Your Craziest Mishap During a Mission

[aceassasin]

The title says it all this is a place to discuss crazy mishaps you have experienced on your missions let me start by telling you one of mine.

It started as a normal mission with Jeb was piloting my experimental one manned space plane soon after orbit insertion Jeb prepared for his first EVA just before leaving I accidentaly hit shift and didnt notice until jeb watched his plane fly into the distance without him, eventually the engine stoped still with fuel in a eccentric orbit. While preparing a rescue mission i thought what if i just rendevouzed with the plane with my rocket pack and got back in. A few Kerbin Hours later Jeb approached his abandoned ship and stepped back in

[AncientAstronaut]

I was testing my most powerful rocket ever designed. Crazy things started going wrong and because there were six SRBs attached to the bottom -- quickly overheating -- I had to come up with a solution in seconds. I used the launch escape, jettisoned the SRBs to hit the fuel tank and blow it up and have that force propel me towards the ocean. It worked and I parachuted back down with an epic abort under my belt.

[Kosmo-not]

I was drinking one night and testing out a friend's rocket. I was doing my landing burn for the Mun and, as I got closer to the ground, realized I was coming in too steep. I pointed the nose straight up in an attempt to recover, but it was too little too late. My rocket hit the surface going around 200m/s.

Assuming my Kerbal was dead, it took me a moment to realize the capsule had survived the impact and was making a shallow arcing trajectory at about 150m/s. Another second went by as I confirmed I didn't have an engine anymore. My last chance at emerging alive would be to use the EVA pack. I looked at my VSI... I was already past the top of my arc. I frantically clicked on the capsule, sent the lone Kerbal on EVA, and started thrusting upward. I watched below me as what was left of my rocket exploded 10 seconds later.

I landed the kerbal safely and later launched a rescue mission to recover him. That was probably my most epic KSP moment.

Remember, kids, don't drink and fly rockets.

[KAO]

during my mission that involved sending an orbiter to the Mun, I had a payload fairings malfunction

so naturally, I thought I could just fly through them (don't get me wrong, this actually works sometimes)

but nooooo, once I gunned my throttle I pulled the whole ascent stage with me as if I was a chariot horse

so the ship can't handle the stress anymore so it decides to explode into its individual pieces, creating a debris ring around Kerbin.

[Ted]

I had the a staging mishap with radial decouplers being too close to each other, one of the boosters that separated then ripped off another currently firing one. This caused the the ripped off booster to spiral out of control and then into the lower section of my rocket destroying that as well. I quickly cut engines too see if I could recover and maybe land, but the explosions were happening all around and boosters were careening out of view and then back in.

You see, the downside to cutting your engines is that you lose velocity quickly, much more quickly than the SRBs that just flew off of your rocket. This can result in, as it did in my case, an SRB smashing right up through the bottom of your rocket and beyond.

Oddly enough the crew capsule did survive the explosions, but the parachute was destroyed and it plummeted into oblivion..

The amazing thing about this mishap was that it all happened so quickly yet it seemed to be very slow.

[Ghery88]

After a few experiments I decided to go for the Munar landing. Designed the craft, made a few test runs, everything seemed good to go. And everything was fine, until TMI. Plan was to finish that with the landing stage, but somehow the last stage got stuck and landing stage engines wouldn't start even after pressing space. I was like 'WTF? Let's press it again!"

And at that moment I successfully separated the landing stage with 99.9% of fuel and 100% landing legs about halfway to the Mun.

[szpw]

I was heading for Minmus on what was supposed to be my first landing. I was captured by the gravity, did a burn to get into orbit, then burned again to begin my landing. I came down at a good 5m\s, but unfortunetly it was on the side of an extremely steep hill. A leg snapped off and exploded, and my lander tipped over. Even though it was slow, my ascent stage hit the ground and exploded too. I disconnected the command pod, but it began tumbling down the hill at a high speed. I quickly got the Kerbals out of the pod, but the moment they hit the ground they started tumbling down the hill too. I managed to get the last Kerbal's EVA pack activated in time, and saved him. The other 2 Kerbals eventually stopped rolling at the canyon's floor and I managed to get them up. I brought the other Kerbal down via evapack, and the crew was reunited. The problem was I was left with a connecter, an RCS tank, and nothing else. Even the command pod was destroyed, and the Kerbals are currently stranded in the middle of mountainous terrain on Minmus with no command pod to refuel their EVA packs at.

[aceassasin]

I was testing my three manned orbiter that was launched by a core of 3 of the biggest fuel tanks with the biggest possible engine also with 2 boosters the same as the core strapped on the side i launched and made my apoapis and began to coast everything looked good until orbit insertion. I fired up the engines when all of a sudden the acceleration of the boosters was too much for the decouplers so they where destroyed causing the boosters to tear up the entire rocket. Miraculously the capsule survived and the crew made a ditch landing in the ocean east of the Kerbal Space Center however my astronauts where quite dissapointed that they did'nt go to space.

[Altair1371]

I was heading for Minmus on what was supposed to be my first landing. I was captured by the gravity, did a burn to get into orbit, then burned again to begin my landing. I came down at a good 5m\s, but unfortunetly it was on the side of an extremely steep hill. A leg snapped off and exploded, and my lander tipped over. Even though it was slow, my ascent stage hit the ground and exploded too. I disconnected the command pod, but it began tumbling down the hill at a high speed. I quickly got the Kerbals out of the pod, but the moment they hit the ground they started tumbling down the hill too. I managed to get the last Kerbal's EVA pack activated in time, and saved him. The other 2 Kerbals eventually stopped rolling at the canyon's floor and I managed to get them up. I brought the other Kerbal down via evapack, and the crew was reunited. The problem was I was left with a connecter, an RCS tank, and nothing else. Even the command pod was destroyed, and the Kerbals are currently stranded in the middle of mountainous terrain on Minmus with no command pod to refuel their EVA packs at.

I had a similar mishap. Realized too late that my lander was careening towards the side of a mountain, and slowed down just enough for the command pod to survive. Luckily I had a space station orbiting above my position. I fueled up my Kermans' packs, intercepted my space station one by one, and returned to Kerbin.

[Clouds]

I was testing whether I'd set up staging correctly (with intent to restart mission) and ejected my radially-mounted liquid fuel stacks while still in full burn. They separated correctly and flew away...only to have made a symmetrical turn back inward off-screen, and bullseye'd what I was still testing a good 5 or 6 seconds later, like a 4-way guided missile attack.

[_Aramchek_]

I decided to take jeb on a spacewalk, and while testing his pack out, I got way too much momentum...and now he is currently orbiting the sun.

[2008dragon]

Well I was excited when I landed on the Mun for the first time so naturally I decided to take a picture. Well, since I used a Mac back then I hit command-SHIFT-4, and took a picture of my plane flying away, out of control

[bsalis]

I was drinking one night and testing out a friend's rocket. ...

The things you would only read on the KSP forum.

I have a couple of incidents worth mentioning...

The Stuck Kerbanaut

I just landed on Mun with a two stage lander. Although it had a Mk2 pod, I only had one Kerbanaut on board. After descending the ladder and jumping off to set foot on the tanks of the lower stage, he slipped. Then promptly fell between the gap between the inner and outer tanks and got stuck. With no one else there, I had to send a rescue party in the form of two Kerbanauts in a Mk2 pod. Once there, I had one of them take control of the poor fellas ship and takeoff and land again, hoping to dislodge the stuck Kerbanaut. No luck with that, so I decided to try going to orbit and see if he could dislodge himself in zero gravity. So off we go on the initial burn. I checked, and he is still there - all good so far. Another burn to almost get a full circle orbit, and I check, and... he is gone! Map view, and I see he was dislodged during the second burn and he is behind me some distance away. While both in sub-orbit, coasting to Ap, I try to rendezvous. No luck with that, however on the EVA, the RCS activity accidentally put my poor Kerbanaut into orbit! So I get the ship into orbit as well and try more rendezvous attempts. Sadly, no luck so I gave up. However if anyone posts a challenge to get a Kerbanaut in EVA to orbit around the Mun without holding on to anything, at least I can say I done that.

Munbuggy Madness

Using the wonderful Carts mod and Crewtank mod, I created an ingenious ball of fun out of just two parts: The Munbuggy. This little contraption has taught me a couple of thing. Speed Kills, and don't let Jebediah behind the wheel. One incident that fortunately ended well, I was returning to the lander in the Munbuggy on Minmus after visiting another landing site. Travelling atop a plateau at speed, I decided to slow down as I approach the edge down to the lake, for obvious reasons. Alas, I touched on the brake at the wrong time it seems, because it rolled and bounced. Minmus, being Minmus, this meant nerve racking ordeal that was probably pushing 2 minutes. I did reach the edge of the plateau after a few bounces... then went careering over it. I thought it was a goner, but no, it kept bouncing. Ended up coming to a standstill, wheels down, only a short distance from the lander.

[Gamergull]

I've gotta try the Carts mod .

Anyways, I had a WTF moment today. My spacecraft, dubbed "Equinox 2", made an absolutely perfect Mun landing! I extended the ladder and two Kerbals made their way to the surface. However, Hervin Kerman decided it would be a good idea to jump from the capsule onto an unsuspecting Kerbal. He hit one, and poof, Elbin Kerman was gone! What a dumb loss. It may have been a bug, but I like to think that Elbin's helmet got smashed.

I need to take EVAs more seriously from now on .

[Felsmak]

The great hero Jebediah Kerman was on his way back to Kerbin after making history by becoming the first Kerbal on the Mun. Then, his parachute wouldn't work during re-entry. There were no survivors.

[beastcat]

Today I accidently ****ed up a return mission by separating the capsule from the return stage. One more kerbal for my mun kerbal belt.

Edit: Oh no! Why did they add a word filter D:

[Millst0ne MK II]

word filter

It's not like there was alot of it to begin with

[Minit]

I was going in for a landing on the Mun one time, and, seeing as we had just passed the 7500 meter mark, it seemed well past time to separate from the transfer stage. One thing that I forgot to do before staging, however, was throttle down the stage...

In short, I disconnected the two, and, without the added weight of the lander, the stage shot straight up into the lander's engine...

It didn't end well.

[Quinny]

I accidently put the parachute over the pod hatch so I couldn't get back in once I got out on the Mun.

Then this happened

I tried to get him home safely anyway... he's now stuck in orbit around the Mun. Sadly, he's actually doing better than the shuttle, which is now stuck in orbit a bajillion miles from anything.

[iBotz]

I launched a new addition to my Mun base. Instead of heading towards 90, I decided to go to 270, because why not? At about 95ish Km, I passed through the orbits of some space junk (about 100 pieces total). Once I established my orbit at 97KM, I decided to do an EVA because I didn't see any debris.

Suddenly, Stage 4 of my rocket explodes! Quickly, I recovered and got my Kerbal back into his pod. I then checked the map to see that a piece of debris called "Solar Research 1" had collided with my booster for the TMI. Thankfully, the rocket had enough fuel to make a one way trip to the Mun, so I said "Why not?" So I do my TMI and about 2 minutes before I swap SOIs, I notice a gray square 50km away... coming straight at me. I quickly activate my RCS to boost myself away, but to no avail. The piece of debris smacked into me at about 10 km per second. I realized what hit me. The debris from "Solar Research 1". It was a spent engine cluster that was orbiting Kerbol, and came into Kerbin's SOI at 10 Kps.

I stopped sending stuff to orbit Kerbol after that.

[TOROWY]

landed on min, did some eva exploring. Ran out of rc fuel on my kerbal and couldn't get high enough to get back in my ship. Tried to do some fancy jumping and died....

[Killerblonde]

This was a pretty bad mishap of mine:

I had just landed 3 Kerbals on the Mun, and got one out to do a spacewalk. I got a second out to join the first, and the moment I touched the ground, my game lagged, and crashed. When I reloaded, one Kerbal was nowhere to be found an on an escape trajectory out of the star system, and my other Kerbal and command pod was en route to the Sun. They crashed into the Sun and died. I have no friggen clue how it happened. Pretty bad though.

[Adams]

I created a plane with a decoupler and took off successfully, but accidentally pressed the space bar.

The command pod separated, rolled back down the fuselage and stopped when it hit the tail. This created a perfectly balanced plane which took about 5 minutes to glide gracefully back down to the ocean.

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/qOISj.png" alt="" title="Hosted by imgur.com" />

Here's another one, not really a mishap, more like a happy accident:

<img src="http://i.imgur.com/7FOWZ.png" title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" />

Edited August 14, 2012 by Navy4422
Added spoiler tags

[LaydeeDem]

I caught it on video during testing for a desert planet lander.

[Vanamonde]

Just now I was using a cart-mod-rover to make a high-speed jump on Mun, and it crashed, of course. The cart part went flying, so I ]-ed to it to see how far it would fall. It turns out this thing is nearly indestructible, so instead of hitting and blowing up, it would just keep bouncing until it landed on the wheels. But the cool part was, it was stuck on full throttle. So each time it eventually landed on the wheels, it would just start accelerating again. For the next 12 minutes, I watched this thing blaze randomly around Mun at speeds of up to 379m/s, once bouncing itself on a 3 minute arc that threw it to a 9000m apoapsis.

About the 10th time it slammed into the ground, it finally blew up.