Your Absolute BADASS Moment in KSP

[Codey737]

I "Nailed it"....into the wall

http://gfycat.com/CircularTartEastrussiancoursinghounds

[nadreck]

I (actually Bob, Bill, Jeb etc) have had a few hairy moments, but one of the hairiest that was survived recently was on take off from near the rim in East Farside crater. Things happened way too quickly for there to be a good photo op, but Bill had a concern about low fuel and was trying for a most efficient launch into polar orbit and was not perfectly careful about where he was going. The craft had four small tanks and engines around at Mk 1 lander can core with a science package on top and legs attached to the tanks. A great wide base, but at about 160m/s he clipped on tank leg and engine clean off on the crater rim and the remaining craft was spinning badly (engines were off at the time waiting for the top of the arc for an orbital burn). Bill immediately opted for EVA and managed to slow down and land safely from that speed with nearly 2 units of EVA fuel left. That actually made me wonder if he couldn't have actually made orbit!

[DimSky]

I had a go at the "tech level one challenge" back in 0.23.5 Career Mode and got as far as Minmus, landed at a few biomes and EVA'd to the others, came back with enough science to unlock all the science parts and enough rocket parts to build a huge asparagus rocket*.

I launched the second rocket with an orbiter stage (including science lab and rockomax tank) and lander stage (including all the science parts) and used those to get all the science from all the biomes on Minmus and the Mun, and return it to Kerbin (I spent quite a few hours playing KSP that week)

I landed the science lab from the second launch back on Kerbin, which returned enough science points that I completed the tech tree after only two launches (albeit with much F5/F9/revert-ing when I botched things).

That was something like my fourth go at career mode in 0.23.5. I don't think it would work in 0.24.2 - I'd probably run out of funds.

* - I meant the spacecraft but, come to think about it, "asparagus rocket" could be an interesting salad.

[Ruthgar]

I have two of them.

First I'll tell you about my trip to Eve with an ingeniously designed lander It was designed for a parachute/powered assist landing (final braking), then launch, link up to a set off fuel tanks left in orbit (4 sets of quad linked tanks that after transfering fuel from them to the lander I could jetison individual tanks), and the lander would then go back to kerbin. Here's a screenshot of the basic lander design I was using in that career, unfortunately not of the lander I'm specifically talking about, but it is the central 'core' of the lander that was used (it's missing the clamp o-tron, and additional ascent engines for EVE)

The problem was something about the descent/landing/ascent from EVE broke something in the lander supports, and once out of EVE atmosphere any thrust over 35-40% would start the 'legs' gyroing around, actually they started gyroing at anything above 10-20%, but could stay on course until 35-40%. So Jeb took this crippled lander, and managed to get it back to Kerbin and landed it at the north pole. When it landed, only one of the four legs was still at a right angle to the central stack, one was twisted about 30% off center, and the other two were pushed up about 15%. Turns out I had not noticed that I had completely lost the struts on those 3 legs, and only the struts from the central stack to the 4th leg were intact. An examination of the mission log showed that jetisoning the Eve ascent packages after transfering the last of their fuel once I had reached the resupply tanks in orbit had somehow destroyed those missing struts.

The second awesome moment I had was landing at a 45 degree angle as you can see in this picture.

It's my firm belief from Jeb's normal lack of response, aside from being happy/excited, to all forms of 'exciting' incidents that there is something not right with him.

[Jovus]

I landed a spaceplane on the KSC runway. From space.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Accedently building a small space station out of parachute delivery drones. (I didn't even notice until the 7th)

Or, probably my hextuple encounter, laythe->tylo->laythe->Vall->tylo->tylo, within 4 orbits (the last encounter smashed me into Jool). Best slingshot ever.

[The Demon Lord]

My Most Bad-Ass KSP moment:

I was exploring Duna - with Jeb, Bill and Bob. The landing was a bit hot and the chutes didn't deploy high enough and it all went pear shaped, with everything exploding but the Capsule.

Jebediah was all like '....s given = 0'

Send up an unmanned rocket for epic Rescue mission of doom - landing on Duna this time ate up a large amount of DeltaV - but managed to land only 600 meters away from the capsule. Kerbals transferred to new ship - ready to embark home.

Make slight error in my Transfer back to Kerbin - get stuck orbiting the sun with sweet FA worth of DeltaV left, no Electrical charge (all my Solar panels broke) and no RCS

Jebediah still unable to register a single .... given.

After some epic time warping (20 years worth) and some serious application of Anti-Aging cream (Jeb looks just the same as when he left for Duna)

I am able to transfer to Kerbins sphere of influence - 80 m/s worth of DeltaV left.

Course correction as I enter the sphere of influence to hit my Kerbin Periapsis at 10,000 m - I now have 20 m/s left.

As I approach Kerbin, my periapsis rises, to outside the atmosphere.

Jebediah takes it all in his stride, does not bequeth a single fornication and makes another course correction - 3 m/s of DeltaV left - We enter in fast, with the chutes deployed, but we are still travelling fast enough to escape into orbit again

Jebediah takes stock of the situation and knows that on the next pass he will land safely.

As predicated the landing is good - 1,500 science later from all my experiments stored in the 2 capsules, 20 years and a succesful landing with 3 m/s to spare.

Jebediah didn't flinch once....

[Cupcake...]

There have been a few but this one's certainly up there....

Flying to Laythe and back in a ship the size of a Ford Transit.

Cupcake...

[GloriousWater]

On my first manned Duna mission in 0.24, the mothership sucked out some of the fuel from the lander which I only noticed after landing. So it ran out while still suborbital and Jeb & Seebart had to jetback to orbit.

However I still had to do an Ike flag contract, so I transferred the mothership to Ike and Seebart landed with his jetpack. Only problem, he had nowhere near enough fuel to return to orbit. I considered leaving him for now and launching a rescue mission from Kerbin before remembering that I still had a rocket in orbit.

*proceeds to undock transfer stage*

Yes, I landed the overly tall transfer stage (and the lab) on Ike even though its TWR was barely above 1, burning for basically the whole way down. And it didn't even have landing gear, it touched down on the docking port about 3km away from Seebart. So I return to orbit, rendezvous with Bill & Bob in the habitation module of the mothership (which used to be a Mun station) and.... No RCS. On that day in low Ike orbit, I learned to dock without RCS and did it with Jeb's mad grin on my face. Probably my best KSP moment so far.

Except I hadn't discovered the screenshot key yet, so no pictures....

[Jarin]

Cupcake...

Okay, I'm not one to yell at other people about odd habits, I just want to ask... why? I've seen a couple people do this, and it just seems strange. You're not writing a letter, you're having a conversation. And even if you were, your name is right there. So... why?

[Chewy]

After sending Bob to Moho, I was quite a bit short on fuel inserting into Kerbin orbit. I ran the tank dry and still had to somehow kill several hundred dv to avoid taking another trip around the sun. So Bob does something crazy and goes on EVA thinking he can jet pack out of the escape trajectory, only to be rescued days later. Bob empties all but a few drops from his jet pack and is still maybe 100 dv short of getting into Kerbin orbit. So an emergency rescue mission is launched which catches up to Bob just before he leaves Kerbin SOI and returns him safely home.

[_Aramchek_]

One of my planes like to lose it's wings doing specific high speed/high altitude maneuvers, the first time this happened..and a few times after that, I learned that you can still land the plane as it floats to the ground like a sycamore tree seed by carefully modulating the throttle.

[PwnedDuck]

My Laythe Lander ran out of fuel on ascent at 35000m and I had to bail Jeb out, still inside the atmosphere, and jetpack back to the station from there. Made it with about 2% fuel remaining.

[Frank_G]

Absolutely my first aerobraking maneuver around Jool... minutes of tension... not certain if it will be enough or too much velocity that the ship will lose... The whole structure wobbeling and squeezing... absolutely awesome moment, when the ship left the dense atmosphere into a perfect orbit...

[Crusher8000]

A mun lander with 3 kerbals didn't have enough fuel to reach kerbin again so I send a ultra lightweight rescue vehicle, 3 seats around a fuel tank and a parachute. Everything went well, I reached the mun, loaded them up and was in a trajectory towards kerbin. However with the last stage that would seperate the fuel tank from the probe that connected the seat something went wrong and the whole thing exploded. Luckily the kerbals survived but 2 were on a collision trajectory to kerbin and one was in orbit. I build a ship, launched it and picked up the 2 kerbals in freefall.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

Of course Jeb

[ImJake]

Once I strapped some boosters to an asteroid, stuck a command seat on top, and rode the sucker into the sun.

[theend3r]

Probably transferring between vessels by EVA inside Kerbin's atmosphere. Fighting the atmosphere with jetpack to board a ship feels very badass. Other than that some of BahamutD's Armory fights felt absolutely badass, dodging missiles and bullets under 10g:

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Edited December 8, 2014 by theend3r

[Xacktar]

The first time I fired up the Krakenfire and accelerated a kerbal to unsafe speeds.

The huge lag spike before the poor guy shot out was quite a tense moment.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Xacktar

[Sasquatch_Punter]

At the end of my 0.24 career save I deorbited a massive 400-500 part station with a couple of SSTOs docked to it. I was using a 3-man command module as an escape pod with parachutes and rcs blocks attached to it so after I deorbited the station I moved my pilot in there. Then I realized one of the SSTOs was still carrying two passengers, so I managed to move one of them over to the escape pod before the reentry effects started. About 20 seconds later, the station snapped in half. I undocked the escape pod and the space plane and fought to keep them within 2.5 km of each other as they were falling, then triggered the escape pod's parachutes and just spiraled after it with the plane, waiting for them to deploy. That plane was actually VERY maneuverable so it was easy to keep them relatively close to each other.

Best part of that mission was trying to dodge the station as it was rotating. Even though it was chugging at almost 5 fps, it was epic.

[L3GO]

Photos can describe what words cant.

[Cirocco]

http://i.imgur.com/R8eWADZ.jpg

Photos can describe what words cant.

Haha, awesome. Did you want to land a launch stage on a barge before SpaceX does it?

[VR_Dev]

Flying three crafts at once

[Kizarvexis]

A mun shot with the vanilla Demo. I spent about 2 min swanning back and forth just meters over the Mun until I finally cancelled the sideways motion. Got back to Kerbin with no fuel. Yes, the fins were the landing legs.

[mythbusters844]

This seems to be a pretty cool picture of my bomber taking out the VAB:

And I think this one is the most relevant to the thread: