What was your closest call in terms of delta-V?

[Dkmdlb]

47 m/s left when I returned from Mun after I had to land my service module on the surface to rescue my LM crew after a fuel-line accident.

[Jon Tash]

One update ago I builded a Mun lander on career mode. The thing is, during the building phase, I wasn't paying attention to the total Dv of my ship. I launched and made Kerbin orbit with ease, planed à maneuver point to the Mun, orbited the Mun and landed. Pretty much the usual thing I do. What I hadn't planed was to launch a couple of kilometers and land at a different place, to get more science. And then I looked at my Dv left, I hadn't enough to get bat to Kerbin but I launched anyway and escaped the Mun directly placing myself at a trajectory to Kerbin that entered the atmosphere at around 60km. It wasn't enough to slow me down to get captured by the atmosphere. I made a couple of orbits before I was completely caught by the atmosphere. I splashed down on the ocean of Kerbin with parachutes minutes later with 0m/s of Dv left.

The way I did my launch from the Mun to escape the Mun and enter the Kerbins atmosphere was a bold move but saved alot of Dv (I never do that normally). And everything was guesswork, I didn't calculate anything during this mission. Oh and by the way, Bob Kerman was the one piloting the ship.

[Heagar]

This is already a time ago, but:

I had already build an Apollo alike craft, but only a lander for one kerbal. Therefore i wanted to build a new two-kerbal one, witch had to have only the same height as the one-kerbal version. The reason was simple: With the old version i nearly scrached the ceiling of the VAB with my LES. Additional i wished to have two sience-packages on board as well as a small rover on the new lander.

Fuel? Two FL-T200 for the descend-, and two FL-T100 for the ascend-stage should be enough i thought. I calculated a bit short it seems. After the circularisation burn at mun i had already used up more fuel of the CM than on the missions before. On my landing attempt out of a 30 km orbit i realized that the fuel consumtion of the lander was - uuh - a bit more than expected. So a normal slow but save descend was not an option, and i decided to avoid hovering. With 3.5 m/s and a bang i setteled down on the surface only a few seconds before burnout.

After this "near miss" i decided to go for an 20 km orbit for future missions - for the saftey of having 10% fuel left on landing with 0.6 m/s at touchdown.

[cantab]

Around one metre per second.

That's how much I calculate I would have had left after I used 148 out of 150 units of monopropellant to establish a stable orbit for my Whittle crew transport, after it had inadvertently decoupled from its launcher too early. It had 21 Kerbals on board and landing is a risky only-in-emergencies affair, so I was very glad to make it.

Of course, that's not counting GOAP. I resorted to pushing earlier today, after a deorbit burn from an escape trajectory gave me a 90x80000 km orbit. In theory I should have had just enough fuel, but I think not being quite on target during the burn is what spoiled it.

[Wallace]

There have been several times I've had to do the ol' RCS to finish getting into orbit trick. Most recently with a remote Mun lander which was a bit close to the DV requirements anyway and then was flown on a very poor decent profile leaving it only 540m/s left on touchdown. It had only one spherical can of monoprop, and 90% was used up to get it to orbit, and now it has to rendezvous with my science lab station with just it's remaining few drops of monoprop for propulsion. Whether it makes it or not still remains to be seen as it will be taking a while for the transfer window to come around as there's not enough DV to establish a decent phasing orbit.

Edited June 11, 2014 by Wallace

[r4pt0r]

i dont use any mods so i dont know the dv, but my first ever interplanetary mission was an ike landing, and when i re-entered kerbin i only had 2 units of fuel left. it was intense and the most fun ive had in KSP, its why im glad a dv counter isnt stock. the anxiousness of not knowing if i would make it was so exciting.

[stevism]

my first trip to laythe, i had 3 kerbals taking off and rendevouszing back with their return-to-kerbin ship that was in orbit at 70km or something.

i ran out of fuel right as a made the relative speed come to 0 when they were about 300m from the ship, and then used almost all of the remaining rcs (i hadnt stocked that much to begin with) to complete the maneuver

i think i finished with like 1.5 rcs or something left

[Superfluous J]

i dont use any mods so i dont know the dv, but my first ever interplanetary mission was an ike landing, and when i re-entered kerbin i only had 2 units of fuel left. it was intense and the most fun ive had in KSP, its why im glad a dv counter isnt stock. the anxiousness of not knowing if i would make it was so exciting.

Actually with a dV meter, if you use it right (ie, to cut your fuel budget to the bone), you still won't know if you've got the fuel available until you're done.

[No one]

Before I knew about bi-elliptic transfers when returning from either orbiting or landing on the mun, I forget which, I had almost no fuel left, definitely not enough to get my periapsis within Kerbin's atmosphere via burning retrograde at my apoapsis.

I was somehow confident that there had to be a way, played around with maneuver nodes attempting to reduce the delta-v required, and discovered bi-elliptic transfers. Even with the bi-elliptic transfer, I only just barely got my periapsis to below Kerbin's atmosphere, and aerobraking took a while. I didn't get out and push because I didn't know how to use jetpacks at the time, and also because I never really thought about getting out and pushing.

I haven't had any close calls in anything outside of the Kerbin system, because Ion Thrusters remove close calls from existence. They force you to leave KSP running while you go do something else for a few hours, but they can always get you home.

[Progressm]

I went to Gilly with a light 1-man pod once...didn't do any calcs for delta-v or anything. I had 7 units of fuel left after the transfer burn back to Kerbin with a 35 km periapsis. Used up all the RCS as part of the transfer burn to lighten the ship too.

I was very careful to have 1 x time acceleration during SoE changes, as the aerobrake was needed for a safe return

[cantab]

I did something similar on my first Munar orbit mission. It's not necessary if you make your ejection burn correctly, of course, but worth knowing if you do get stuck in a high orbit round Kerbin.

I'm not sure how much the delta-V requirements drop actually. For a regular bi-elliptic transfer, with no aerobraking involved, the savings are usually small, but if you're aerobraking into your low orbit (or even landing) I think they can be larger.

[Buzzed Aldrin]

The other day I was at a friend of a friend's house, and it somehow came up that he had just downloaded KSP but didn't really know what the hell he was doing.

I of course got excited and started talking about it and next thing I know I'm sitting at his computer designing a mun rocket with about 4 guys watching intently. I guess I had talked a little too loudly about being a Sierra Hotel Rocketship Pilot.

Anyhow, I somehow manage to design (no math - totally seat of pants) a simple munship, launch and achieve orbit on the first try, transfer successfully, land using only the keyboard (first try), plant the flag, and achieve munar orbit. Of course by now I'm desperately low on fuel, but the hard parts are done, right? I'm still playing it Scott Manly cool though, set up my transfer burn and used up the very last bit of fuel getting a Kerbo reentry trajectory. I did not equip RCS on my ship (or panels -- whoops!)

Splashed down with authoritah in the sea off of KSC. Stood up and finished my beer like I did that sort of thing all the time.

Hopefully I got another one hooked on this game

-Buzzed

[magnemoe]

I landed a rover on tylo, run out of fuel 2-3 meter over ground the two side boosters was destroyed so i did not need to decouple them.

Currently I have a probe on a asteroid, only class A but two Oscar tanks and a 48-7s on it.

16 m/s with asteroid, 14 m/s to get it in orbit

[Spyritdragon]

Personally, probably my very first Munar landing. Okay, well, second. My first successful munar return (my first landing ran out of fuel somewhere in the Mun re-orbit burn and the explosion propelled my Kerbonaut into an extremely high, but still semi - orbital trajectory. Sadly, he seemed to be stuck in ragdol state, so i wasn't able to save him.).

It was in the demo version, and not realising just what RCS is usually for yet i'd brought along a can and 8 thrusters. The rest was just a standard MK1pod-FL.T400-LV909 one man lander.

I had to use RCS to get back .

playing it Scott Manly cool

Dat quote xD

[Cirocco]

Splashed down with authoritah in the sea off of KSC. Stood up and finished my beer like I did that sort of thing all the time.

You sir, are a damn hero

[Kasuha]

In my case it was probably landing Kerbal X on the Mun and then getting it to Mun orbit.

[bsalis]

Did a test flight to Minmus in a new SSTO Spaceplane, after re-fueling in LKO to get there. Here they are...

With that a success, I thought heck, why not refuel in Minmus orbit, then take the lads to Laythe. Problem is, what I didn't know is that the MechJeb version I had at the time was a bit screwey with the dV calcs. It showed significantly more than what I had. Basically not enough that you would try to get to Jool. The realisation that something was very wrong was after the trans-Jool plane change.

So I get my direct intercept for Laythe at the edge of Jool SOI, then aerocapture into a highly elliptical orbit. I basically had nothing but a pipet of oxy now, which I used up adjusting the orbit to intersect over the equator, hoping to be somewhere over land when I get there. Fortunately I did, and was even close enough to a fuel tanker/rover. I used the few remaining fuel reserves to fly the small distance. Landed with no oxy and almost no fuel.

Edited June 11, 2014 by bsalis

[Fendleton]

I was trying a Mun orbital station for science farming. Sent my lander down a few times, then decided to aim for the pole (or near enough for science points). Finally docked with the station again with 0.3 units of RCS fuel left, and nothing else.

Alas, I'm not good enough with slingshots and maneuver nodes to have close calls on interplanetary flights. Either things work or they don't....they aren't generally close calls.

[sdj64]

Jool seems to be my go-to place for close calls. My first Tylo lander reached orbit with less than 1 unit of fuel remaining and no RCS left. More than once I've had to finish maneuvers on RCS after my fuel ran out. On my minimalist Jool-5 challenge I had to get out and push to bring my periapsis down to Kerbin at the end.

My most egregious under-estimate of delta V was on my first Dres mission, when the "lander" (very optimistically named) failed to even reach orbit and the pilot had to eject and use his jetpack to finish the capture to avoid being stuck in an elliptical solar orbit. He was rescued later once I had unlocked nuclear engines in that career save.

[FleetAdmiralJ]

I'd have to say it was a probe landing on Vall. It was actually a probe meant for Eeloo (which I uh...accidentally sent to Jool by mistake). I think it touched down on Vall with something like 0.3 units of fuel remaining. It probably could have survived if it ran out a few meters up, but I don't think I so thoroughly ran out of fuel before.

[StuntMax]

My first munar rendezvous mission had a ridiculously undersized lander (and I wasted most of the fuel during the descent).

At takeoff, it had so little dV available that it could barely stabilize in a slightly eccentric orbit, with periapsis way less than 1000 m from the munar surface. Luckily the part of the orbit closest to the surface was reasonably clear of obstacles.

[RoboRay]

I landed on the Mun with my descent stage having just 0.2 units of fuel remaining.

[theend3r]

I usually overbuild so I have enough dV to go to another space system if I needed to and there were any. One time I ended with approx. 25 m/s dV when returning from Eve, though.

[EdFred]

Moho and back on a test run. 4m/s remaining when I got my Kerbin aerobrake node dialed in.

[Victus]

My first Duna mission I had to rendezvous with my Tug using a very limited supply of RCS, it was pretty nerve racking as I'd only just recently learnt how to dock(3-5 times I had successfully done it). The docking had to be on the dark side of the planet also which was an amazing feeling when I'd done it.