The Jaws of Defeat

[Rakaydos]

This was from Febuary of last year:

Jeb did a slingshot around the mun, then another around Minmus for a massive science boost early in carear. Unfortunately, because I timewarped out of minmus SoI, I missed Kerbin's atmo. After burning my remaining fuel, I was still on ejection path.

A launch later, I remember Jeb still has RCS fuel! So I dump my RCS fuel... and ALMOST capture, about 40-80 MS short. Que Jeb getting out and pushing repeatedly... against a craft that lacks SAS. Jeb is passing minmus orbit, with 56 hours until he becomes lost in solar orbit.

After losing interest and going back to the VAB, I notice one of my mods has been unlocked- the KAS Fuel Line Hookup. Excited, I work out a new launcher with a set of them and some science for solar orbit, work out the bugs, and launch Bob on a hyperbolic path to catch up

Matcing courses within a m/s or so, Bob quickly rushes out, grabs a fuel look up, flys over to Jeb's fuel tank, grabs the line, flys back, links the two craft... and the Kraken Strikes, destroying Jeb's fuel tank, engine, and a third of his science. Jeb has 12 hours till Kerbin Escape.

Seeing Jeb still has his RCS thrusters, Bob tries again, being extra careful in matching velicities this time. Crossing his fingurs, he links again... success. Jeb gets all the RCS propellant, Bob keeps all the rocket fuel. Jeb unlinks, carefully aims for kerbin, and begns shedding velocity. It takes most of the tank to get Jeb to stay in Kerbin SoI. But thanks to Bob's quick thinking, the day is saved.

Bob goes on with Jebs old trajectory, does solar science, and returns to kerbin, landing for 500 science. Jeb follows him in, and his remaiing science is also worth 500 or so.

[Mystique]

A little thing, but sending up a small crew transfer capsule without rememmbering to put bloody rcs thrusters on it to dock with the mun limo. Rather than waste my time reloading, I just gritted my teeth and used its LV-909 to coast in towards it's docking port at half a meter per second. Patience won out and it was a good docking!

Just imagine my rage when I was trying to dock these 2 thing and found that one on the right has RCS ports only for rotation and the one on the left doesn't have any, because it was way to heavy for RCS to move it anyway

P.S. Keeping them from flexing on regular clamp-o-tron (well, I saved some cash for Sr one) after docking was even more interesting than docking using main engines

[soulsource]

I managed to return from Eve with a heavily damaged lander - I thought at that point that the impact tolerance of the engines would have been high enough to allow landing without legs - I have seldom been that wrong...

The only reason Jeb survived that mission was, that the landing spot was luckily quite a bit above sea level...

[Rath]

Landing a plane with lift only on one side and no torque because I was out of ec

[Sirrobert]

One of my worst was not actually that bad.

I ran out of fuel while returning from Minmus in such a way that got a gravity assist with the Mun, which damn near flung my ship out of the Kerbin system.

Through the advanced technique of 'Get Out and Push' I managed to land, after which I touched down on one of the steepest parts of a mountain. Naturally the rocket fell over as soon as the parachute deleted itself, and started smashing off everything on the roll down.

Through some kind of miracle the command pod survived though. With all the science already safely inside it. I planted my first, and only ever flag on Kerbin on the spot where it came to rest

[Coam]

My third crewed Mun mission, Persephone 3, nearly ended in disaster due to the low fuel margins of the lander and return craft (not helped by the fact that I was flying everything by hand, including docking, which I'm pretty terrible at.).

In the end, to get even a reasonable intercept with the command module I had to burn the lander out of orbit into a shape that would only briefly encounter it, then EVA the crew across, leaving the lander to crash. There was only enough time to EVA one Kerbal across before the two craft separated again, and it looked like there would be insufficient time to rescue the other, who with no fuel would almost certainly be killed if the lander hit the Mun. Fortunately, the RCS system of the landing craft had enough fuel remaining to put the lander into a Mun orbit, allowing a later rescue mission to be mounted. The other two returned to Kerbin in the CM.

RCS frequently appears to me as a saviour from total disaster.

Also, my first shuttle attempts basically consisted of "[1]Wait for the ship to start spinning, [2]shut down the engines, adjust the thrust levels, wait until it points prograde, fire the engines and see if it keeps spinning, if it does return to [2], otherwise wait for [1] or Orbit."

[Perry Apsis]

My first time to Jool (Lordy, that seems a long time ago) I had no idea what I was doing. I came screaming into the system at some huge relative speed and it occurred to me, hey, maybe I can slow down by going through Jool's atmosphere. So I picked an altitude at random and burned the little nuke at the bottom of my huge ship (I was paranoid about fuel) until my periapsis dropped down into the atmosphere. All went well until I realized I was slowing too much and wasn't going to come back out. So I lit up the Little Engine that Couldn't and burned somewhere prograde of radial, and it just wasn't cutting it. Suddenly I realized that my lander's engines actually hung out over the sides of the stack. I activated them and was just barely able to claw my way out of Jool's green embrace, dragging my precious fuel with me. (Did you ever notice, by the way, how long it takes to do an aerobrake maneuver on Jool?)

Even less deservedly, I was then on a perfect intercept for Laythe. I actually used that design deliberately for a long time, where I would hoard fuel by using a single nuclear engine for efficiency, and burn the lander's rockets when I just couldn't stand it anymore. Those were the days when I refused to read the forums or google anything related to KSP because I wanted to figure it all out by myself.

[Axelord FTW]

RCS frequently appears to me as a saviour from total disaster.

Whenever I feel like budgeting a mission tightly (which is rare but it happens), then monopropellant becomes my buffer that keeps me from total failure.

[Red Dwarf]

The hardest thing I've ever done was extreme EVA Jeb home from the Mun without patched conics. It was my first career save, and I hadn't unlocked the observatory yet. I found out the hard way that my ascent stage wasn't gonna cut it, so I had to bail out suborbital. Getting to orbit on jetpacks was easy, as I'd already built up most of my speed, but I had to guesstimate where to start my escape burn and hope I got the velocity right. Turns out I started at exactly the wrong time, and was thousands of miles off-course. I got a lucky Mun encounter which dropped me into the atmosphere, and I was able to get Jeb in perfect headbutting position before he hit the ground. Contract complete!