal is still in orbit, waiting to be rescued, and the lander is now a new crater on the Mun

[GamerMitch]

I built an interplanetary ship to the Jool system with 4 landers on it.When I had touched down on Bop, I have about .60 Fuel left and about .40 RCS fuel left because I had to start using that.

[buzzles]

Sadly, having to get out and push in order to lower periapsis enough to do some Kerbin aerobraking and then decent isn't unheard of.

[maccollo]

My closest shave was a mission I did just recently where I landed Jebediah on all the planets and moons (can be viewed here http://youtu.be/Q2V6a9-FUHM).

The craft was 980 tons on the launch pad, it took me several days to do this mission and combining all the manouvers the mission requires the delta V adds up to something like 60 000 m/s.

I finished the mission i had 2 units of fuel left, or around 60 m/s. When I rendezvoused with the Kirbin landing capsule at the end I sighed the biggest sigh of relief I've done ever in KSP XD.

[Spatzimaus]

My first trip to Duna, back in 0.17. I made it there just fine, although I didn't know you could repack parachutes so I used rockets to land on Duna. On the way back I ran out of fuel just inside Kerbin's SOI. I used RCS to slow my orbit down just enough to intersect the upper atmosphere. Upon landing, I had just under 7 units of monoprop remaining.

[Themohawkninja]

I can't remember much in terms of close calls of all time, but today I did dock a fuel tank to my space station with only <8 units of electric charge left. The odd thing is, is that when I undocked it after I transferred all the fuel, it had no electric charge. I kind of assumed that the charge would automatically go into the tank's batteries. In the end, I had to get a Kerbal out and push the tank away from the station with the EVA pack.

[Warmblood]

Mine was a tier 0 Duna+Ike flyby and return mission. My spacecraft was like a long stick, a pod or two (no batteries of course) and something like 9 of the small liquid fuel tanks with a LV-30 at the end. I did the usual burn-through of solid boosters on launch, and once I was up to orbit, calculated how much delta-v I had. I knew that I would be cutting it close, but as it turned out, it was a little too close!

So I got to Duna, did an Ike flyby at high altitude along the way. I settled into a high Duna orbit and time accelerated to the next return window. Well, I knew it might be close, but this was a bit much. I finished up the main injection burn with about 5 units of fuel remaining, and I still wasn't on target to actually land on Kerbin!

I made further adjustments, although it was made difficult by the relatively powerful engine, but finally I had a path that would take me low enough over Kerbin to deploy parachutes and land.

So how much fuel did I have left after this? 0.6 units of lf It was almost time to get out and push!

[KvickFlygarn87]

I helped my brother land on Mun; 0.3 units of fuel at touchdown.

[Halo_003]

My closest shave was a mission I did just recently where I landed Jebediah on all the planets and moons (can be viewed here http://youtu.be/Q2V6a9-FUHM).

The craft was 980 tons on the launch pad, it took me several days to do this mission and combining all the manouvers the mission requires the delta V adds up to something like 60 000 m/s.

I finished the mission i had 2 units of fuel left, or around 60 m/s. When I rendezvoused with the Kirbin landing capsule at the end I sighed the biggest sigh of relief I've done ever in KSP XD.

Unbelievable, how long did it take real time to do that?

[Dooz]

Mine was a apollo style mission to the mün and i tried to put it in a low orbit as possible and i skimmed a mountain only by 2 meters luckly they lived

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Had to land a superheavy rocket on Kerbin with no parachutes, no SAS, no solar panels, no nothing. All because the Kraken thought it'd be funny to wipe the Mk1-2 pod with RTGs, SAS and the parachute from the rest of the rocket on Minmus' surface. Had to rely on the Mk2 Lander Can's SAS, which ran out of power shortly.

[xzxvrx]

Ok I think I just had a new closest shave(s), when I was doing a landing on the Mün about an hour ago. It was a step in my Münar colonization plan. I was sending probes to my 3 candidate landing sites for my base.

1st probe (East Crater Rim)- Lander somehow bounced off terrain going 100+ m/s, and still finished the landing with 0.06 fuel left.

2nd probe (Southwest crater)- Ran out of fuel about 30m up, and then fell to the ground. The lander remained intact.

3rd probe (Farside crater)- Nothing really interesting.

[Felsmak]

When I sent a Messenger-ish probe to Moho, I had to fly past it once while burning in order to slow down enough for a capture next time. However, the burn bent my trajectory down towards the surface, and although I couldn't see it very well due to the darkness, it was clear that I was getting closer and closer. I thought I would crash and ruin everything, but the altimeter eventually started to tick back upwards, and just one lap around the Sun later, my probe could enter orbit around Moho.

[maccollo]

http://forum.unity3d.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=65521&d=1377691686

Unbelievable, how long did it take real time to do that?

1347 days, or roughly 3 years and 8 months, or 12.6 Kirbin years.

The reasons it was relatively quick was because I didn't spend any any time waiting for transfer windows. This worked out mostly ok, with a few exceptions.

The wonky retrograde Gilly intercept was because I wouldn't have been able to catch the Moho transfer otherwise.

The other part where it didn't quite work out was when I was gonna transfer from Eeloo to Duna. Duna was on the completely wrong side of Kerbol, so I had to gun it towards Kerbol to get the intercpt. However this did in a way work out well, because it shortened the length of the transfer quite a bit.

[InterCity]

Once i decided to just use just ONE Mk25 parachute to get my first Ker-boom craft back to ground in the less explosive way possible. When the chute deployed, i found myself descending at EXACTLY 7,9 m/s, while the impact tolerance of my module was 8 m/s.

[gtmattz]

During a recent mun landing mission I did not pay enough attention to my orbit after taking off from the mun and realized my periapsis was perilously close to the surface when I noticed my ship flying between the ridges of the far side channel... I don't think I could recreate that orbit intentionally.

[TimMartland]

Had a science probe in low orbit around Gilly getting science and preparing to return to Kerbin. Didn't account for the undulating surface of the moon and just missed the surface - I was so close my 2x3 solar panel hit the surface and shattered. but the main body was fine.

[Ravenchant]

My second career Mun lander design almost killed two Kerbonauts. According to Engineer, it had plenty of delta-v to pull it off, but I noticed too late that two of its four engines were blocked by landing legs, so half the fuel up to that point was wasted. When did I notice? After the deorbit burn, on a steep descent, with less than 2 minutes left to impact, right after I foolishly quicksaved

So after crashing into the surface at about 200 m/s and quickloading, I decoupled the rover the lander was carrying, undocked the offending stage, docked on a different angle... and still crashed. I then managed, on a fifth or so reload, to get my horizontal speed up just enough for an about 30x500, 20° orbit using the last fumes of RCS.

The rescue mission was where I learned to rendezvous on elliptical, inclined trajectories

[AmpsterMan]

Mine was a Free Return of my Command Pod that had a Periapsis of 5.5km on Mun. At some point I remember seeing the tops of the mountains of Mun. There was nothing i could do because it was just a command pod with a parachute that I had sent for some easy science. Needless to say it was a harrowing experience.