KSC, all Kerbin Cities and launch sites just exploded. How are your Kerbals?

[Whirligig Girl]

[Hypothetical Scenario]

All Kerbals on Kerbin are dead now. The Space Center is completely destroyed, as are any other launch sites you may have. Earth in RSS counts as well, btw.

Everything in orbit is fine, so tell me. Is you Kerbal Race going to survive? Do you have any amount of technology in space that could allow rebuilding of civilization on Kerbin or other worlds?

Right now, my Kerbals are screwed. There's a Duna craft landed, waiting for the Kerbin launch window. 3 Kerbals. There's two 3-Kerbal orbiters that I forgot in LEO, and an empty Science Station. 9 Kerbals left in the universe. Hmmmm. Good news is that it seems that due to texture replacer, 5 of them are females, 4 of them are males, so roughly half and half. Eh. Yeah, this is not good.

What about you? How are your Kerbals going?

EDIT:

judging by the names, all our astronauts are male anyway, so there will be no repopulating anything, unless you make a cloning mod

Well, I use texture replacer, but this is hypothetical anyway. If all Kerbals are male, then they would naturally be able to clone themselves. If only your astronaut Kerbals are male, then let's just pretend you've got a 49-51 mix of female to male. (Round up for male, down for female) If you have texture replacer installed with female Kerbal heads, then you have to use that for your count.

Also, let's not talk just about what we can do in-game, but rather about what your Kerbals could/would actually do in real life. For instance, they could disassemble a Hitchhiker Storage Container landed on Laythe to repurpose it into a house. Or they could detach the batteries from the battery-holder on the battery banks and use those to power up things with a jury-rigged solution.

And, because this is a planned feature, if you have any spacecraft with Advanced Grabbing Units (Claws) on them, you can mine asteroids for water, fuel, oxidizer, etc.

Let's also assume any crew container that has no built-in control source (Like the Hitchhiker Storage Container) can produce enough food to sustain 4 (Or the amount of Kerbals the pod can store) Kerbals indefinitely, and 3 (Or 3/4 the maximum amount of Kerbals the pod can store) Kerbals for 10 Kerbin years. So any station will be able to slowly produce food, so if you have any control pods with food in them you can stockpile the food in the HSC.

Edited December 9, 2014 by GregroxMun

[zekes]

They'll rebuild on laythe - we have a crew of 7 and lots of supplies in orbit (reachable via SSTOs)

[annallia]

I would have pretty much no chance.... I used mostly remote probes to explore and get science to this point and just recently finished construction on my mothership which is currently housing 4 kerbals who are so unimportant I didn't bother to learn their names and is on its way to duna for its shakedown cruise. Barebones, landers haven't been tested yet, escape pods not installed yet, and only 1/3 of its fuel capacity... Though should have enough to reach laythe

[LABHOUSE]

I have about 25 kerbals in space currently. I have many crafts with plenty of delta v left in kerbal orbit on trajectories reaching from eeloo to eve. They would be able to use the ions on my duna probe that has room for 12 kerbals (have three in space) to limp to laythe.

[Whirligig Girl]

I have about 25 kerbals in space currently. I have many crafts with plenty of delta v left in kerbal orbit on trajectories reaching from eeloo to eve.

Interesting. Would you be able to get your Kerbals to meet back up somewhere? Perhaps in LKO or around Jool. A central base of all the surviving Kerbals to plan for the future?

[AcidSludge]

4 Kerbals on my SpaceStation, 4 in the RoverThingie cruising around Kerbin (does that count aswell?), 1 on Mun, 1 on Minmus, 2 about halfway to Duna. I'd say my Kerbalkind is doomed.

[Rune]

I'm almost not screwed, but the genetics of the hypothetical survivors are dubious... I have recently finished lugging all the pieces of an O'Neill colony at "L3" with room for 200 of the little guys, but I have nowhere near that number in orbit. Counting all the kerbals in fuel depots and mining installations and surface bases... yeah, maybe 25 or so to replenish the gene pool, a bit dubious as I said. But they would have room to try:

Rune. It's the place I will retire kerbals to.

[Reactordrone]

15 guys out there (would have been 19 but I brought home my Minmus crews yesterday) but three of them are on Eve with nothing that can get them back currently in orbit. Plenty of ships that could get to Eve and elsewhere and ten seats available on landers/capsules with parachutes and a couple of rocket only landers on the Mun so I could concentrate everyone on Eve and rebuild there or abandon three Kerbals and head elsewhere with the remaining twelve.

[qwertyx2y]

I have 1 Kerbal in orbit... Yea there screwed...

[Borsek]

judging by the names, all our astronauts are male anyway, so there will be no repopulating anything, unless you make a cloning mod

[Madrias]

I'd be screwed. I've got, maybe, 30 Kerbals on Minmus, but that's about it.

[Scotius]

Considering that we have no ISRU options or space industry (not counting mods ofc)? Doesn't matter how many stuck in space fleshbags there are . Bye bye kerbalkind. *nudgenudge Harv*

[federicoaa]

I am setting an autonomous colony in Laythe, so my kerbals would be fine I think

[tomf]

I have lifesupport installed and no greenhouses so the only place my kerbals have a chance of not starving is back on Kerbin. I have about 25 kerbals in space, mostly on the Mun, Minimus, Gilly and Ike. I have a Kerbonite refueling probe capable of filling up on any of the moons and taking off again. With all of this I reckon that I can get everyone back to LKO before they run out of food.

Where they will all die because I don't think I have anything capable of landing on Kerbin. If only the spaceplane I was just flying to do a kerbal rescue contract hadn't just landed.

Edited December 9, 2014 by tomf

[magnemoe]

Extraplanetary launchpads around Minmus, at an captured asteroid in low orbit, landed at Gilly and Ike, one underway to Jool and Eeloo.

My main issue will be food,

[Cirocco]

totally and utterly boned. I almost always fly my missions start to completion in one single go (don't have kerbal alarm clock and I don't want to miss any launch windows), so the amount of kerbals in space at any time is almost always 0. Stuff that stays up for extended period of time is almost always automated.

[Umlüx]

i don't know the exact numbers. but several dozens of them are still alive and kicking on my Gateway1 Station

there are several 3 man missions on their way to/back from jool, duna and eve too.

[cicatrix]

I'm pretty sure that at least SOME of my Kerbals survive. I've a ship with virtually unlimited dV and Alcubierre's drive (KSP Interstellar). Karbonite bases on Mun, Minmus and Bop, an antimatter collector on Jool's orbit and 16 science slaves on Moho (there's bound to be girls there among a dozen more scattered throughout the system. Provided, there's no Kerbin, we can all go to Laythe.

[NFUN]

Fun fact: Kerbals traditionally reproduced asexually, and are highly resistant to genetic bottlenecks.

[Richy teh space man]

I brought all my Kerbals home in preparation for 0.90 so Kerbal kind would be screwed.

There's also no female Kerbals so even if there were some out there they'd die out slowly..

[cantab]

Current only Jeb, Bob, Bill, and Lemuki are in Kerbin orbit, in two independently-capable three-Kerbal orbiters current still on their upper stage. They have food for around a decade, though those snacks will be getting stale after a while, and untried recycling units for water and oxygen. There are KAS pipes and struts, but no winches. There's also a Tylo ship and its refueller in orbit. Because Jeb designed it there's no pod, only external seats, so it can't support long operations in space. It should be able to land on Kerbin and return to orbit two or three times.

Heatshielding is a problem. The Tylo lander has no shielding, and the orbiters shield only the pod not the life-support parts.

Bill, Bob, and Lemuki will take one of the orbiters down, and command its service module to reorbit. Jeb will attempt to land the Tylo lander on the same continent, using a large deorbit burn to reduce entry speed. I need to check if I can bring a bare service module down safely; if so this will be taken, if not the second full orbiter must come down so it can land on its parachute. Whichever one is not taken will stay in orbit should the need arise to return to space.

This will then provide fire, food, and water for the four Kerbals to begin rebuilding civilization.

[justidutch]

Inrteresting question. I do have a station in orbit, though very low on fuel. Attached to it are two flying saucers, one is Ion powered and will reach anywhere, the other is fusion powered with about 50 minutes of burn time, but they only hold a single Kerbal each. If there was enough time to send up tankers to the station then they could relocate to Laythe (or anywhere else). I think there's room for about 50 Kerbals in the station - we might make it.

[MGCJerry]

6 On Mun with a tiny kethane miner. Sorry dudes, you might as well be extinct.

They do have stuff to do though...

6 Kerbals

2 four crew rovers

1 Mobile science lab

1 "Return Lander"

1 Kethane driller/refiner platform

[Francois424]

Got about 8 kerbals in low-earth orbits (2 ships preparing to bring station pieces to POL)

Also has about 12 kerbals in my Space station between Mun/Minmus' orbits.

Without the capability to produce new part or mine fuel (ne kethane in my mods yet) might as well say we are dead. My 2 tractors do have about 60k delta-V between them tho, but not while carrying a lot of parts. I guess I would re-route my to-be-built station to Laythe instead and try and colonize there. Tho I fail to see what kind of minerals would be available on Laythe. Unless I build everything off glass.

[Whirligig Girl]

judging by the names, all our astronauts are male anyway, so there will be no repopulating anything, unless you make a cloning mod

Well, I use texture replacer, but this is hypothetical anyway. If all Kerbals are male, then they would naturally be able to clone themselves. If only your astronaut Kerbals are male, then let's just pretend you've got a 49-51 mix of female to male. (Round up for male, down for female) If you have texture replacer installed with female Kerbal heads, then you have to use that for your count.