"Jeb had to get out and push..."

[JebNeedsHelp]

I will admit, I simply thought that was an inside joke when I first signed on to the forums. I later realized that it was a valid method of propulsion, and soon enough, I needed to have Jeb get out and push for myself after a Mun lander didn't quite have enough oomph to get all the way home.

Anybody else have anything that they heard on the forums that they didn't realize was actually possible at the time?

[TimberWolffe]

airdropping kerbals onto minmus was one I was surprised that it worked

[magnemoe]

You can eva to open solar panels, yes this is pretty realistic but did not know it was possible.

Lots of other tricks, asparagus staging, landing on the engine or using stuts or fins as landing legs, reaction wheels on rovers.

[Pikachu8091]

There was one time I was in quite a pinch! I had TAC Life Support installed, and my kerbal had maybe an hour left, before he died. (Note, this was all on the Mun). What I ended up doing was turning my lander on it's side, activating the engine, and shooting my Jebediah into orbit, and hopped in a Mun space station with a couple minutes of life left. It was nerve-racking, but also incredibly fun to do.

[SunChaser]

All the EVA tricks, definitely. Landing on Minmus and taking off again with just the jetpack was pretty awesome (I got a sub-orbital trajectory to rendezvous with the ship). Like magnemoe said, 'asparagus staging' came as a surprise. I've only heard of the Falcon launch system using fuel crossfeed, and even that's only with 2 boosters. Of course every KSP player has built some monstrosity or other once they discovered that trick.

Oh and launching rockets using jet engines...yeah I still think it's weird how air intakes work. You can get a rocket up to very good speeds by abusing ram intakes and aerospikes.

[Aragosnat]

Yes. I taught another person who plays this game the get out and Push method as well recently. Also was the first time they EVA'ed too.

[RocketPilot573]

Jet engines work in space (And on Eve, Duna, etc) if you close air intakes while they are full. Then when you go into space the air will be stored as fuel rather than "leaking out," and can be consumed by the engine to get a few hundred m/s of delta-v.

[GreeningGalaxy]

With Near Future Technologies and its super-efficient plasma engines, I've managed to get ships into perfect hovers at a few hundred meters over Minmus, allowing a kerb to descend to the surface under EVA thrust, plant a flag, grab some samples, and then hop right back up into the hovering ship without ever touching the ship to the ground. Admittedly not as BadS=true as the Extreme EVA maneuver (which I've also done) but very sci-fi to jump down out of a hovering ship. Great way to drop off kerbs from transit vehicles that aren't designed to land.

[Tail_TL]

There was one time when I had to get back from the Mun, And Jeb needed to push the whole command pod for 20 minutes (Yes I was keeping track of the time) I was pushing it for a bit then went back in to refill the monopropellant and then out again and so on.

And then I finally managed to return him home... it felt good but also I felt like I wasted too much time..

[Duke23]

I also originally thought the "get out and push" thing was a joke, a hyperbole for how close you cut the fuel allowance. Then I had to do it to finish deorbiting a capsule once coming back from the Mun.

[Wanderfound]

I've never actually had to resort to "get out and push" for propulsion, but I do end up using it fairly regularly to spin a ship around when I've let the batteries drain with the solar panels facing the wrong way.

Although it's usually not so much "push" as "headbutt at high speed".

[bitbucket]

It's been quite a while since I've had to "get out and push." The one time I remember it happening was underestimating my delta-V budget on a return from Duna in 0.18, and the return capsule was 30 m/s short of what I needed to intersect Kerbin's atmosphere. A good hard jetpack-assisted shove saved the day.

[Felsmak]

I had to do that to get my CSM home from the Mun once. It was glorious.

[Rocko]

LOL I never considered the "get out and push" method It seems that you have unlimited EVA propellant if you keep boarding the capsule... I always assumed that EVA refills somehow take monoprop out of capsule's supply, but never really needed to investigate. It is awesome how this game makes you invent things when you are in a tight corner. I once used Jeb to turn around a light Minmus lander that fell on its side. It took some bumping, but I finally got the rocket pointing the right end towards space

I remember once having Jebediah stuck on a highly eccentric solar orbit after a test flight (originally I intended to just leave him there, but then... you know, you don't do that to your kerbals, especially not to Jeb). A rescue party set out in a 3 seat capsule with one seat empty. But, my rocket-building and piloting of the time being rather poor, after a successful rendezvous and Jeb's EVA transfer the rescue ship didn't have enough delta-v and could only get to a little closer orbit to Kerbin. So a third party, with a hitchhiker's container and a mighty ship, finally brought all three back, only to find that they didn't have enough parachutes and crash-landed on Kerbin. What a shame.

When I was trying to return from Eve, my rocket had too little delta-v to reach orbit, so I tried to finish the orbital insertion on EVA. But no luck, even that didn't do, and ended in EVA reentry

Asparagus staging was a big eye-opener and I was quite angry at myself that I didn't think of that. It seems so obvious once you see it. And yes, I used it to build a monster booster, weighing some 20 000+ tons, that is capable of launching 2 000+ ton payloads to Kerbin escape (using 5m KW rocketry parts; with stock parts I only got to 1 200 tons to Kerbin escape).

[Red Dwarf]

I recently had to get Jeb out when I was testing out my prototype heavy lifter (which turned out to be heavy, but not so good at lifting). 40 ton station component with an 80 km by 50 km orbit. Took a looooong time to push that thing out of the atmosphere.