What's your closest shave?

[AcidSludge]

I finished a 400 day-mission to Duna with an unmanned "scratch the atmosphere below 10km, do science and get out of there"-probe this afternoon. By the time I got it back to Kerbin to do some aerobraking before 'chuting the science-section of the probe I had 94 m/s left in the tanks.

[edit]Oh, and about 6 units of RCS-Propellant.

[ProjectXMark1]

Science mission to Minmus, due to lack of proper electricity generation I guesstimated that my probe would run out of electricity on the return trip. Set the parachutes to deploy a few hdays before I ran out, prayed they would deploy even without charge, and they did. Recovered without a hitch.

[Iridium616]

I was trying to land a probe on ike but were very low on Dv. Had to quickload around 10 times and I forgot landing legs. Ended up landing with 0 fuel left and had to sacrifice my nerva (aka lithobrake with my nerva)

[Tw1]

I used my shuttle to drop a probe of on a near escape orbit, before burning retro, and returning to Kerbin. Unfortunately, I underjudged my reentry, and missed both KSC and the island runway. Had to turn around, and try and glide there after using up all the fuel, and all the RCS to sustain speed.

Those kerbals were lucky I'd experimented with gliders earlier that week. I managed to get them to the island safely.

[Skorpychan]

Landed a gigantic rover on the Mun, for low-g testing. I FINALLY got it landed intact after multiple attempts. Careful touchdown, only a couple of buggered wheels, no major breakages. I throttled up, hit the staging, and watched the skycrane use the last of it's fuel to blast off upwards, assisted by a few sepratrons. I breathed a sigh of relief, and motored off in the direction that wasn't going to rain rocket parts, before quicksaving.

Then the Mun got landscaped again and ATE my rover.

[jchad]

I had to get out and push coming back from minmus...................

4 times....(had to go back in refuel my EVA pack, go back out, repeat)

[TheDataMiner]

I had a mun mission where Jeb had to get out and push. He refueled 5 times before my periapsis got low enough to areobrake.

[NQMT]

You all know the mountains behind the KSC?

Well, I'd made a small, nimble fighter-like aircraft and felt like going crazy.

So, I flew as close as I could to the mountains.

I had a small spotlight mounted to the bottom of my plane. By the end, that was gone and I'd almost lost my nose wheel.

[XeroCoolUSN]

From a straight Razor.

[pigletx2]

From a straight Razor.

Wrong type of shave.

[Klingon Admiral]

Im remember that way back in the day, in .19, one of my Minmus probes ran out of fuel 5 metres above the ground.

[PwnedDuck]

I was landing a large rover, which in terms of propulsion only had inefficient engines, so only had about half the Delta v to land. I had to use the drive stage, which had more than enough Delta V, but not enough Thrust to weight, to slow down first. I took loads of tries trying find out just how much I could slow down using the drive stage before I had to switch to the rover in order not to crash.

[Procyon]

Had a lander that had enough fuel on the Mun to get the AP to jsut under the orbit my command module was at. Launch timing was good and i eva'd parallel to the path of the CM. Made it to the CM airlock and continued on home, lander went back to the Mun

[Werwolf]

This is returning Jeb from Duna to a direct descent profile from Solar orbit... Note the fuel in the top right.

[Dean Harper]

As Jeb was aerobraking on his way home from Minmus he ejected his return stage in the upper atmosphere (after having used its engines to help slow his descent). It flew forward a little bit, then the drag started to really slow it down and it came back at his pod!

The two collided. The return stage shattered and the command pod spun out. Fortunately his pod wasn't destroyed, but I had a white knuckle grip on my mouse.

[Duke23]

There was a slight design flaw in one of my test designs that caused all the liquid fuel booster rockets (Skippers?) to go squirrelly after the SRBs were dropped and fly apart at about 8km, luckily for Jeb one of the booster tanks grazed the command module and knocked it loose as the rest of the ship exploded below him. He parachuted to safety.

Then there was the Mun return where I ran out of fuel just as I was low enough to aerobrake and had to wait an orbit to touch down.

Slow motion train wreck with a rover on Minmus - I still don't know how Jeb didn't die or at least get a nasty concussion as he was thrown out of the rover onto his face right before it finally stopped tumbling across the surface. He was able to jetpack the 5km back to the lander and vowed not to go back to Minmus until the equipment was better tested.

[LethalDose]

While I was getting my lander designs fine tuned, I came up short on fuel a bunch of times. The worst event was a Munar ascent where I ran out of fuel and had to establish orbit with my remaining RCS. I rendezvous'd a tanker and the pilot had to space-walk over. Future landers got docking ports and the tanker stayed in a Munar orbit to prevent the same thing from happening again.

[Merinsan]

I've had 2 which I can't decide on. 1 is also one of my best saves, the other more mundane.

1. I was landing a probe on Duna, it ran out of fuel about 30cm off the ground and landed intact. The perfect suicide burn (no idea why I didn't use parachutes).

2. While leaving the surface of Moho, I ran out of fuel before getting into orbit. I quickly realized I could jettison the fuel and engine and use RCS to circularize. I made it with out 7 units left.

[BlackBicycle]

A couple of days ago I had to get out and push. It was a return from Mun, a crazy 2-capsule "christmas tree" with nothing left in it (jettisoned the engine section after it ran out of fuel). Both of my astronauts had to get out in turn and push the capsules stack retrograde with their EVA rocket packs before I had a decent periapsis over Kerbin. All good though, the return was a success : D