I think I've worked out the reentry issues with my rescue vessel. The final stage was topheavy and had a tendency to run out of electricity. A bunch of solar panels along the base fixed both problems, with a couple of extra parachutes for good measure. I was landing on the final engine, and it was usually exploding (though not enough to hurt anything else... bad form though).
So I rescued another poor kerbin from orbit. Reentry was tense... I had barely enough fuel to collapse the orbit. The pilot and rescued scientist were coming in extremely fast horizontally, and taking forever vertically. Using the atmosphere to airbrake, excessively. As usual, this involved getting a lot of heat as the air particles wizzed by at about 2 kilometers per second.
"High V gas which scoured our hull with a shriek like a banshee wail". This time around we enough power to catch most of it with the bottom of the ship. The engine was in no danger, it was designed to get far hotter, but it wouldn't protect the rest of the ship. That's what the blast shield underneath was for.
But even with the shield facing dead "forward", components started lighting up with orange heat meters. Then red. I had to very carefully correct the heading as we continued to fly around the planet - in atmos. Desperately I spent the last of the fuel, which barely made a dent in our speed. But at least the fuel wouldn't explode in the tank, if that's a thing. Our speed *was* dropping... steadily, and oh so slowly. So was our electricity, because the sun was on the far side of the planet. If we ran out of that, we'd tumble and shred almost immediately.
I wish I could say we had a reverse sunrise, but we were going east. Which was a blessing. As the sun leapt out of the horizon, the heat gauges finally started to drop. We were still streaming a red comet-tail over the desert sands, but the thick cushion of the lower atmosphere had caught us. We were still almost a kilometer above the ground when the parachute sensors pinged "safe!". I released one manually just to be sure, then the rest. That last 1000 meters took quite a while with three parachutes, but that was fine. Clearly further modifications were necessary, but we were alive! We hit the sand engine-first but it didn't crumple, a success for the parachutes.
I could have called the recovery team then. I *should* have called the recovery team then. But noooo, I just had to get a soil sample from the desert. I climbed out of the inline command module and... slipped.
But our suits were quite sturdy. I jotted down some notes on the area ("Hot sandy wasteland. The most beautiful sight I have ever seen.") and put some sand in my pocket. I looked back up at the ship. Added: "Consider adding ladders in future". I hopped, but couldn't quite reach. I didn't *need* to reenter, but I wanted to know if I could... I hopped again, and triggered my jetpack. So close! I activated my jetpack first, then leapt-
I skidded several meters along the sand before my helmet got embedded in my jetpack and my foot. The jetpack exploded.
Kerbal Space Program.
It autosaved a few seconds before that... I hit escape and killed the game, I hope it didn't automatically save then too.
Though I guess I can live with it, since it was Valentina Kerman... Orangesuits heroes never truly die.
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Topic: How did you last die? (Read 2400191 times)