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. That day, I nearly had a heart attack and I have been Quick saving almost every 15 minutes

Lets see what you awesome people have :3

(Derp: I put the first version of this thread in the wrong area )

Edited June 3, 2014 by Cat_Fish12321

[AfailingHORSE]

landing on minmus at a relatively flat angle and suddenly, mountain.

[Othuyeg]

Well here is a video of what I would call a close call.

http://www.twitch.tv/othuyeg/c/3932138

Also, in this album the first pictures show me landing on Minmus and nearly hitting a mountain:

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[luizopiloto]

a close call I had sometime ago... with a transport spaceplane... was comming back from one of my stations... 5 kerbals inside, it's maximum capacity.

reentry was safe... everything was fine... then at 50Km from the runway, 6000m altitude... the wingtips colided with the launchpad... yes... that damn bug...

spaceplane was gliding pretty well, even with this little damage... then again... more wing pieces colided with the launchpad... more pieces gone but it stills gliding...

then, 1km from the runway... poof... another hit, and the plane lost aileron control... I fast changed canards and tail to have roll control to compensate... but the plane started to get unstable...

I turned the engines on, set throtle to 100%, pointed the nose up and ejected the crew module...

[Red Iron Crown]

That green font is painful to read.

On topic: I once was doing a landing on the Mun, suicide burn style. Everything was going along nicely until just before touchdown, when I noticed I had forgotten to deploy the landing gear (Protip: Make sure your ship is ready for landing before the actual touchdown when you're staring at the navball). I jabbed the G key and had them deploy just in time, so that the lander "popped" up a bit as the gear snapped into place and hit the surface.

[Cat_Fish12321]

Wow, these are some close calls... Another one of mine was when I was piloting my first plane in career mode. It looked good from all I could see, got to 40km up, going 700m/s+, gaining speed pretty good... Then I forgot to check my air intake and then flameout... I lost control and barely got it back 8000m up from sea level. I aborted, opened emergency parachutes, and have yet to use the swept wings since...

Edited June 3, 2014 by Cat_Fish12321

[corvustech]

My first attempt to make an aircraft, I realized halfway up the runway that one intake wouldn't sustain 3 jets and my boosters were going already. A few seconds later, I also learned that when you attach parachutes to wings, engines, etc but not the CM will result in your plane flying apart rather comically. Remarkably, Jeb lived, as the CM just tumbled down the hill and landed in the water.

[Taki117]

Probably my favorite close call was just after I unlocked Mechjebs Space plane guidance in career mode. (I don't use auto land, just guidance). I have the ball, approach looks good, then I start dropping altitude, normally not a concern, but I'm about 50m from end of runway. I pull up hard and the last 3rd of the fuelsalage explodes as my nose comes slamming down hard. Thankfully nothing else broke and I was able to come to a complete stop before the other end of the runway.

[KvickFlygarn87]

a close call I had sometime ago... with a transport spaceplane... was comming back from one of my stations... 5 kerbals inside, it's maximum capacity.

reentry was safe... everything was fine... then at 50Km from the runway, 6000m altitude... the wingtips colided with the launchpad... yes... that damn bug...

spaceplane was gliding pretty well, even with this little damage... then again... more wing pieces colided with the launchpad... more pieces gone but it stills gliding...

then, 1km from the runway... poof... another hit, and the plane lost aileron control... I fast changed canards and tail to have roll control to compensate... but the plane started to get unstable...

I turned the engines on, set throtle to 100%, pointed the nose up and ejected the crew module...

So... many... periods...

I once did a perfect suicide burn without mechjeb. Or, well, the "suicide" part was perfect. I slammed into the Mun at 60m/s. Only my cockpit survived

[TrooperCooper]

Going in for extreme low level orbit arround the Mun, trying to farm Biomes...

Cruising below hilltop level at insane orbit speed...

And doing EVA in the process.... Jeb had lots of fun on that mission...

Edited June 3, 2014 by TrooperCooper

[tutrakan4e]

I did a perfect suicide burn once. Absolutely perfect. No mods or anything.

I can also recall coming back from Duna or Ike and the parachutes snapping off and me forgetting to quicksave. Got out, took all the science while in the air and landed on the Kerbal's helmet. Fun times.

[troyn123]

Coming in for a Mun landing, pretty routine for me at this point (I've played WAY too much)... But carelessness breeds mistakes! My approach to a big crater was a little too low and I clipped the rim of the crater, managing to destroy the bottom half of my ship. Pretty much only the capsule survived, no RCS. However... That impact + explosion boosted the capsule up. A quick look at the map, and I was on a very eccentric and sub-orbital trajectory. :-| I EVA'ed, grabbed the science from the pod and all the remaining sensors and watched the pod crash into the surface HARD as I used the EVA pack to boost Jeb's periaps high enough to avoid the ground. Just had him hang out in a low orbit around the Mun until I could mount a rescue operation. :-P

[Aethon]

My literal closest call lately was this.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=262281838

I think my system shuttle was on the way to Minmus but the flight engineer info isn't making any sense to me now. I saw Clarke station comin' up fast but thought the odds of a collision were infinitesimal. Then I thought of Han Solo- Never tell me the odds! Funny how life flashes before your eyes..

Was close enough that I clicked Clarke to set as target to get a screen shot. May not be closest approach. I had a lot of Banth fodder going on at the time and was lucky to get the shot. 750 meters at 250m/s. Goes by fast.

[Aethon]

Edit- Stupid auto log out while typing log back in double post.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Aethon

[pauix]

My closest call was when I got too close to Ike and I had to perform an emergency landing:

[Duke23]

At a friend's house I was being reckless and built some ugly ship and sent it to the Mun... I was coming in at an ungodly speed with an underpowered engine and did a suicide burn that could only end badly. When I was about to slam into the ground I cut the engine and decoupled, and fired off my "emergency" stage almost straight up (a lot of my rockets are built with a small tank and engine under the CM in case things go south I can still get home or into a comfortable orbit). Because of the difference in TWR it actually worked; I came close enough to reach out and high five the dirt then my vertical speed went into the positive, I killed off the rest of my horizontal speed and gently plopped it down right on the engine. Then by some insane stroke of luck I managed to leave the Mun, screw up my transfer to Kerbin and run out of fuel which put my AP out in Minmus territory, then I time warped until I swung back into the Mun's SOI at PE for just long enough to get a gravity assist which slung me at a perfect angle to directly enter Kerbin's atmosphere and land. It's definitely on my top 3 list of close calls and lucky breaks.

Edited June 4, 2014 by Duke23

[kookoo_gr]

These are the close calls i've had so far. Two of them are form the Jool - 5 challenge

At this pic i physics warped during an aerobrake at Laythe, once i saw this bend i reverted to 1x time acceleration and hoped for the ship not to brake, which it didn't.

The second close call was during my Tyllo landing were i cleared the rim of the crater with 50m clearance

And this is my ever first close with the surface of the Mun, although the altitude from the crater reads 500m i went close to 100m.

[Sputnik's Revenge]

I was going to eeloo, and i was going too fast. Ran out of fuel. Had to stage and use return fuel.

[Rocket Farmer]

Had one just last week.

My lander was ascending from dres and I was attempting to dock with the Kerbal return vessel that was in a standard 6x6km orbit.

I'm still not sure how i managed it but while working to bring the 2 together I degraded both orbits to 6x3km. Dres has mountains up to 5.7km....

So on the dark side I was on final approach about 50m below the space station when I looked at the altimeter and saw is at 3,300 and decreasing!

In a panic I quickly decided to EVA fly my kerbal up to the space base. 30 seconds later I was just over 1/2 way when I saw a ridgeline on the horizon. At 3/4s of the way (35m from the lander) I watched the lander hit the top of the ridge while my slightly higher kerbal and the space based sailed by clean.

I have never been anywhere near that close to disaster before.

[McFarnsworth]

A few days ago, while landing a capsule on the Mun my landing stage turned into a crasher stage when it ran out of fuel at around 50m from the surface during the suicide burn. Normally I'd stage and use the main capsule's engines to finish the descent, but I forgot to properly set my stages up. So before i was able to do anything I hit the surface, hard. The landing stage blew up entirely, my capsule bounced up and I set it down gently on its engines a few meters from the initial impact. Not a single part had broken off, it even looked suspiciously like I planned the whole thing. Good thing it had a Kerbal in there though. A human would have turned into a fine paste smeared onto the floor of the pod.

[Basilo1146]

My favorite, and I'm ticked I didn't get a picture of it, is the time I was trying to rendezvous with my space station, but was doing entirely from the map view (I wasn't trying to challenge myself or anything, I was just monitoring the orbits). The map showed the intercept as being in about 2 minutes at a distance of around .7 km, so I had no concerns at the time. For some reason though, I hadn't been hovering over the station's icon to check the distance, and when I exited the map view, I found the station 70 meters away from me right in my path, with a relative speed of about 40 m/s. Thankfully, I still had the mainsail from my launcher, so I gunned it and ended up moving the opposite direction a second later. Still the closest call I've ever had.

[Master Tao]

Jack Kerman went biome hopping on Minmus. The descent stage ran out of fuel about 30m up doing about 15 m/s. With no chance to shift any fuel around, he thought "Eh, the ship can take it" and kept going. The hit destroyed the descent engines and the landing gear were rammed through crust, but the ascent module and all the science modules were intact.

[Baenki]

Last week i started a new career and sent a probe lander to the mun. After that i decided to use the same design for minmus. I landed in the highlands, did my experiments and transmitted. After that i realised i had one unused goo container, the reusable thermometer and enough fuel to do a suborbital hop to the salt flats. After landing there, doing my experiments and transmitting i still had fuel left. I wanted to jump to a plateau (i don't know if that is a different biome than the highlands) to grab some more temperature data before abandoning the lander. So i powered up the engine aimed for the plateau and, poof, fuel ran out at an AP of ca 6000m. My lander wouldnt reach the plateau but would crash back onto the flats. Even if it was worthless by now i wanted to save it but it was going to impact at more than 50 m/s. I angled the lander towards the falling direction... Bang... the engine exploded and because i didn't lock the suspension of the legs it... jumped. Ok i can save this. It hit again and it jumped again. When it "touched down" the third time it stayed on the ground. Besides the useless engine nothing broke off and only one landing leg was damaged.

Edited June 8, 2014 by Baenki

[kidolvski]

Once I deorbited one of my old stations, but I forgot to empty one hitchiker...

I saw that I had 3 kerbals on a sub-orbital trajectory near Kerbin, and that's when I found out. So I immediatly switched to the station control and I managed to get the Kerbals in escape pods just before hitting atmosphere which would have made EVA's impossible.

[[email protected]]

Once I deorbited one of my old stations, but I forgot to empty one hitchiker...

I saw that I had 3 kerbals on a sub-orbital trajectory near Kerbin, and that's when I found out. So I immediatly switched to the station control and I managed to get the Kerbals in escape pods just before hitting atmosphere which would have made EVA's impossible.

This is something I would do...lol.