This Season 2 stream on GopherCraft's multiplayer server opens with The Success 2000 XLT already far out in space, on its way back from Minmus with Hilchel Kerman aboard. The whole stream is about getting home. A short burn on very little fuel, the engine dropped, and then pass after pass through Kerbin's upper air while the heat shield wears down to nothing. It ends with a parachute, a splashdown at night and 55.2 science recovered.
Short on fuel
The stream starts in the middle of a burn that goes wrong. The burn time climbs instead of dropping, and the commentary stops it: "Something's wrong. Something is wrong." The Resources panel shows about 85 units of liquid fuel left. "That is really far from Kerbin still."
Viewers coach the approach, and Basket inches the maneuver node around to bring the path closer to Kerbin, "ever so slightly." The first burn gets part of the way there. A second, much shorter one follows, done slowly in map mode as a viewer suggested, and it works: "Aha! We're amazing."
Dropping the engine
The ship now dips into Kerbin's atmosphere, and the plan is to let the air slow it down rather than spend fuel. Viewers advise dropping the lower stage first, which the commentary calls "the big explosive bomb underneath me." After the split, the Tracking Station shows two craft on sub-orbital paths: The Success 2000 XLT, and The Success 2000 XLT Ship, the part with Hilchel inside. The new craft gets its own mission clock, starting again from zero.
Pass after pass
The first dip lights the capsule up in flame, then it climbs back out. "Pass one is done." A viewer suggests checking the heat shield by right-clicking it, and the panel reads Ablator 167 / 200. With no engine left there is nothing to do but warp to the next low point and watch. Later the commentary spots the dropped stage on its own looping path: "The rest of the XLT is working on its own atmosphere braking."
Each pass takes a bite out of the shield. "I feel like with each pass we use about more than 25 health points." Close to the hour mark the commentary expects the capsule to burn up, so Basket sends home the Materials Study taken high over Minmus, which the science window values at 21.9 if transmitted and 62.5 if recovered. The transmission drains the batteries much faster than expected. "Wow, that uses up a lot." Soon after, the Resources panel shows the Ablator at 0.00 / 200.
Splashdown
The capsule keeps going anyway. "I'm lasting a lot longer than I thought I would with zero HP on my heat shield." On the final dip the flames trail the capsule for minutes, then fade. The commentary waits for the parachute to read safe, at about 250 m/s. "Please deploy." It opens, and the capsule drops into dark water. "Yeah, I'm in water, so I'm good."
With the ship floating, the crew records a crew report and a surface sample from Kerbin's Water, and the batteries sit at 0.43 of 50. Then Basket recovers the craft.
Where it ends
The Mission Summary for The Success 2000 XLT Ship lists six experiments recovered, among them "Recovery of a vessel returned from a sub-orbital flight on Minmus," for +55.2 science and a total of 181. The stream closes at the Space Center. "Wow, that was a stream and a half." Hilchel Kerman made it home. The dropped stage, The Success 2000 XLT, was left on its own path, and what became of it is not shown.