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When have you ever had an accidental win in KSP?


doggie015

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This thread was inspired by a mission I just flew to Laythe in my Career save (One way probe. May eventually send manned mission now that I have the ARM rocket parts unlocked!) during which I decided to see how forgiving Deadly Reentry was with a Jool aerocapture. After said aerobrake I looked at my map view and found this waiting for me.

Cd7eNkU.png

Yes, that is a Laythe encounter. About 300 m/s later (WAY less than what I thought I would be using maneuvering around the Jool system to get to the same place) I did an aerocapture straight into Laythe orbit and rounded it out to a 100 KM equilateral orbit so that I could actually land rather than make a bit a of splash and potentially break stuff.

Craft files used: https://mega.co.nz/#!Wc9niKiL!mpAGkperI5j7yoZ8OkQud6T9OMhU75dmLTkAPTCUAIc (Main vehicle. In this situation I parked it in a 150 Km orbit to avoid my LKO station and sent the craft below up a couple of times to refuel it. It comes with a heat shield for the final descent onto Laythe)

https://mega.co.nz/#!PQkiFSZR!DBSGiHbsTZefFVh750ldSUwTf-ScJFL7bV2_K_9kq_A (Fuel supply vehicle. Originally designed to ferry fuel to and expand my LKO station it proved rather useful in refuelling the main vehicle. Two trips should be enough to fully refuel the departure craft)

Mods used: Mechjeb

Deadly Reentry

Procedual Fairings

Edited by doggie015
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Just the other night I was doing a Mun landing into one of the very small, but deep craters. For some reason I ended up distracted and I ended up landing onto the slope at 30m/s. But, somehow, my landing legs survived and instead of exploding, my lander just bounced and slid all the way down to the center of the crater. It was amazing.

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With the Kethane mod, I sent a probe to Duna to scan it. It also had a rover with a skycrane, which would become my first landing on Duna. It had a skycrane in addition to parachutes, because I did not know how effective the parachutes would be in that thin atmosphere.

I expected to have barely enough delta-V to get in orbit of Duna, but I got lucky. My encounter put me on a perfectly polar orbit, so I didn't need to make that expensive correction. Also, because I could move fuel between the two tanks (one for the probe and one for the skycrane) I was able to put just enough to get deorbited and soften the landing in the skycrane, and the extra fuel in the probe let me scan Ike as well (originally not planned for that mission).

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Quite some time ago (around when science was first introduced) I was sending my first ever eve mission to collect science. Only when I was descending in did I realize I had no parachutes, and only the retroengines. I did a perfect suicide burn on complete accident and successfully landed the tiny probe. Sadly I never got any screenshots :(

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I designed a rocket once, very simple, 4 stages, one engine, somewhere around 23 parts. Didn't expect much of it, might get a decent suborbital hop with it...

The Wonderful thing reached orbit, encountered the Mun, then Minmus, then proceeded to leave Kerbin's SOI... which at the time, the farthest I had gotten was the Mun, so I was pretty proud of myself. (also realized later on, if I removed the boosters it could become a SSTO)

I'm still using that design today, it can't carry to much. But I use it to launch tiny probes to Minmus, the mun, and I'm modifying it for my first manned mission to Duna.

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I have to say that the closest thing I have had happen to this was when I left a ship set for a munar capture in 2-days running while I went to dinner, as I just turned down the time warp (not off, just down) and forgot to pause the game. I came back from dinner 2.5 minutes from the 4 minute burn maneuver node :D

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My first Ike landing was one of the happiest accidents I had in KSP. I had set my periapsis too low, and trying to dodge a hill I had in front of me I somehow managed to kill all my lateral velocity AND almost all my vertical velocity a few meters above the ground. I landed the ship on its nuclear engines (the ship was not supposed to land, so it had no landing gear) and returned to Kerbin with almost no fuel left on my tanks.

Since that day, the Ike-hiker has become my standard interplanetary carrier, and I've managed to return from Dres safely without needing to dock.

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I was using my KRS Daedalus (Kerbal Rescue Service) to pick up Jeb who got stranded on the Mün. Unfortunatly when i pressed the x key to cut my engines, it didn't stop (thanks to my 4 year old keyboard) in the end, when it did stop, I had a encounter with Minmus, my periapsis at 50km, I burnt into orbit, and landed, and managed to get back to my CSS (Crete Space Station) and then got picked up by my BCT (Bystander Crew Transport). I was planning on doing a Minmus mission, but kept having problems (not enough fuel, not enough thrust, not enough manoeuvrability etc.)

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My first Minmus landing was entertaining. I got all the way down to the surface, but on impact I was drifting sideways a bit, so the lander started to tip over. I tried to correct the lean with SAS torque, but I messed up and pushed it further over instead of stopping it. The funny part was that the force from shoving the landing legs against the ground pushed my lander up just enough that in Minmus' low gravity it did a full 360° cartwheel without hitting the ground, after which I got it vertical again and managed to land properly.

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On my first mission to Minmus in my current career save, I noticed I had a whole lot of fuel left after having set up my encounter with Minmus. Not too long ago, that (probe) mission flew by Duna and Ike.

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Tried landing a 3-man capsule on Minmus for the first time. Trouble was I;d put the thing together in too much of a hurry, and only realised when well on the way to Minmus that it lacked a few things. Like extra batteries, or some solar panels. So no reaction-wheel control. And I'd fluffed my trajectory a bit, so was low on both fuel and monopropellant. Free return, or try landing anyway? Land! Within minutes I'd made another fluff - forgetting that I had no SAS due to the lack of electrickery, and not keeping my eyes on the game, the ship had slowly rotated and was now trying to escape Minmus rather than land on it. kill engines, and re-evaluate. Can we still make Kerbin? Really not sure.. howsabout MNimus? Well, it;s rather tight, but with a 'suicide burn' landing we should just be able to do it. So, down we went. Except I had misjudged, but didn;t realise until a tad too late to push it back into a Minmus orbit. Main engine fuel ran out somewhere between 1 and 2km, so I was using attitude thrusters for all they were worth, and trying to ignore the fact that the ship still had 30ms-1 sideways velocity, whcih would normally be sufficient to cause a catastrophe all by itself. The ground was closing fast - I didn't think we were going to make it. So I ordered one of my Kerbals to EVA, thinking I might save at least one of them with their jetpack. Too late! BANG! The EVA'd kerbal was launched into space, and I winced every time he hit the ground, expecting him to die every time. But no! He actually survuved! I;d no sooner got him onto his feet when, enter stage left - the nose of the ship hove into view, sliding along the ice and ground to a halt just metres from my much-bounced Kerbal. Two landing legs were damaged and the main engine plus monoprop tanks had gone, but I discovered later that the legs could be repaired, and I flew some spherical monoprop tanks up from Kerbin. I salvaged solar panels and some batteries from obsolescent gear cluttering up the terrain near my base, and managed to use the ships reaction wheels and thrusters to get it onto its legs. Shortly thereafter, it successfully returned to Kerbin with Science! I only realised later that the sideways velocity was probably what had saved both the ship and my poor bruised Kerbal - if they'd hit at 90 degrees to the surface, theyd almost certainly have been destroyed.

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I'd say one of my most memorable accidental wins was this:

On my first trip to Duna (my first manned-interplanetary trip, in fact), I got myself into an eccentric orbit around the planet, and detached my lander. From the night side (ascending side of the orbit), I started my de-orbit burn so that I could land on the sunny side. After landing, I took my samples, and immediately launched to get back into orbit. I didn't look to see where my orbiter was, since I figured I would worry about the rendezvous later. As it turns out, the time it took for the orbiter to go around the high-side of the orbit and come back around was perfect. I was able to just about launch right into a rendezvous. Since I wasn't great at doing rendezvous maneuvers yet, this made it super easy.

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I'm new. My accidental win was on my 2nd or 3rd ever mission, I managed to leave Kerbin's atmosphere and get to The Mun and get a high sample. And then Kerbin recollected me and I went back home with no fuel. Not as big as others, but it was very cool for me.

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I've got a few to share, starting with the most recent.

While assembling the Jool Express mothership in orbit (http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5889104/ksp/joolexpressmothership.jpg), I ran into issues building an efficient launch vehicle for the command section. After 4 aborted launch attempts, I had the design ready, and launched it in a rush. Didn't check it for staging errors first. 1st stage solid boosters went dry, so I hit the button to activate the second layer of boosters and jettison the first -- and accidentally severed the entire rocket below the payload. Didn't lose stability, so I rode it out just for the hell of it rather than reverting, and lo and behold it ended up in a stable rendezvous orbit.

Munshot I was another interesting flight. The payload was a 4-part Munbase (http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5889104/ksp/munbase-ia.jpg) that I didn't want to land in multiple trips, as I wasn't confident I could hit the same target spot with reasonable accuracy a second, third, etc. time. I took the whole thing down as a single stack, landed the bottom module, detached it, hovered, moved over, landed the second, etc. All 4 modules landed successfully but the command module was further than I wanted it to be. Catastrophe followed when one of the RCS blocks glitched midway through relocation and the module entered an uncontrolled burn horizontally over the surface. The lander did not survive, but the capsule and crew did. (http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5889104/ksp/munbase-ib.jpg)

Base expansion / rescue mission Munshot II was launched. Payload consisted of the Rover Maintenance Bay with 3 rovers attached, and an identical command lander (http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5889104/ksp/munshot-iia.jpg). I managed to maneuver the capsule/rovers to a landing spot within about 30m of the Munbase, when the fuel tanks ran dry. I'd forgotten to pipe fuel from the main tank to the rover's braking engines, so they had a more limited burn than they should have. It then fell the rest of the way to the surface, and hit at somewhere between 25 and 30 m/s. The ship telescoped down into itself, followed by a massive explosion. When the smoke cleared, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rover frame and all three rovers had survived intact, as had the command capsule. Everything in-between blew up (http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5889104/ksp/munshot-iib.jpg). Lesson learned -- check your fuel flow ahead of time.

Edited by CCraigen
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I once landed a rover on the Mun via skycrane.

I went out for coffee while running MechJeb Landing Autopilot, came back to find that the craft was on a collision course with a Mun arch. Said craft narrowly missed at the last moment, flying underneath the structure and landing safely.

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chance Laythe encounter?

I was swapping my orbital direction to align with (most) of the moons before a Jool aerobrake, and I saw a little yellow blip... "Hm..." I thought.

screenshot229_zps0bfcbef5.png

Why not aerobrake on Laythe?

screenshot244_zps06e1d348.png

this was designed to be a laythe lander, but turned into an all-but-bop Jool tour...

Edited by User Unrelated
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First post ever. On my first ever Dres Landing mission, after circularizing in high orbit, I somehow ended up losing one of my five engines. I don't know how this happened; I was using MechJeb to execute my maneuver node, with prevent overheats on, and was away from the computer at the time (I didn't know how to open the flight events dialog either to determine exactly what happened). Anyways, this meant that I was stranded, as this was also my return vehicle and I didn't have a recent quicksave. So, I decided to do the landing and return to the orbiter anyways, just to prove that the lander worked and so that I could transfer some science back to Kerbin (this was in 0.22 as well, so it didn't really matter if I never brought the ship back). This went over flawlessly. Once docked with my orbiter again, I throttled up a little bit and found out that the ship was too unstable to work, even at low power. Then, totally by accident, I figured out how to transfer fuel between tanks. I was able to transfer enough fuel inot the other side of the spacecraft to where it could hold course again, and was able to return to Kerbin safely.

Not as exciting typed out as it was for me at the time, but is anything ever?

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