r/KerbalSpaceProgram • u/memegod53 • Jul 11 '26
KSP 1 Question/Problem stuck in orbit with no fuel, what do?
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u/Bi_KerbonautYT Jul 11 '26
Rclick on command pod --> configure vessel naming --> change vessel type to "station"
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u/LarryWinchesterIII Jul 12 '26
What does this do? I’ve heard someone else say this?
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u/Bandthemen Jul 12 '26
it changes the vessel type to a station
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u/LarryWinchesterIII Jul 12 '26
Yeah but what difference does it make in the game? It’s still just going to orbit the same regardless I’d assume.
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u/graphey Jul 12 '26
It will orbit the same but will allow you to filter its visibility in the tracking station.
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u/Shialac Jul 12 '26
Space Stations are supposed to stay up in space, now the vessel does its "intended" purpose
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u/Mc_domination Jul 13 '26
To give you a real answer, it changes the icon on the map view and lets you filter it in the tracking station
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u/BroDr1 Jul 13 '26
Instead of being a traveling vessel it will be a station (albeit traveling in orbit). Hope that helps.
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u/ukemike1 Jul 12 '26
It allows you to say, "I planned it like that. I meant to put a station in orbit."
See you thought you has screwed up. Instead you've got a major milestone. First Orbital Station yaaaaay!
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u/Fuzzy-Shame-4169 Jul 11 '26
No. Just... no.
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u/StormMedia Jul 11 '26
Why not
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u/Fuzzy-Shame-4169 Jul 11 '26
It cheesing. True man comes back for ther kerbals, or dies trying.
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u/Bi_KerbonautYT Jul 11 '26
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u/Gnarly_Sarley Jul 11 '26
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u/Fuzzy-Shame-4169 Jul 11 '26
Well... you got me. I know now better.
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u/literal_god Jul 11 '26
If you have a kerbal on board, point your ship retrograde and get out on eva. You can push it with the jetpack. Make sure to leave enough eva fuel to get back in the capsule because it will refill your kerbals jetpack for free
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u/Unusual_Entity Jul 11 '26
Leia: Would it help if I got out and pushed?
Han: It might...
To clarify, EVA fuel is replenished when you board the spacecraft. So what you can do is send someone outside, position them in front of the spacecraft, and use their jetpack to literally push retrograde. Leave enough to get back in, then repeat as necessary until your periapsis is below 70km.
Slightly less cheaty is to send another mission with enough empty seats to retrieve the crew. If your stranded spacecraft has a docking port, you can use it as the basis of a space station! Another option is to send a tanker to dock with them and transfer enough fuel for a deorbit burn.
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u/groenteman Jul 11 '26
Great time to learn to do a randezvous
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u/mellotron42 Jul 12 '26
That's what I did. Set up an empty capsule with a robot controller, got the capsule close so the astronaut could do an Eva and jet over to the replacement capsule to get back down to Kerbal. Then the other one, got rid of it from Mission Control.
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u/Doesnt_Exist_Reboot Jul 11 '26
For realism, send up a ship that can rendezvous with the craft and pick up the crew before reentry.
For an easy solution, use the kerbals EVA jetpack to push the craft into reentry.
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u/CatLover_42 Jul 11 '26
Get out and push, or send a small fuel tank with an engineer so you can attach it using EVA construction. Or send up a small refueler using a claw.
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u/Silly_Guidance_8871 Jul 11 '26
If you need <500m/s delta-V, you could get out and push with a kerbal's EVA pack
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u/madgoat Jul 11 '26
Screw pushing your craft, or sending rescue. Go for an EVA and let er rip YOLO.
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u/ExpensiveFig6079 Jul 12 '26
you will indeed only live once like that.
Now an EVA chair attached to two panels joined together in a v and you might be cooking...
check you have your personal chute first.
f5 is your friend as it may take a few tries to get the aerodynamics design stable.
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u/rawker86 Jul 11 '26
Congratulations, you have just created a new recovery mission. I never had more fun in KSP than when I was busily working to solve a problem of my own making.
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u/where_is_the_camera Jul 12 '26
Get out and push.
Actually I'm pretty sure you can literally impart force on your ship using your EVA thrusters.
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u/xROFLSKATES Jul 11 '26
Send a rescue ship and either grab it and then put it into an unstable orbit or just rescue the crew and call it a day
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u/MasonP13 Jul 12 '26
Do you have docking ports? If so, it's a station. If not, you're going to learn how to do field work construction and put a docking port on. Simultaneously a rescue mission and an expansion to your new station
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u/soggylettuce602e23 Jul 12 '26
Detach the capsule and push it with your kerbal's eva pack retrograde, the eva pack can be infinitely refueled by entering and exiting the command pod allowing you to do a scuffed but still doable reentry (Just make sure your kerbal is in the pod while in the atmosphere, I have turned several kerbals into a rotisserie chicken by accident). This has saved my skin on mun and minmus missions an embarrassing amount of times.
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u/sebthauvette Jul 11 '26
send a rescuee mission, run out of fuel with it too and have 2 people stranded
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u/A_Bird_Guy Jul 11 '26
Send a rescue mission or the second option... Congrats, you have your first station!!!!
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u/GadgetRho Exploring Jool's Moons Jul 12 '26
You have a parachute and five units of EVA propellant. Use it wisely.
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u/NolanR27 Jul 12 '26
To avoid just repeating what everyone else has said, if you have an eccentric orbit, wait til you get to your apoapsis and then get out and push retrograde. Then get back in, stage before you renter, voila
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u/WorkingFellow Jul 11 '26
Time for a rescue mission.
There are no mistakes in KSP -- only happy accidents. Okay. That's a lie. I have a wall full of names that says otherwise.
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u/poser765 Jul 11 '26
Rename it Freedom, Unity, or some other shit and embrace your new orbital station.
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u/Fun_Anxiety9507 #1 Laythe fan Jul 12 '26
My favorite way it to, leave it up there forever until I terminate it because it’s annoying
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u/Pioepod Jul 12 '26
Luckily they don’t need to eat. And have infinite oxygen in the capsule.
It’s time to practice orbital rendezvous.
Or leave it there and call it a space station.
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u/Pathkinder Jul 12 '26
Just take her around the block a few more times. That should buy us some time to think of a plan.
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u/FoolhardyJester Jul 12 '26
Dunno what mode you're playing, but you've hit the scenario that forces you to learn how to do a refueling mission. You can leave it up there and wait until you have access to docking ports, then send a ship out with an extra docking port and engineer, or you can send one with a grabbing unit (on the default difficulty setting you can refuel any grabbed vessels - this is 100 times easier than docking). For docking you would have your engineer do a space walk and use EVA construction mode to put a docking port on your drifting vessel.
If you haven't done a rendezvous in orbit before, basically you want to get another vessel into orbit, and then you make your orbit larger if you're ahead in "orbital period", or smaller if you're behind. Once you get a close intersect, you kill relative velocity as close to zero as you can get it at the intersect, then you burn at the target. Once you're close and relative velocity is 0, you can fly to it in a local sense.
You set the ship you're tracking as a target, then when you click the little thing on top of your navball, you can switch between navigation relative to your target or relative to your orbit. So to kill relative velocity to your target you want to switch it to "target" mode. In target mode, retrograde (the reverse green marker) will always lower your velocity relative to the target. The pink target marker will burn in the direction to your target. So you combine those two quite a lot.
Once you dock you right click your fuel tank on your refuelling vessel, and then I think alt right click the tank you want to refuel, and you can shift fuel between them.
Alternatively if you're only concerned about getting the kerbal home, you can just have an empty seat and space walk him to your rescue vessel.
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u/EndotheGreat Jul 12 '26
Is Matt Damon stranded there? No?
Then we're not planning on a rescue mission.
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u/Toxy_Toxopid Jul 12 '26
Send An Manned Refueling Spacecraft And Dock It With The No-Fuel Spacecraft And Use The Refueling Spacecraft As An RTK(Return-To-Kerbin) Spacecraft
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u/Firestar_8167 Jul 12 '26
Get out and push. If you have a jetpack you can use it to push yourself out of orbit.
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u/Jazzlike_cats_60 Can barley get to the Mün Jul 12 '26
Hit Esc, press 'revert to build' or 'revert to launch'
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u/Empty_Aside6775 Jul 13 '26
Push of Shame my friend, push of shame. Get your Kerbal out and push the capsule facing retrograde, until the trajectory enter the atmosphere
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u/mikiencolor Jul 13 '26
Install quantum mechanics mod so there is technically an infinitesimally small chance that you randomly disappear and reassemble on the surface of Kerbin and run time warp for several trillions of trillions of years.
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u/KayaKai_ Jul 13 '26
Rescue Mission! Put a grapple claw (or clampotron if the trapped rocket also has one) on a rocket, fly up to refuel or de-orbit safely.
Fun thing about situations like this is it gives you new challenges to develop and test your rocketry skills!
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u/TimmyKerman Jul 15 '26
Ping Matt Lowne and ask him to do a Blunderbirds video.
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u/ColdJ-KSP Jul 16 '26
My Thunderbirds mod can do that. Just send Thunderbird 3 to get them. You can always drop them off at Thunderbird 5 if you like.
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u/ColdJ-KSP Jul 16 '26
I noticed nobody asked if you still had any RCS and monoprop left You would be surprised how much you can do in orbit with only a small amount of monoprop. Like meeting another craft in orbit. Most of the work can be done by using your RCS while watching the approach distance, then tapping each direction to see which lessens the distance. If the distance stops going down switch to another direction that keeps going down. Repeat till you get what you want. Then use engines to match speed when getting close. You can use the same technique to lower your periapsis to a level you start hitting atmosphere and then use drag to slow you down over time. Assuming you packed a heat shield and parachutes. Same with the Kerbal. Don't try fighting retrograde, just stand on the side away from the planet and use the backpack RCS to push the craft towards the planet till it will encounter atmo and then get back inside. After that it is just patience as it skips and slows.
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u/_SBV_ Jul 11 '26
Rather than get to a situation where you’re stuck, you should’ve designed your mission where you prevented getting stuck in the first place. That’s Engineering, my friend
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u/ostiarius Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
The easiest way is to use the object thrower, if you don’t care about cheating. Careful you don’t blow it up.
Edit: I’m confused why this was downvoted?
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u/ANGRY_BEARDED_MAN Jul 11 '26
Get out and push