Your Absolute BADASS Moment in KSP

[mangekyou-sama]

In this thread, you can share your absolute badass moment in the game. Was your SSTO heading towards the ground and bailed out at the last moment? Found a way to get back home amidst the overwhelming odds? Or maybe just did something that made you feel like this...

Share them right here!

Edited August 18, 2014 by mangekyou-sama
image violated community rules

[Cupcake...]

...flying this evil, evil little ship and not ending up in a heap of flaming debris.

Cupcake...

[SkyRender]

I landed perfectly in the dead of night on the Mun with no SAS enabled once. That was pretty awesome. Jebediah was, of course, the pilot.

[I_Killed_Jeb]

...flying this evil, evil little ship and not ending up in a heap of flaming debris.

Cupcake...

apropos of nothing, every time you post i imagine you, instead of signing off with your handle, just wistfully wishing for some cupcake. and that makes me happy. please carry on.

[Cupcake...]

apropos of nothing, every time you post i imagine you, instead of signing off with your handle, just wistfully wishing for some cupcake. and that makes me happy. please carry on.

Cupcakes are the truth path to world peace. I mean everyone likes cupcakes right? That's the one thing we can all agree on. Man, all this profound thinking is making my head hurt, I think I need to lay down.

Cupcake...

[TythosEternal]

Landing multiple gravity assists (not by planning but purely by taking advantage of noticed opportunities) in a row...

[magnemoe]

Obviously:

http://imgur.com/a/dahmU#0

yes I did it one other time with a better ship but the first time is more awesome.

[Felsmak]

So I just had my most successfully failed Mun landing yet. I forgot to add a solar panel to the lander, so it couldn't last long on its own. The ascent stage was also improperly assembled, so the engines received no fuel from the tank. That last one was easy enough to solve, though. I just pumped fuel into the descent stage and took off again, and I managed to reach a low orbit before the batteries died.

Now the CSM had to rendezvous with the lander instead, because that one wasn't going anywhere. The low orbit made waiting for a good window quite boring, however, so I put it on a trajectory that would take me there faster - a trajectory that also put me on a collision course with the Munar surface.

Everything went well, though. I reached the lander, turned around, and braked. They docked, and Jebediah could finally be brought to safety.

Unfortunately, however, that maneuver also cost me a lot of fuel. Because of this I couldn't complete the return burn, so the Kerbals had to go out and push their ship the last few m/s.

[FonVegen]

I have no images, but I once managed to get a mun rocket backflip; I was playing with FAR, and the rocket was apparently not very stable. Halfway going into orbitm it flipped around, so instead of trying to counter that momentum, I increased it and managed to get back on a stable course. It should be mentioned, however, that this approach only worked once...

[JDCollie]

With NEAR enabled I had an SSTO go into a flat spin on re-entry. For some reason docking in orbit had reversed all of my control surfaces and Infernal Robotics areas of activity (meaning I could not retract the docking arm back into my docking bay), but not my gyroscopes or SAS! Worse, it had also somehow managed to open one of my airbrakes, so every time I pressed the action group, one would open and the other would close. The end result was a horrific spin that only got worse when I tried to use SAS and which didn't respond to my controls they way I expected at all. To top it off, none of these problems were obvious in space aside from the docking arm, because everything that was wrong had to do with aerodynamics.

By the time I figured out everything that was wrong, I was 5km above the ground. By the time I actually managed to click on and close the errant air-brake, I was 2km up. I pulled out of the death spin with a visible shadow, disabled my gyroscopes, turned off SAS, and flew the SSTO 150km over the mountains to the West of the KSC and landed on the runway for 100% recovery, docking arm sticking out of the cargo bay and all. I felt like the king of Kerbin.

Here's the SSTO, btw. This wasn't the mission I'm talking about though; I was a bit too busy for screenshots that time around . . .

Edited August 18, 2014 by JDCollie

[Vicomt]

I landed my first SSTO Spaceplane this weekend after rescuing a Kerbal from orbit.

This may not seem Badass enough to most of you, but I've had problems with Spaceplanes ever since I started playing KSP, I've only very rarely got one to orbit, and NEVER landed one successfully before.

Due to the plane's central forward landing gear being mounted lower than the rear wing gear (so that I could get lift on takeoff without angling the wings), and the MASSIVE amount of lift it has at low altitude, I had to float the plane down from about 5km out and 500m up with zero thrust, tweaking the rate of descent by angling the nose up or down. The touchdown was so perfect I almost leapt out of the chair with joy.

Yes, I felt like a Badass.

[technicalfool]

I have so many "holy pants that was awesome" moments that it's difficult to pick any one and say it was my crowning moment of awesome. However, sometimes, it's the simple things that amuse:

Like jumping on the DMP server and finding people to formation-fly with.

[JDCollie]

I landed my first SSTO Spaceplane this weekend after rescuing a Kerbal from orbit.

This may not seem Badass enough to most of you, but I've had problems with Spaceplanes ever since I started playing KSP, I've only very rarely got one to orbit, and NEVER landed one successfully before.

Due to the plane's central forward landing gear being mounted lower than the rear wing gear (so that I could get lift on takeoff without angling the wings), and the MASSIVE amount of lift it has at low altitude, I had to float the plane down from about 5km out and 500m up with zero thrust, tweaking the rate of descent by angling the nose up or down. The touchdown was so perfect I almost leapt out of the chair with joy.

Yes, I felt like a Badass.

Got any pictures? I'd love to see your SSTO design

[Mighty1]

Going up to meet my spacestation on a 150 km orbit. I eyeball the launch window and when i get to 150 km orbit I see my station comming to me at 20 km out. I just had to accelerate to mach velocity and dock. From launch to docking it took less the 10 minutes.

[cantab]

Flew a lander onto the VAB, no big deal there, then buzzed it so closely with a plane that they actually touched, and kept right on flying.

[syfyguy64]

I strapped a bunch of boosters on my ship just for lulz, maybe 20 or 30, and launched straight up.

This thing went really high, past the mun, and apparently Duna was in just the right spot, and I was heading straight for one of it's poles.

I was amazed, got ready, took Jeb out, and landed via EVA.

tl;dr- I landed on Duna with only one stage SRBs.

[wasmic]

For me, it would be the time where I got Jeb, Bill and Bob back from Laythe safely. The first parts of the mission went great. However, when I arrived at Laythe, I realised that my transfer stage had used almost all of the LFO in the lander. I did, however, manage to land on one of the Laythean islands, but once touchdown was made, I had no oxidizer and only a few units of LF left. Meanwhile, my return ship circularized around Laythe, headed to a polar orbit and scanned for Kethane. Then, I sent a fuel-packed rover to Laythe to refuel the lander. I was successful, and after a nerve-wracking ascent, I docked to the orbital return vessel, ready for the long journey home. Nothing more happened on that journey, luckily. And then there was my semi-successful Moho mission...

[Vicomt]

Got any pictures? I'd love to see your SSTO design

I don't have any pictures with me atm, but I'll try and get a couple when I get home tonight. Some of the non-clipping purists among you will definitely not like my engine cluster though

[timsfitz]

On My first manned Eve mission my ship ran out of fuel short of orbital velocity. Jeb went EVA, collected all the science, then used his backpack to reach orbit while his ship burned below him. He rendezvoused with the return ship and made it home safe with all the precious science. When you go to Eve, bring more than you think you'll need.

[Superfluous J]

I hate to pull this old pic out again but come on. It was pretty sweet.

[iornfence]

Quite a while back I sent a probe to eve to collect science. Everything had been going well, good reentry, no parts falling off...and I realized I had no parachutes. But hope is not lost. Without any way to judge the altitude, I essentially completed a perfect suicide burn on accident, saving the probe and allowing me to collect that sweet, sweet science.

[LordFjord]

Hmm, most badass moments?

Tossing a 200 ton rover towards Eve - the most epic aerobraking I did so far. Having no idea about transfer windows back then, it was a very very close, lucky and insanely inefficient encounter (burned through ~150tons of fuel) -> the monster came in very fast and the poor crew had to endure some rough g-forces. What can't be seen on the pic is that it started spinning on reentry, I could only stabilize it by opening the chutes very early. I still wonder why it didn't break apart.

Another pic from leaving Kerbin orbit:

Edited August 18, 2014 by LordFjord

[SiliconPyro]

I've had several moments where I was amazed my Kerbal survived, but this is the one I managed to record:

[Cirocco]

Up to this day, my completely stock runway-Duna surface-runway SSTDuna takes the prize for me. One spaceplane, three kerbals, no refuel.

After literally weeks of constantly pushing my SSTO designs further, testing and running simulations (read: using hyperedit and quickload to test landing and performance on Duna) I ran the actual mission.

Upon my return, I came in on the nightside of Kerbin and had to spend all my fuel, monopropellant and even all my electricity during re-entry and approach flight. Only the single emergency backup RTG was keeping the plane responding to commands while I attempted to glide through the last few kilometers down to the KSC. Add to that that the plane was INCREDIBLY tail-heavy at this point because of all the empty fuel tanks and heavy (nuclear) engines in the back, and you can imagine that the last few minutes of this trip were the most nerve-wracking of my entire KSP career.

When that plane made a full stop on the runway I felt like I had just won the olympics.

full story and mission report is here (shameless self-plug):

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/83711-To-Duna-and-back!-in-a-spaceplane!-without-refuel!?p=1224245#post1224245

Edited August 18, 2014 by Cirocco

[Vicomt]

For JDCollie (and anyone else interested), here's my Badass (lol) SSTO

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