My Apollo 13 Moment

[ansaman]

I had the Mk 1-2 3 man Command Pod, Service Bay, Half-Size fuel tank and engine in orbit after having rescued two Kerbals from low orbit.  Did the deorbit burn... all was nominal... until I hit staging and with a big "whoosh" realized that I had failed to include a decoupler. No revert available! Oh boy... we are all gonna DIE... but let's see what we can do.

Opened up the doors on the equipment bay, extended antennas, extended the solar panels in hopes of increasing drag. Things started to get hot... started to get temperature bars and everything started to glow. I still had an engine and fuel so I gave it a few shots to slow down some more. Figured that with chutes and perhaps a last second burn the command module might survive the impact. I only had a little burn time left. At about 10km altitude I was still going real fast and somehow started to get sideways. Decided to close the equipment bay doors and realized that I did have a heat shield sandwiched in there. Hit jettison shroud button and that did nothing. Hit jettison heat shield  button and... WOW... the capsule tumbles free! The rest of the flight is routine except for Jeb and company being hoarse from screaming.

Back at KSC... Jeb goes looking for the designer. Someone deserves a fat lip.

[Sagacity]

Wooo! Intense. I think this is stuff that makes KSP even MORE fun. You can get into a routine then BAM.

[Magzimum]

Nice post. I love improvising, and when it goes well I am massively proud. But I use a simple pre-launch checklist (which I check in the VAB / SPH) and I have a system of save-files now to avoid getting into such a situation. Obviously, it still happens though.

Basically, my checklist checks for a lot of issues that have gone wrong on previous missions:

1. Got control? (RSC/reaction wheels)
2. Got power (battery / solar panels)
3. EVA access: got ladders, hatches not blocked?
4. Landing gear: legs/wheels/parachutes
5. Staging sequence ok?
6. Got the right crew?
7. Got science? (the right equipment / data storage)
8. Got antenna? (since 1.2)

Also, I use number sequences for save files:

1. Totally safe, all Kerbals on the ground at KSC
2. Ongoing mission, all going according to plan
3. Risky part of the mission ongoing
4. We've changed the plan but may fulfill the mission goals
5. Last attempt to save the mission
6. Just messing around now

Sticking to these numbers with these descriptions, I can always go back one step where the situation was safer and better... worst case back to the pre-launch situation with all Kerbals on the ground at KSC. In your case, I would have saved the progress throughout the mission onto a "Save 02" file, possibly "Save 03" during the landing sequence, then a "save 02" again when you're safely back in Mun orbit on the return trip, a "Save 04" when you are on a no-going-back-now course with Kerbin's atmosphere with no decoupler at 3000 m/s. After it all goes horribly wrong, you still have "Save 01" to go back to before it went wrong (and in this case it went wrong already in the VAB), but you can also use a "Save 02" and try to do the re-entry a second time.

Sorry if you consider this off-topic, but I haven't had a situation where I cannot revert back to before the launch since I use this system. I still love to improvise, but I don't risk my entire career over it anymore.

[Curveball Anders]

4 hours ago, Sagacity said:

Wooo! Intense. I think this is stuff that makes KSP even MORE fun. You can get into a routine then BAM.

Indeed.

It's when you think you're running a 'routine mission' that you'll get caught.

The intense feeling of '[explicit explicit explicit] - this is going to [very hot mythological place] in a hand basket'.

But you manage to wrangle yourself out of it (by all kinds of bizarre and Kerbal methods) and it feels so good.

[The Aziz]

I had that twice, both were Mun missions, and one of them was my first mission with separate lander.

I had small Mk1 pod and small lander can. And I brought two Kerbals with me.

I realized my mistake after docking back to command module. Since it was past 1.0, lander couldn't survive reentry, so I left Bob it in very eccentric orbit and sent rescue ship for him.

Second time was when I changed the design, while still keeping one Kerbal capacity. I misplaced decoupler separating the lander from nose cone on top (don't ask how I came up with the idea, but it worked), so the cone got jettisoned, but decoupler remained in place. What's weirder, engine was burning fuel, flame was visible, but it didn't move a bit. So I gave up landing for the first time in career and returned home after few orbits.

Phew.

[ansaman]

44 minutes ago, Magzimum said:

Sorry if you consider this off-topic, but I haven't had a situation where I cannot revert back to before the launch since I use this system. I still love to improvise, but I don't risk my entire career over it anymore.

No, it's great. I usually can revert, but because I had been craft switching that was unavailable. I also usually do a quicksave before launch, but I had forgotten like the designer forgot the decoupler.

[Curveball Anders]

6 minutes ago, ansaman said:

No, it's great. I usually can revert, but because I had been craft switching that was unavailable. I also usually do a quicksave before launch, but I had forgotten like the designer forgot the decoupler.

Yep, even reverts and quick saves can fail due to craft switching and such.

Not to mention that excrements tends to happen when you're so sure that it's just another routine launch.

[Jhawk1099]

1 hour ago, ansaman said:

No, it's great. I usually can revert, but because I had been craft switching that was unavailable. I also usually do a quicksave before launch, but I had forgotten like the designer forgot the decoupler.

I was in a situation very similar to yours but because I turned the option to revert off rather than switching around. 

I was launching the first manned munar lander and return craft in a new hardcoreish career when all of a sudden the untested craft started flipping about like a pencil thrown through the air. Since i hadn't yet setup an abort sequence so i just burned when i was pointing up. After only the upper stage remained the instability went away and orbit was achieved. But at a cost. I did the maths and there was just enough delta v for  Valentina to land and return to orbit around the mun. Since i had  contract to launch a satellite into an equatorial munar orbit i decided that she could wait in orbit for a while. (Part of me making this decision was i didn't have enough money to launch another one  these crafts  but i would after the plant a flag on mun contract got fulfilled) 

The next mistake came after landing. Insertion and landing were both smooth as could be. Val got out to plant a flag but for some reason she decided to put the flag right next to the craft... so when the flag sprung up the craft went flying off landing on its side. Once she climbed back in takeoff proved to be truly terrifying. At the moment before actually lifting off the surface Val was scraping against the mun at 20ish m/s. I looked at my fuel levels to see that i had 7 units of lf left. I still had long way to go to orbit so Val got out once more and got to a 12 km orbit with .8 jetpack fuel left. It was quite an interesting flight. 

[Aegolius13]

One of my current 5-kerbal Mun landers does this intentionally (i.e., keeps on the bottom tank and Terrier).  I generally have enough fuel left over to slow the thing down to non-explodey speeds.  Then the only issue is staying retrograde.  My design is pretty bottom-heavy, but I've found it helps a lot to leave engine on just a tiny bit to use its thrust vectoring for additional attitude control.  

[magnemoe]

14 hours ago, ansaman said:

I had the Mk 1-2 3 man Command Pod, Service Bay, Half-Size fuel tank and engine in orbit after having rescued two Kerbals from low orbit.  Did the deorbit burn... all was nominal... until I hit staging and with a big "whoosh" realized that I had failed to include a decoupler. No revert available! Oh boy... we are all gonna DIE... but let's see what we can do.

Opened up the doors on the equipment bay, extended antennas, extended the solar panels in hopes of increasing drag. Things started to get hot... started to get temperature bars and everything started to glow. I still had an engine and fuel so I gave it a few shots to slow down some more. Figured that with chutes and perhaps a last second burn the command module might survive the impact. I only had a little burn time left. At about 10km altitude I was still going real fast and somehow started to get sideways. Decided to close the equipment bay doors and realized that I did have a heat shield sandwiched in there. Hit jettison shroud button and that did nothing. Hit jettison heat shield  button and... WOW... the capsule tumbles free! The rest of the flight is routine except for Jeb and company being hoarse from screaming.

Back at KSC... Jeb goes looking for the designer. Someone deserves a fat lip.

Good thinking about dropping the heatshield. Now you would probably survived anyway as the MK1-2 is very solid and the service module, tank and engine would works as crumble zone.
Starting to tumble during reentry is more of an problem if you return with an upper stage. Here opening the service bay doors might well have saved you here, the bay doors makes excellent airbrakes who never overheat as long as you reenter retrograde or pro grade. 

 

[Hodari]

16 hours ago, ansaman said:

Decided to close the equipment bay doors and realized that I did have a heat shield sandwiched in there. Hit jettison shroud button and that did nothing. Hit jettison heat shield  button and... WOW... the capsule tumbles free!

You, sir, are a steely eyed missile man.

[GluttonyReaper]

My most recent... issue was when I accidently jettisoned my heatshield at the beginning of reentry from the Mun. Thankfully, aero forces kept it pinned to the capsule, but I had to be pretty careful with the torque to stop it from sliding off. Got lucky though, landed in one piece.

[Provisional Name 12]

5 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Second time was when I changed the design, while still keeping one Kerbal capacity. I misplaced decoupler separating the lander from nose cone on top (don't ask how I came up with the idea, but it worked), so the cone got jettisoned, but decoupler remained in place. What's weirder, engine was burning fuel, flame was visible, but it didn't move a bit. So I gave up landing for the first time in career and returned home after few orbits.

I've had this happen too, It is a pain, I used to do this on engines before I got too into planning ahead. Just yesterday I sent a large space tourism ship up as a part of a much larger payload AND accidentally used that style of decoupler rather than the separator. Because it was on the front half of the craft it was the parent part, so when I went to deorbit, I got no thrust and as soon as the shroud overheated, the entire ship exploded. I tried to use KAS to remove the shroud, but it wouldn't remove a parent part. I ended up sending up a shuttle to deorbit the thing, then when I landed it occurred to me that I should have used the control from here function to switch parent parts.

[Chiron0224]

I just had an Apollo 13 moment moments ago and remembered this thread and decided to post.  So I'm getting to the point in my current career where my eyes turn towards Mun, but where I haven't unlocked the 2.5m parts.  I beefed up my current LKO ship to deliver a simple craft with a decent amount of fuel to Mun.  It worked and I achieved Munar orbit and managed to complete some observational survey missions while there.  And then I burned to come home and managed to achieve an escape from Mun, but couldn't return to Kerbin.  To make matters worse, my Apoapsis was still close to Mun's orbit so I clicked ahead an orbit and saw that on my next pass I would get slung out of Kerbin's influence.  So I bolted a probe core to the top of the ship I was using and emptied the capsule and launched it.  I screwed up and achieved an equatorial orbit so I adjusted that and then I planned a manuever a couple of orbits later that got me an intercept and executed it.  By this point my manned capsule was approaching Kerbin periapsis and I had a limited window of opportunity to rescue him.  My rescue craft didn't have enough fuel to zero relative velocity on arrival.  So I beefed up the launcher some more and tried again only to get mixed up and launch in the wrong direction (I was trying to match inclination during launch).  So I abandoned that launch and built yet another rescue craft.  This one achieved orbit and was able to get a rendezvous considerably after my manned capsule's Kerbin periapsis.  I had just barely managed to squeak by in the what was left of my window of opportunity.  Anul Kerman boarded this third rescue craft and used up what little fuel it still had to get home.  It was so close and the whole time I was thinking "Failure is not an option!".  It was a blast!

[Vanamonde]

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