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


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Today I had my most brilliant fail in KSP, and it was glorious.  Too bad I don't have pics.

In this career save, I'm making my first kerballed beyond Minmus mission to a B-class asteroid with Bob, Nalin, and Judith Kerman.  The ship is called Kerbodyssey 1, and is powered by four Nerva engines, with about 4,300 m/s of dV.  The ship is meant to be reusable after each mission and to always remain in space, but contains a command module that can seperate and has a heatshield and parachutes, in the event I return from somewhere and don't have enough dV to enter orbit.  In this save, it is the first Kerballed craft to leave Kerbin's sphere of influence, and the first spacecraft designed with the intention of being reusable.

So... In this mission everything is going wonderfully well, I got out to the asteroid, latched on to it, and completed the asteroid survey mission.  Originally, I only planned to do the survey and then return to low Kerbin orbit separately to reuse Kerbodyssey 1 for another mission.  But, with over 1300 m/s of dV remaining, even attached to the asteroid, I decided there was more then enough dV for an asteroid capture instead.  So, I set up a small burn that flies me past the Mün and captures me into Kerbin orbit.

So I do my burn, fly past the Mün, and I've captured myself into Kerbin orbit after using a measly 33m/s dV.  At this point I'm feeling pretty elated and patting myself on the back for my expert space-piloting skills, so I make the fateful decision to see just how much dV I can save while lowering my apoapsis for circlerising my still pretty eccentric orbit.  So naturally, I decide on aerobraking.  At apoapsis, I lower my periapsis to 35km and according to MechJeb, it will result in an orbit with a new apoapsis of 3Mm (down from my current 23Mm).  The altitude inside the atmosphere seems somewhat low to me, but I trust MechJeb so I go with it.  I fast forward to before periapsis and turn my ship so the asteroid is facing towards the upcoming inferno, protecting my precious ship and her crew.  I begin entering the atmosphere, and so far so good, the asteroid is protecting my craft and is stable.  There was a DMagic asteroid sounding experiment bolted to the leading edge of the asteroid that I forgot was there, and it quickly overheats and explodes, but the rest of the craft is nice and cool, protected by the asteroid.  This is when I decide to recheck MechJeb's trajectory prediction, and I instantly realise that I should have rechecked it BEFORE diving 20,000 meters into hellish plasma inferno that is Kerbin's upper atmoshphere.  Instead of my apoapsis being a comfortable 3Mm, it is now saying that I will be crashing into Kerbin's waters.

I designed the ship with a seperateable command module with heatshield, so I know I can abort and save the crew, but doing so would doom the asteroid to crash into Kerbin's waters, and I so desperately want to reuse the ship.  So I pull back hard, to point towards the Radial+ direction, and fire my 4 Nerva engines, turning my ship from the protection of the asteroid, and exposing the entire craft to the harsh plasmic flames of re-entry.  Quickly every exposed piece of ship begins to overheat, and within moments the more delicate pieces of my craft like the scientific instruments begin exploding, yet I press on declaring "I have engineers, I can fix this!"  But gravity and atmospheric-drag are not letting go, and with just moments left before full ship disintegration and command module destruction, I accept the fate of my craft, and hit the abort button, separating the CM, and turning it towards SVel-, protecting the CM with the heatshield, watching as the rest of the craft disintegrates above and below me.  As I drop towards Kerbin, I notice every scientific instrument that I had bolted to my CM has been stripped away.  My heart skips a beat, fearing my chutes were gone as well, but thankfully they remained, and I gently land in the ocean, hearing a sole radiator, the last remaining bit of my craft, splash down somewhere near me.

Ironically, perhaps only because I moved far enough away from it outside of physics range, the asteroid continued through the rest of the atmosphere and back out into orbit.  Unfortunately I use KCT, and the orbit will return it to Kerbin in mere hours so there's no way I can resonably build something and get it to it before it reenters again.

TLDR version:  Tried to aerobrake with asteroid, dove too low into atmosphere, tried in vane to correct and in the process steered my craft sideways causing many epic explosions.  Saved craft at last minute by hitting abort button and seperating from my disintegrating ship, however doomed an asteroid that would have missed Kerbin to inevitably return and strike the surface.

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1 hour ago, Piper said:

Ironically, perhaps only because I moved far enough away from it outside of physics range, the asteroid continued through the rest of the atmosphere and back out into orbit.  Unfortunately I use KCT, and the orbit will return it to Kerbin in mere hours so there's no way I can resonably build something and get it to it before it reenters again.

Wait, what was the asteroid's periapsis? If it's above 22km or so, the game won't delete it and will basically ignore it, giving you time to build a new ship to go after it. 

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1 hour ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

Wait, what was the asteroid's periapsis? If it's above 22km or so, the game won't delete it and will basically ignore it, giving you time to build a new ship to go after it. 

I can't remember the exact number, but it is almost certainly still above 30,000km.  So ya, I could do that, but I know at the same time that it wouldn't actually stay up there, so I'll likely just delete the object.  I have another asteroid mission coming up anyways, so hopefully Kerbodyssey 2 will fair better.  The experience had given more some ideas for a new ship design anyways, and the science points I've obtained have allowed me to unlock some things that will be really usefull in a redesign (like the docking sr. port).

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I recently completed the Jool 5 Challenge yesterday... with some hiccups. Fail Count: 1:In testing, my lander had too low of a TWR to get into orbit around Laythe, so I sent up a separate lander to dock with the ship in LKO. After that was done, it was off to Jool! My Laythe gravity assist to insert into Jool orbit and Laythe landing went flawlessly and I had arrived just in time for an eclipse. After contemplating the beauty of the cosmos just like the Cupola's description, it was time to leave Laythe. 2:On my first attempt at ascent, I flipped over and lost all my velocity when I separated the Whiplash engines. On the next attempt, things went smoothly, and I rendezvoused with my mothership. Next, I went to Pol to refuel the ship, and there inlied the first of several design flaws. 3:The ship could only land vertically, so finding a flat surface to land on Pol was a nightmare. 4,5,and 6:Tipped over and blew up a few times. After finally refueling, I headed for Tylo, where I originally intended to land first. 7:When I detached the lander from the ship, something unexpected happened... the front of the ship came off and flew away by phantom forces. *Goes to tracking station *Loads ship *Kraken calms down. It turns out I could bring Jeb home with the broken ship, so I left Bill and Bob in Tylo orbit.  So, I now had to solve this problem and redesign my ship. I made it so it could land horizontally, and fixed the docking port issue. I now send Valentina by herself to Jool. 2 years later, I arrive at Tylo and rescue Bill and Bob. Meanwhile, Jeb is just now arriving back at Kerbin, and I use the "lander" to insert into Kerbin orbit and land safely on the surface and recover Jeb. Now, I attempt to land on Tylo 8: Crashes once before landing successfully. 9: Can't get back into orbit, reloads and lowers ship's orbit. I then landed successfully and the rest of the mission went according to plan, except for 10: Didn't bother to wait for a Kerbin transfer window, and so I had to lower my periapsis to near-Moho orbit. 11:Explodes once re-entering because I had forgotten to stage somehow. *Reloads* Succesful re-entry at 6 kilometers a second and 18 G, Kerbals go unconscious, wake back up and successfully splash down into the ocean. One thing I must note however is that I didn't send another lander to land on Laythe again, so I didn't technically complete the challenge. Fun times. :D                      And fail number 12: I don't have any pictures :(

Edited by Jack Joseph Kerman
Spelling mistake
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Not a full fail without explosions, but my recient Moho mission partially failed due to low TWR. Because of the insane dV requirements I decided to just send an ion powered spacecraft.

So, I get to Moho and guess what, the capture burn takes 5500 m/s and it takes over 2 hours! Wouldn't be too bad (have better timewarp mod installed), except there's a catch; the flyby only lasts for like 30 minutes. So I decided to give up and make it a flyby mission. Still allowed me to max the tech tree though :)

Also, a recient mission to the Mun almost failed because the lander tipped over. Instead of giving up though I used it as a rocket powered rover that crawled along the ground until I got to a nearby crater, then took off using the crater as a ramp

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On 4/10/2017 at 0:15 AM, qzgy said:

I took a vid of a jool 5 work in progress. Skip to 1:20 for fail.

After this was fixed, I found out LV-N shrouds apparently cause surrounding ones to explode. yay....

Aw man you should have let it explode!

I also learned about the LVN shrouds the hard way. It's because they eject sideways.

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I made it into space, I even made it to Mun orbit. But for the first time in years, I get a stranded Kerbal on the Mun. On EVA. Jeb is waiting for technology. Or parts for base construction.

However, Val used the same rocket and got to Minmus and back without problem. I hate Mun.

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On ‎4‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 1:15 AM, qzgy said:

I took a vid of a jool 5 work in progress. Skip to 1:20 for fail.

After this was fixed, I found out LV-N shrouds apparently cause surrounding ones to explode. yay....

i

 

thought I saw a staging problem I did, I did see a staging problem!

Edited by SpacedCowboy
On second glance
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Space?.  Nope . . .

t7lscbE.png

The middle of the rocket had a faring covering a cluster of 8 radially mounted NERV engines.

The fairing had clipped the second stage decoupler, this in turn blew the vehicle in half.

Five tries later, I got it right.

 

Edited by ScarM
Delet duplicate images
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32 minutes ago, joacobanfield said:

I dropped my probe core into the Mun at 8000 m/s. Core did not survive.

Oddly, a symmetrical fail happened to me: I dislike debris and useless objects, so I de-orbited one of my old probes that was circling the mun (for ScanSat)

However, as it is well-known, cargo bays are made of mithril-clad vibranium.

After a few bounces and pleasant explosions, the probe and the cargo bay landed. From a 300 m/s original impact.

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So in my quest of making a super plane/space plane. Spending about 5 hours on a design. It's first "flight" provided it in not making it to space today but I did make it off the runway though. Quite the achievement considering it weighs almost 2,000,000 tons.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiDgZMXhaSk

 

I don't have pictures or video of its actual first test but it did "work" to the point where it clipped the fuel tanks on the side of the runway and virtually destroying all of the KSC. Needless to say... I didn't make to space then either..

Also I did try and have a bigger version but it just exploded on the runway the whole time so i gave up on it.

Edited by Shazer
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spfhPcQ.png

all looks good on the pad!

Spoiler

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a little shimmy...

NqPYNBA.png

a lot shimmy...

q9qFZEY.png

you can guess how it went if I had to resort to this...

qH5u8Ds.png

happy or sad? you decide!

KlkOz5N.png

he's sad now!

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oops....

t5xUH5N.png

oooooooops....

vLy9M66.png

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooops....

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oh kraken what have you done!

EQFAKY4.png

and everyone is accounted for...dead but accounted for...

r6U5Hbp.png

the remains! as you can see there's nothing!

 

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New day, new fail....

To be honest the fail was not so bad as in S*** more like upppsss.

Tried to build an SSTOplane for turism contracts, was to eager to make some money and rep and through Private Sector III from Strategia a bonus on Scince.

Like 30 Tourists awaits a hop to Space and im going for MK3. 

Fain start realy beautifull circularisation at 82-83. Tourists ate chearing reentry goes realy well too... but hmm 1k km to GSC and i have only 750 dv on the SCIMITARS... 

I didn' tealisoed that on my speedrun i burned way to much LF...

I landed on runaway after 1 hour gliding realtime with healthy 6k kg on oxidiser and 2.3 kg LF...:blush:

Funny Kabooms 

Urses 

 

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Instead of learning to land my horrible, horrible SSTO, I've decided to make an autopilot landing script in kOS.  Many, many hours later of debugging (~600 lines), and tuning PID Loops that all interact (speed/throttle, ascent/descent, and hold altitude), I finally got something that heads back towards KSC.  I'm not even going to show you when I accidentally set the landing zone to 70 meters below sea level (I get those -/+ signs mixed up a lot).
 

 

Edited by Soda Popinski
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On 16.4.2017 at 5:21 PM, MinimalMinmus said:

However, as it is well-known, cargo bays are made of mithril-clad vibranium.

This explains it... my exertion stages have allways a cargobay with the smalest probe some batteries and a closed small tank for deorbit.

Station part up. The stage is on a realy excentrical orbit like 73-275. I make my work... Station dock some construction work with engineer... for somewhere around 1/2 hour and see the stage is short above the atmo. Let switch the sight to see some nice booms...

Engine explodes, same the tanks ... the Cargobay is shiny red and speed around 1k m/s and mimics a UFO... no problem if it us not the heat than it is the lithobreak.... hmm funny the surroundings looks familiar and there is a waypoint in the trajektory ... GSC... perfect R&D hit at 500m/s... the only thing that survived was the startpoint on the runway...i think if i did not open the bay i had overshoot...

But it was like a "rabbit  in light" moment with disaster upcoming....

And i never get as near as 250km on atmosphere Bodies on purpose...

Lesson for me...

1.a dragchute is a need...

2.Its not good to to give up to OCD for perfection on starts....

Funny Kabooms 

Urses 

 

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Alas poor Jeb. First casualty of this hardcore campaign. Veteran pioneer of the kerbal space program and in particular the first spacewalk and Gemini Rendevous missions. Killed in a tragic launchpad accident when the launch clamps released prematurely. Unphased he initiated the abort procedure but a second oversight meant that at sea level the munar module did not have enough TWR to pull itself clear of the ensuing fireball. He will be missed. As soon as the space program can find two more credits to rub together Valentina will lead on in his stead.

Edited by RCgothic
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