The close calls we all have from time to time.

[Cat_Fish12321]

Here we can put some of our times when we have a close call (Or not so close) like smashing into the mun at 40m/s without explosions. Or docking at high speeds.

Can't wait to see some of the feedback on here. Hope some funny/suspenseful moments can be shared here!

Ill start it off:

One time, I had spent many, many, hours getting to Eeloo with ION engines only (I nearly died of boredom) I forgot to quick save. Not that bad of a thing right? Wrong, once I got into orbit I kept saying " I'll quick save once I go suborbital. I'll be fine..." Well turns out, I end up getting back into a solid orbit because I was going to fast and aborted. The rocket was multi-staged, and once I jettisoned the empty xenon tanks, they blew up from hitting the surface 3 seconds later.

Lets see what you got

[KSK]

Nice idea but wrong place I think. This looks like it would work better in the General forum, or even the Mission Reports section of this forum.

[Cat_Fish12321]

Yeah, sorry bout that. I put it in the wrong place, and I just noticed

[IcarusBen]

One time, my rocket decided to nosedive. At about 200 feet above sea level, I regained control of my craft, jettisoned the launch stage, and got back up into the atmosphere. James still has nightmares.

[VelocityPolaris]

My closest call was probably when I first got the interstellar mod, and quickly collected antimatter from Kerbin's magnetosphere. Unfortunately, I had drastically underestimated the power requirements for the antimatter containment unit and was losing electricity to power the containment field, even with the mainsail's generator and four plutonium ones helping my solar panels. Fortunately, by the time I was down to 100 watts I finally figured out how to vent the antimatter out of the containment unit safely. Doing so, I was down to 20 watts by the time the unit was safe. I came THIS close to blowing up all of Kerbin, the Mun, and probably Minmus with an accidental antimatter bomb. Needless to say, after that I became quite little more careful when all of Kerbal-kind is at stake. It happens more often than they would like...

Besides that, once I accidentally dropped an atomic bomb in the ocean near KSC, with my first attempt at an atomic SSTO, but that's a different story. Just, be more careful when you take your Kerbal out for a relaxing swim in the nearby ocean.

[VelocityPolaris]

Kerbal close calls part II - Major Tom's baptism of fire

This unfortunate incident was a result of my wanting to make a heroic battle with the newly downloaded skillful weapons mod. I had made a large ship, the warsheep, and was itching to bomb it. Just then, I encountered a Kerbal recruit named Tom Kerman, and, recalling David Bowie's "Space Oddity", (ground control to major Tom) I decided that this was the hero who would destroy the poor ship floating in the nearby waters. Long story short, the weapons missed or did little damage, and the warsheep's AA turret carved up my engine and a wing, spinning us out of control. By now, I had decided that there was no earthly (or, rather, kerbinly) way to save poor Major Tom. Except! I thought back to Danny2462's "messing around in KSP" videos, and remembered that he once used a shockwaves from an exploding (lithobraking) craft to slow the fall of a Kerbal for landing. Major Tom got out, and tried to use his rocket pack to position himself for landing, but the ground was coming up too fast for poor Tom. Fortunately, as the rocket pack jets fired, somehow the game failed to register Tom's impact tolerance and kept him from dying. Does this always work? Who knows? None of the Kerbals are willing to volunteer for a near-suicide mission, and Jebediah is still in Dres orbit.

[GamerMitch]

I remember once when I was on a Jool mission with 4 smaller ships to explore the moons. On my way to Bop with one of them, I realized I was burning through my fuel supply quite quickly. A stupid mistake I made was acheiving orbit, then de-orbiting, which wasted what I thought was boatloads of fuel at the time. When I finally landed, i had .62 fuel left, and I sill did half of the descent with RCS.

[Noname117]

In career mode, I had sent a 3-kerbal (in 3 pods) science vessel, equipped with multiple goo canisters and 3 of those miniature mobile science experiment container things into munar orbit. The purpose was to overfly the mun's biomes and gain science from EVAs over the different biomes and from crew reports and science experiments at different heights (I also lacked a science report from Kerbin's high orbit, which would explain why I had the 3rd experiment container). I first got most of the science I could from the close to equatorial orbit, and then decided to adjust the orbit to pass over a crater which I needed science from. The engines from the stage which had put my spacecraft into munar orbit ran out of fuel, but I still had one more stage left, and plenty of fuel in it. However, I had set this rocket up to be a bit more efficient on the space key, so that it would only take one push of they key to both detach the stage and ignite the next engine. And, out of habit, I pushed space twice. Now my rocket was being uncontrollably pushed by the now detached stage, which was on full throttle and with plenty of fuel. And I was pointed in a way such that the science vessel was being de-orbited. A turn using the reaction wheels, however, did get the craft pointed so it would exit munar orbit to enter an eccentric Kerbin polar orbit... but now I had to get rid of the engine so it wouldn't push that orbit into one where Kerbin's sphere of influence would be left. Somehow managing to remain in control of this situation, I began rotating the craft, eventually to a point where the engine finally came loose and flew off looping into the distance. Once in Kerbin orbit, returning the crew home became a matter of getting out and pushing... which was not fun, considering I was pushing a 3-capsule craft with a chain of science experiments attached down from a periapse of over 2 million meters. After a couple dozen EVAs, the craft was finally on a return trajectory (which timewarp screwed up the first time, passing me through Kerbin and back to the apoapse again). I am glad to say all that science (and the 3 kerbals) returned to Kerbin intact and unharmed, though I do wish I could've gotten a bit more from the trip.