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Have you ever done something really cool completely by accident?


severedsolo

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As the thread title says.

I've personally had two of these "wow that's really cool, and completely accidental" moments this week.

The first one, was on a standard return from a Mun Landing, completely by accident I landed in an inland sea in the desert. Now, I knew there was water in the desert, I've even gone looking for it once or twice, but I've never hit it completely accidentally.

Spoiler

dEy84ce.jpg

The second one came a few days later. I was launching something up to my station in LKO, I never bother going for a direct intercept from launch, I always go higher and then rendezvous. This time though I happened to set the station as target before I launched, and completely by accident, got a 2km encounter while Suborbital.

Spoiler

AJyHGdO.png

 

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I had finished building my SLS, and wanted to test it. At launch, the Mün was just barely over the horizon, and when i launched I pointed my rocket directly at the Mün.

I got an intercept. 

I then crashed on the Mün due to poor timewarp management.

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10 minutes ago, TheMadKraken2297 said:

I had finished building my SLS, and wanted to test it. At launch, the Mün was just barely over the horizon, and when i launched I pointed my rocket directly at the Mün.

I got an intercept. 

I then crashed on the Mün due to poor timewarp management.

GG Fam

My happy accident was when I managed to parachute a rocket booster onto the top of the VAB. It was awesome. Well until it fell off and exploded.

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Just now, Mark Kerbin said:

GG Fam

My happy accident was when I managed to parachute a rocket booster onto the top of the VAB. It was awesome. Well until it fell off and exploded.

GG No Re M9! 

1v1 Me M8 I'll shrekt you in the face! Knives only! Call of Duty Infinite Warface!

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Screwing around one day, putting a capsule out at the limits of Kerbin SOI.  Eventually, brought it back.  Periapsis was less than 70 km, but not by much, when I ran out of fuel.  After a long series of aerobrakings, I finally reentered and splashed down within visual range of KSC.

Another time, I was mucking about, built a big rocket, launched straight up.  Never figured out what the maximum altitude was, since I ran into the Mun.

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2 hours ago, razark said:

since I ran into the Mun.

Been there done that.     Do the interplanetary burn, set KAC to the SOI change, notice it's for only 5 hours from now, map view, Dangit!

Once testing a new probe in the same manner, I ended up with a <8 km flyby of the moon at >3 km/s orbital speed. 

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I made a Mk3 SSTO spaceplane by accident.

You see, I was planning to get a rather bulky thing down to the surface of Laythe, and rather than slap a de-orbit engine on it, I went for rapiers just to get it out of orbit.  Then after putting the wings on, I was struggling with the centre of mass.  One of the components was an (empty) Mk-3 to 2.5m fuel tank that allowed me to dock it to get it to Laythe in the first place, and filling it up with oxidiser sorted my centre of mass / centre of lift problems out.  So, naturally, I test these things before hurling them a billion miles, so I try it from the runway, turn around and land in the grasslands, because landing gear can always be an issue.  Fine, no problem, let's try it again - keep going.  Hmm, big mountains coming up, let's just throttle up, get over them and land on the other side.

Hang on, I'm going supersonic.  And now hypersonic.  Shall I try it?  Yes, I've got some oxidiser.  Made it (just) to LKO going the wrong way around Kerbin, with a Mk3 spaceplane that was never designed to do so.  Here's a pic.

pzvv48R.png

Edited by bigcalm
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Overshooting minmus during circularization burn due to the late burn execution, ended up into my first time landing on duna (and getting enough science to finish the tech tree)

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Back right after 0.23.5 came out, with the new SLS inspired 3.75m large parts (now only medium large with the making history 5m parts), I built my first attempt at a Saturn Vish replica, then did a Mun mission... I spotted an unnatural feature as I was on my final landing approach, I altered my approach to land close to it... and it was a fitting easter egg to find on my first flight of a Saturn V replica with the (then) new parts).

It was also the first time I had seen that particular easter egg - IIRC its in the dark if you start up a newgame, and takes some time to get sunlight, so its good for me that I did the mission on an old sandbox save, rather than starting a new throwaway game to test it.

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I did a suicide burn on the Mun and the lander hit the surface at around 10m/s before I ran out of fuel. The problem with that is... I don't have any fuel left. But it was still cool considering I was winging the suicide burn.

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My Kerbal once survived a really high fall (this was before parachutes) by landing on its head. It turns out that if you land on a Kerbal's head, no damage will be done. You can also steer a Kerbal by turning on the EVA pack, and drag/clicking the mouse around the screen, i always do this to make sure my Kerbal lands on his head. Does not work on water.

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1 minute ago, NSEP said:

My Kerbal once survived a really high fall (this was before parachutes) by landing on its head. It turns out that if you land on a Kerbal's head, no damage will be done. 

This is *waaaay* interesting! Time to twist some rules on some challenges...

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1 minute ago, Lisias said:

This is *waaaay* interesting! Time to twist some rules on some challenges...

Also, sidenote, using the steering method i mentioned earlier, you can glide around a little bit. Not like an actuall glider, but if you are, say 20km up in the sky above the KSC, you can bassicly get anywhere in the whole KSC region.

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