Home Sweet Home

It was only in the last moments of my seemingly successful rescue mission to the Mun, that I discovered just how unwise it was to place a mk1 lander can at the bottom of my final stage – a capsule too weak to withstand even a parachute-assisted landing.

In one (alternate) reality, Jebediah Kerman bravely travels to Kerbin’s closest moon, lands with his last sliver of fuel, waits there for 12 days (during which time about half a dozen Kerbals are killed testing various rockets intended to rescue him). Finally, a sleek new rocket lands nearby, taking him all the way back to Kerbin, through its atmosphere and then gently down to the ground suspended from a parachute. But not gently enough to stop his half of the dual capsule from crumpling up like tinfoil and crushing him to death.

Fortunately at this point I had finally learned to quick-save, and in the real (albeit later) timeline, the Space Cheetah 1 does not separate its final stage, coming down to land with a combination of its parachute and the last reserves of its plentiful fuel. It’s still a bumpy landing, but at least both kerbonauts survive.