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

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MGCJerry

MGCJerry

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Facebook... Always facebook. It is the new 'failblog'.

KSP related. You know building a rocket only for the clamps & decouplers getting screwed up... *SPACEBAR* main stack sits there, while the outside stack takes flight without the center stack... Oops. Tip: don't build in a hurry.

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NeoMorph

NeoMorph

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So my mod heavy sandbox game was going great... right up until Jeb, Bob, Bill and Valentina got up and vanished from my save. I kept expecting them to re-appear if they had mysteriously died from some mod bug but no. So I kept sending up my noobs but still missing my main crew.

Then I went to try out a new station escape lander that I wanted to try and get to return to the landing strip when the game up and sent me the message "Runway not clear... Untitled Space Craft is already on the Runway". So I pressed the button to recover the space craft and... there were my A-Team... all sweaty and cussing and accusing me of imprisoning them on the runway without food and water for nearly a year. Luckily though they had a large cargo bay full of snacks and Dr Pepper lol (Also lucky that I hadn't installed TAC Life Support at that point).

*THUD!*.. *THUD!*... *THUD!*.... <---- (my forehead banging on my desk).

God, sometimes I feel such a noob when playing this game.

  • Building ships with solar panels and then forgetting to deploy them (dead spacecraft littered the whole system of my permadeath build)...
  • Building craft that have no RCS facing forward so that when I went to dock with my craft in Duna orbit I instead crashed into the space station when I tried to dock... (even placed all the RCS nozzles on one craft and then removed the RCS tank when modifying the ship and only noticing it in Moho orbit.
  • Forgetting to put crew into ship and sending it to another station in Eve orbit and wondering where the crew had gone when I tried transferring them from my transfer vehicle...
  • ... and the list goes on lol. Let's just say I spend a good portion of my time running rescue ops while my design crew get chewed out by Gene Kerman.

Anyone else make such silly mistakes like this? Misery loves company you see. :blush:

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moogoob

moogoob

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1. Built a chemical-rocket-propelled probe to Duna. (my first non-nuke/ion interplanetary trip!)

2. Used Vernors to steer, as Mk3 fuel tanks are heavy as heck.

3. Vernors drained all the fuel from the attached lander probe for some reason.

4. I only found out after staging the lander off the decoupler and trying to perform a deorbit burn.

However! I used my transfer stage to push the probe into a deorbit scenario. I was at the very least getting a test of the various chutes I had on the probe. Turned out that one of the small main chutes (that you have at tier 0) and two of the tiny new drogues was enough to do a safe, gentle landing on Duna and I didn't need all that fuel anyways, it just made deorbit a chore not having it.

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HvP

HvP

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Was very proud of the orbital station I made and was looking forward to using a robotic arm I built using Kerbal Attachment System and Infernal Robotics. But the arm needed to be sent up in a separate launch and attached via a docking port sr.

I had it all worked out. (a) The arm would be brought up attached to a tug. (B) The electromagnet on the end of the arm would grab the station. © As I had a probe core on the arm assembly I would be able to maneuver the arm's docking base onto the station using the robot arm in reverse.

It was going well. Successful rendezvous, perfect alignment of the arm, even the rotational axis was spot on. Electromagnet engaged and holding. Bend the arm so that the tug is aiming at a right angle to eject away from the base and prepare to bend the arm 90 degrees to drop the now open docking port down into contact with the one on top of my station.

Decouple and... immediately lose power because my batteries were on the tug. I was able to ponder the relationship between electromagnets and electricity as my robotic arm floated serenely off into the sunset.

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StrandedonEarth

StrandedonEarth

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RIP Milbur. My first failed contract.

Milbur was in need of rescue around Gilly. During his rescue, all the solar panels were ripped off the rescue ship. He was able to catch a nearby scannersat with the Klaw before his power ran out, giving him power generation once again. Exhausted, he fell asleep, not realizing his current Pe was a mere 4km. Eventually Gilly caught him with the highest mountain.

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Jofe

Jofe

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Kinda cheating because I went to space and it was a weird bug, but when coming back to Kerbin ran into this weird thing, I had set mi PE to around 30 km so I would slow down a little. Yet for some reason I failed to lose altitude. Reload and try again, this time set it to around 5 km. Same issue, this time you could see the reentry animations as I gained altitude. Tried again but didn't set off the previous stage, this time I would drop like a rock and nothing I did would slow the craft down. Had to sacrifice a Kerbal because I found no wait to fix it.

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macdjord

macdjord

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I have a habit of reentering pod only with 1 man pods, so my deorbiting stage hits my pod while last 500 meters of parachuting.. Bill died in a most unlucky way.

Useful tip: If ditching a stage just before reentry, always point the stage normal or anti-normal before decoupling it. That way, there is no possible combination of drag and gravity which will send it back into you.

Kinda cheating because I went to space and it was a weird bug, but when coming back to Kerbin ran into this weird thing, I had set mi PE to around 30 km so I would slow down a little. Yet for some reason I failed to lose altitude. Reload and try again, this time set it to around 5 km. Same issue, this time you could see the reentry animations as I gained altitude. Tried again but didn't set off the previous stage, this time I would drop like a rock and nothing I did would slow the craft down. Had to sacrifice a Kerbal because I found no wait to fix it.

Video is private.

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Nansuchao

Nansuchao

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Kinda cheating because I went to space and it was a weird bug, but when coming back to Kerbin ran into this weird thing, I had set mi PE to around 30 km so I would slow down a little. Yet for some reason I failed to lose altitude. Reload and try again, this time set it to around 5 km. Same issue, this time you could see the reentry animations as I gained altitude. Tried again but didn't set off the previous stage, this time I would drop like a rock and nothing I did would slow the craft down. Had to sacrifice a Kerbal because I found no wait to fix it.

Usually it happens if you use Far with a part mod that doesn't have Far module integrated. It happened to me a couple of time for that reason. Just a fuel tank or an engine will be enough to break Far drag.

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Jofe

Jofe

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Useful tip: If ditching a stage just before reentry, always point the stage normal or anti-normal before decoupling it. That way, there is no possible combination of drag and gravity which will send it back into you.

Video is private.

My bad, thought I had it on unlisted.

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Johno

Johno

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A frustrating hour of trying to build a rocket around a Mun station left me realising that I don't understand how to build a launch vehicle for a big payload such that it doesn't want to fly backwards . . . .

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Miravlix

Miravlix

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I did go to space today actually and then promptly crashed my freshly balanced (for getting to orbit) Mk3 Shuttle into it's fuel tank, knocking off the engine.

Separating in 60-70k range, result in just enough weight to kill the push away effect of decoupling, so it will float up with you to your circulating burn.

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macdjord

macdjord

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A frustrating hour of trying to build a rocket around a Mun station left me realising that I don't understand how to build a launch vehicle for a big payload such that it doesn't want to fly backwards . . . .

Option 1: Big-@ss Booster

Build a big, single-stage booster under the payload. Add lots of fins at the bottom. Add radially attached SRBs, drop tanks, or asparagus-staged liquid boosters if necessary; make sure they don't interfere with the fins.

Useful tip: Engines always draw from the most distant tank first. For vertical rockets, this means they empty the tanks in their stack from the top down, which causes the CoM to move downwards making the rocket less stable in the atmosphere. Solution: in the VAB, lock fuel flow from all the tanks except the bottom one. During launch, keep an eye on the fuel levels in the bottom tank, and, just before it runs out, unlock the next tank up. Alternately, just install TAC fuel balancer and tell it to balance fuel between all the tanks in the stage.

Option 2: Traditional Vertically-Stacked Multi-Stage Booster (i.e. Saturn V-Style)

The solution for stability is the same: fins at the bottom of the rocket. However, the vertical staging adds a complication: each time you ditch a stage, you have a new 'bottom of the rocket', which needs fins of it's own. But, since stock KSP doesn't have any deployable fins, fins at the bottom of your 3rd stage will be well above the CoM when you're burning the 1st stage, which makes them counter-productive. Thus you need to use successively larger sets of fins at each step, e.g. 2 small fins on your 3rd stage, 4 medium fins on the 2nd stage, and 6 large fins on the 1st stage.

Unless you're trying for a purely ballistic launch, any stage that fires off above 40km or so can probably dispense with fins entirely, and just use reaction wheels or RCS.

Option 3: Balanced Twin Boosters

Instead of building one booster underneath the payload, use two boosters radially attached to the sides. Make sure the boosters extend up above the payload as much as they do below it, thus keeping the payload near the CoM. You'll still want a couple fins for control, but you don't have to compensate for payload drag just to maintain stability.

This solution also lets you asparagus stage the payload's engines off the boosters and use them during the launch, thus boosting TWR. The downside, or course, is that your frontal cross-section is potentially up to tripped, increasing drag losses.

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Sidereus

Sidereus

Posted
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>Rescue Kerbal from surface of Ike.

>Rendezvous with orbiting fuel refinery/space station in order to refuel.

>Transfer Kerbal to the space station while awaiting ore, as there's not enough oxidizer

>Receive ore, process it all into LOx, refuel rescue craft.

>Send rescue craft back to Kerbin.

>Complete aerocapture and landing.

>Realize that the rescued Kerbal was never transferred back to the rescue craft and is still orbiting Ike, and that there aren't any saves to revert to.

Worf_is_Frustrated.gif

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SemiaCloud

SemiaCloud

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The fuel is supposed to be at the station, not all over the ground!

http://i.imgur.com/DafSNNQ.png

time to launch my sta-*reverts*

http://i.imgur.com/d4neyvn.png

note: this is supposed to be a station with the interstellar science lab and a default KSP science lab

also, docking with minmus like a boss

http://i.imgur.com/JoxaRlG.png

what was this again? oh yeah, a giant rover after applying boostahs

http://i.imgur.com/1B9DhyN.png

Logic.

http://i.imgur.com/wSHhcyl.png

Hmm...

http://i.imgur.com/jd11kvU.png

improper use of blimp, unless you're Jeb

http://i.imgur.com/EkMfAP8.png

Para Debri!

http://i.imgur.com/G7oVgnW.png

sorry for all of the pics, but i had a lot

Para debris? :D

One time I was trying to rescue a Kerbal in LKO so I fired the engine to get closer, and then burned retrograde. When I burned retrograde, I sent my spacecraft on a collision course, and ended up blowing up the Kerbal I needed to rescue.

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Goddess Bhavani

Goddess Bhavani

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Here's a shot of a Kerbal maneuvering a habitation and transport module by hand. 3 of his crewmates are still inside the hab, with the lights out and life support down after I ejected the cockpit module from this low tech crew transfer vehicle (CTV).

1Y7WAKB.jpg

Why did I eject the cockpit module, you ask? Well, you see, this ship has a detachable science module between the hab and the cockpit, and the idea was to detach the cockpit and the science module, attach the top to a primitive orbital station (POS-1), and have the cockpit go back to the CTV then de-orbit it using remote guidance.

This all looked well and good in theory, with one crucial point of failure. Midway through the test launch of this new POS I realized the RCS thrusters on the top part of the ship were in the wrong place. They were on the materials science module, not the cockpit with its small but definitely useful monopropellant.

2jSPwTQ.jpg

Even more hilariously, during rendezvous ops and initial pilot's checkout of the orbiting POS-1 station, the back end of the CTV started to drift about on its own accord, necessitating an emergency EVA by the resident space engineer who promptly stomped the hab module into submission before shoving POS-1 and its attached science stack into the momentarily stationary docking port.

Phew.

Ohh, why did you not use KIS to detach the mis-placed thrusters and attach them to the cockpit as initially intended, you ask?

It's because I left the wrench back at the space center.

Here's a 200-capacity fuel tanker and cargo supply module sending the wrench and some other essential things (like life support) to the POS-1 primitive orbital station, testing a new soft-docking port at the same time.

fHxilPM.jpg

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