Herbie Syndrome

[samstarman5]

So it suddenly occurs to me that we haven\'t shared a Herbie Syndrome moment. Let me illustrate.

Bring the Wayback Machine to 1969 to The Love Bug, when we all get to meet the rascally car Herbie. Now in the big race in the movie, one of Herbie\'s wheels is seen rolling away by Jim and Tennesse and they think the wheel looks mighty familiar. It is familiar because it is one of Herbie\'s wheels that had just come loose. This happens until all of Herbie\'s wheels come loose, thanks to the sabotage of Thorndyke, a competitor.

So, I come here to ask if any of you have had a Herbie moment during a mission, when you might see a module or part come flying by and think to yourself that it looked very familiar, and then turns out to be a part of the current rocket that had come loose on its own. Now I did say parts from your current rocket, but stories about how you see a part fly by from a previous mission that looks like something that should still be on your rocket giving you a bit of a panic moment would be just as fun to share.

[Kreuzung]

Plane attack on debris, 5th try. Fired particle cannons, debris flew directly into my fuselage, separating the cockpit from anything that kept it in the air.

[Elven_sword]

Almost ran into a lander leg from an abandoned NpHeavyMunrocket that was struck by debris, while piloting an NpHeavyMunrocket. I had to eject the fairings early to check that I still had all my legs.

[RedDwarfIV]

Whilst testing my Shadow VTOL, it managed to get into such a violent spin that one of the wings, with the mounted engine still attached, broke off. The craft continued spinning, and the other wing his the one that had broken off.

Result: No wings.

Mission: Successful. The craft was low enough that the cockpit and a small section of fuselage remained intact. You know, any crash you can walk away from.

[softweir]

Yep. Jettisoned a stage, used RCS to move away rom it, did a few minor orbital adjustments and saw one part of the jettisoned stage wizz past - and then got hit by the other. Not exactly a Herbie moment because the stages had been deliberately detached, but similar.

[ultrasquid]

I experienced such a moment in real life, and it was perhaps the most frightning thing I ever saw. Fortunately it wasn\'t from my own car, but the wheel of a boat trailer blew out in front of me and seconds later broke off entirely. As in that Herbie scene, with the weight of the trailer now detached, the wheel actually accellerated while bouncing across four lanes of a busy freeway. It then deflected off the center barrier and bounced back across the freeway, including once mere feet in front of my car, before it rolled out of sight behind a gap in the sound wall. It was near miraculous that it didfn\'t hit any cars in all that distance.

Anyway, that\'s my story.

[Thiel]

I lost my decent stage that way once. I was tweaking the orbit of a very big payload so it wasn\'t immediately apparent and I didn\'t notice it until I detached the payload (And the manoeuvring thrusters that could have taken the Kerbals home. Turned out I\'d been hit by an old discarded stage.

[Rich]

I read this thread when it was first posted, and was disappointed that I had nothing to contribute. However, today I was working on setting a land speed record with Tosh's CART pack, which resulted in such a moment during the testing phases. My finger slipped off the canard control, which were angled down to keep the vehicle from taking off, resulting in half of it splitting off and flying past me.

Edited September 1, 2012 by Rich

[Anachronda]

As I\'ve mentioned in other threads, my big problem with rendezvous is patience. This isn\'t helped by the fact that my machine isn\'t terribly powerful and the game hangs after a couple of hours of playing.

Slowly, patiently over the last couple of days I\'ve been working on a rendezvous. And thinking I\'m doing really well. Then I notice in the map view that I\'m sitting right next to some debris. I think 'wtf?' and switch back to non-map view to see this:

The good news: I\'m still creeping up on my target.

The bad news: I won\'t be able to do anything about it except wave as they go by.

[AlternNocturn]

Just had a mission where I was testing out the Deep Space parts pack and I had just thrown together a rough vehicle to take to the Mun. On the way to orbit I lost all but one of the ZO2 PowerTech solar panels much to my mild horror. However after a brief moment in Kerbin\'s shadow while in orbit, there were so many ZO2 tanks onboard the vessel that the lost ZO2 was relatively little so I figured one solar panel was enough. I oriented my ship prograde and was about to activate MechJeb\'s Mun transfer maneuver (I\'m perfectly capable of doing it myself but MechJeb is easier) when I noticed a part drifting by that just happened to look like my current vehicle\'s engine... somehow it had come loose and the vessel became stranded in LKO.

A daring rescue mission ensued that ended in complete success thanks to MechJeb\'s new Rincomp integration that allowed me to perform my first rendezvous ever. I was pretty proud when the rescue capsule touched down intact. In fact I still am. Can\'t wait for real missions to be implemented.