You Will Not Go To Space Today - Post your fails here!

[CatastrophicFailure]

Staging testing for my "Abbot" probe. It and its counterpart "Costello" are going to Jool shortly.

A video would convey this better, but still havn't figured out how to. After this stack separated, TWR just happened to be exactly 1, so with a slight nudge it began to gently drift towards the ground picking up lateral speed. Didn't quite loose mass fast enough tho, and slow-motion carnage ensued:

And believe it or not, THIS was actually a complete success!

[Specialist290]

So I decided to send a small rover with about 5 tanks of RCS to Minmus. The plan was that I could use the RCS to deorbit the rover and go driving, and also to provide a little bit of downforce while I'm roving because the I mapped my rover keys to the IJKL set instead of WASD. (Also, Jeb decided he wanted to channel Evel Knievel and try to ramp... well, Minmus itself if he could, but at the very least a plateau or two.)

However, I overestimated just how much thrust RCS has, so I ended up coming down a bit harder than I expected.

The first bump popped the tires and sent me flying again. I figured I could reorient the craft and give it a little more thrust.

While I was trying to get my rover's bearings again (my other mistake was not including any form of ASAS), the second bump dropped the rover on its back and tore off a few solar panels, as well as putting it into a nasty spin.

The third bump triggered a chaotic disassembly of the entire rover. Parts flew everywhere. The cockpit survived (and actually skidded quite a distance), but I clearly wasn't going to get any roving done with that craft that day.

The best part of the whole story is: Through most of it, Jeb was still grinning like a madman, at least whenever I had time to catch his face.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Specialist290

[Akalaël]

_ Hem, WHO ON KERBAL will tell Camrie that we made HUGE mistakes

on the TWR at sea level on Eve,

on the D-V needed to get out of Eve,

AND on the altitude of the landing site ?

_ Well I can't, I'm going to the swiming pool

_ Neither I, some emergency is calling me far away....

_ Suckers... Hem, Camrie, control mission here !

_ Can hear you loud and clear !

_ Got to talk, boy, you gona laught...

Edited May 17, 2013 by Akalaël

[Rage097]

I was doing an Apollo-style mission to the Mun and had just disconnected the lander from the command module. I was time-warping to get closer and begin to slow my vertical velocity WHEN SUDDENLY, my younger sister comes in and starts yelling. this causes me to waste time being startled and accidentally time warp too much. RIP Jeb and Bill

[johnnyhandsome]

Roving around on Duna and going too fast.

Crashed some Kerbals on Minmus. Sent a rescue ship. It did not go well

[Specialist290]

As strange as this might be to say, I think Minmus is the funnest place to crash ever. You're usually going so slow that you've got a good chance of saving the crew (if nothing else), and there's an odd sort of hilarity to seeing the wreck unfold in slow motion.

[mushroomman]

It turns out that it's incredibly difficult to land something if the thrusters are not pointing in the same direction of the pod.

My Mun exploration vehicle had just such a flaw (this is the only picture I have, it's being towed by Mr. Utility)

but at least everyone survived, and I guess they did make it into space anyway.

[Extemporary]

As strange as this might be to say, I think Minmus is the funnest place to crash ever. You're usually going so slow that you've got a good chance of saving the crew (if nothing else), and there's an odd sort of hilarity to seeing the wreck unfold in slow motion.

I agree. When I was decommissioning my Minmus Base, I decided to see just how much a Bobcat DEMV Mk II could plow through. Quite a bit, actually. I was too preoccupied to take many screenshots, but I did get this one.

[KerbActual]

Going. . . Down?

This was about a three minuet tumble due to an miscalculated landing during an EVA. *Plays the benny hill theme*

[ammonia_ocean]

I sadly didn't get any screenshots, but when I was placing a Protractor-equipped satellite in orbit, I found that my first-stage engine still had quite a bit of fuel even after I had gotten everything nice and smooth and orbit-y. So, being the eco-conscious fellow I am, I began pointing my satellite retrograde. I was about to fire up the engines when I realized I was going to deorbit the whole thing, instead of just the first stage, so I quickly decoupled the first stage to rectify my mistake. Using the probe core I had thoughtfully placed aboard, I took control of the discarded stage, carefully reoriented it so that it faced exactly retrograde, pushed the throttle wide open, lit the engine... and proceeded to blow my satellite into tiny, tiny pieces. Protip: Make sure you point your stages in a new direction after decoupling them, unless you want to fire off an impromptu kinetic kill vehicle.

Or if that's too much trouble, you could just go with a good old-fashioned staging error. (Do these ever happen in real life, or are only Kerbanauts stupid enough to light their fourth stage and decouple their second stage simultaneously?)

Edited May 18, 2013 by ammonia_ocean

[CatastrophicFailure]

... fire off an impromptu kinetic kill vehicle.

Or if that's too much trouble, you could just go with a good old-fashioned staging error. (Do these ever happen in real life, or are only Kerbanauts stupid enough to light their fourth stage and decouple their second stage simultaneously?)

No, in real life they forget to transcribe metric to imperial and thus fire an impromptu kinetic kill vehicle at Mars (guess which one won).

[Lazro]

Dropped off my Huygens probe at Laythe, then realized the only reason I had put the probe on was to balance the Center of Mass for the final stage. RIP Kassini probe (oh gog nova don't kill me)

[ammonia_ocean]

No, in real life they forget to transcribe metric to imperial and thus fire an impromptu kinetic kill vehicle at Mars (guess which one won).

Oh yeah, I heard about that. The dangers of collaboration without communication...

[RocketPilot573]

I recently had my worst fail ever.

I was testing out my new space shuttle by putting a comm satellite into orbit and then landing the ship on minmus. It did all that with out troubled and was reentering over KSC.

Its was about 2 km from the runway when the Kraken attacked.

First, the left tail suddenly exploded and fell to pieces. The other tail did the same a few seconds later. At that point I was panicking, the shuttle had lost the rudders and elevators, and the engines has flamed out(the intakes were on the rudders). I knew Jeb could still land it, but then the entire left wing went. The ship stalled and plowed into the ground. Only 1.3 km from the end of the runway. So close.

RIP Bill, Jeb, and Bob

Edited May 19, 2013 by RocketPilot573

[Dead Pixel]

Lol He looks So Derpy

[jdmgto]

Testing on a new launch vehicle solely for getting my manned capsules into LKO is not going well.

On the plus side my abort system is working FANTASTICALLY and has been well tested.

[satcharna]

Today I lost another one of my Laytheplanes, trying to do a routine aerobrake around Jool. Accidentally read the wrong altitude and ended up doing an aerobreak instead.

[ammonia_ocean]

I was trying to build an SSTO craft and got frustrated, so I just slapped a Mainsail on top of it, opened the throttle, and hit space. It went about 30m before flipping over, crashing, and exploding... but this canard flew (literally) out of the fireball and off into the sky.

It left at some ridiculous speed (~400m/s) and continued to gain speed while ascending, so for a minute I actually thought that I might have just pulled a Jules Verne and created an explosion powerful enough to put it into orbit. Sadly it ran out of air at ~10.5km, peaked at around 500m/s, and plunged back to Kerbin, to splash down in the ocean some 25km from the launch site.

[zekes]

I think we need more engines...

[LeonG17]

Or perhaps A engine? You don't appear to have one. Surprised the Kerbal scientists and engineers didn't notice that.

[Cipher29]

I don't have any pics, but the failure that haunts me to this was my Eve return vehicle I built right after 0.17 came out. I was determined to land on and return from Eve without any outside help (wiki) before visiting any other planets. After missing the planet based on my calculated phase angle 4 times I finally got all 3 ships involved in the operation orbiting around Eve. After a successfully landing on the planet and having waited quite a while for a return phase angle I was finally ready to head back into orbit, so I ignited my engines and... nothing. NOTHING HAPPENED! This was how I found out the hard way jet engines don't work on Eve...

[satcharna]

My third Laytheboat landed on land. This wouldn't be a problem, as I designed them with wheels in case something like that happened. Unfortunately, it landed on one of my rovers, flipped over, bounced, and rolled over to the side next to the Kethane fuel depot, blocking off the plane docking port.

[TurkishCapybara]

I built a Rover and a lander to bring it to the Mun, but forgot to put RCS thrusters on any part of the craft, even when I had multiple mono-propellant tanks! It rotated like a tank, but I was able to get to the Mun. When I was tried to land, the craft had too much horizontal movement and it shattered into pieces! Luckily, the Rover remained intact, but with most of the Solar Panels broken (There were still enough for it to move around).

[zekes]

Or perhaps A engine? You don't appear to have one. Surprised the Kerbal scientists and engineers didn't notice that.

No there is on in the middle....

[Specula]

So I finally managed to balance the lift and thrust vs weight of my new mega spaceplane. Got to the end of the runway, tilted up just a little too much...

And ripped off 3/4 of my engines on the lip of the runway. It ended shortly after that and very poorly. Let's just say it was the most expensive fireball I've yet made...