Out Of Fuel?

This every happen to you? You are flying a perfect mission in Kerbal Space Program. You even land on Mun without exploding or tipping over.

Perfect Mun Landing

Of course you wasted a little (OK a lot) of fuel with that perfect landing. But, what are you going to do? Jeb has to get home. So, you launch into a stable orbit around Mun. All you have to do now is reach Mun escape velocity, entering Kerbal SOI with a periapsis low enough in the atmosphere to assure reentry. How hard can that be?

You create your maneuver node, wait for the proper time and fire the engines, and then it happens.... before the burn is complete the last drop of life saving fuel is gone. You made escape velocity but your Kerbal periapsis is too high above the atmosphere for it to capture the ship. You are officially lost in space.

Out Of Fuel - That Can't Be Good

Hold on you may not have to abort the mission or revert to launch or VAB. There is a way to rescue poor Jeb that does not require a rendezvous or docking ports. That is, IF you remembered to add RCS thrusters and monopropellant to your ship. If you didn't, there is still a chance but it will involve Jeb doing an EVA and literally pushing the ship using his jet pack. The same basic idea  is involved as detailed here.

Yeah Baby - Thrusters!

I have heard people mention using thrusters to correct an orbit but no one ever explained how they did it. Turns out it is really simple. Here is what to do: From the map view wait until your rocket has escaped the Mun's SOI and is on a trajectory towards Kerbal. The closer to apoapsis you begin this maneuver the easier it will be. Turn your ship to the retrograde marker on the Navball. Make sure you press the 'R' key. This enables RCS thrusters (or the jet pack during EVA). Now when you press the 'H' key it will fire the thrusters towards the bottom of the ship. This will slow down your craft and begin to reduce your periapsis.  

Lower That Periapsis

As long as your periapsis is below the atmosphere and your trajectory is a closed loop, you will eventually gain reentry but you may wait forever as you loop until your orbit decays. If you have the propellant to fire until your periapsis is really low, or better below ground level, you can accomplish reentry pretty quickly.

Final Staging

If you look closely in the up close picture where I am firing the thrusters (3 pics up), you will see I was completely out of fuel. So I had to hang on to the lander stage because the thrusters were mounted on the tank. Now that reentry is imminent, the lander stage is decoupled high in the atmosphere. 

Rentry

I love the flaming glow of reentry. Notice above in the background the lander stage is still visible. 

Safe At Home

When the chute fills with air I know I have brought Jeb back safely. 

By the way, the thruster keys are set up pretty much like the rocket engine keys. Instead of using WASD to change the direction the ship is pointed, you use IJKL to move the entire ship in the direction selected. Not as similarly, while shift increases engine throttle and CTRL decreases throttle, H causes thrusters to move the ship forward and N moves it backwards. In our situation we used H to slow down in retrograde.

I hope this helps you rescue your mission.