What have you aborted for?

[Carsogen]

Hi all

So the SpaceX Falcon9/Dragon launch to resupply the ISS and land the first stage on a barge (I assume many of you are already familiar) was just aborted at T-1:21 due to second stage actuator drift (technical talk).

It got me thinking, what have you noticed on the launchpad (or after launch ) as a glaring issue in your rocket that has made you abort and/or crash?

My best (worst) was probably putting attitude control devices (control surfaces/gimbal rockets) in front of the centre of mass and flipping over almost instantly . RIP surprised Kerbals.

Cas.

[Cirocco]

staging errors, mostly. Most common being chutes and engines being in the same stage and launch clamps and main engines *not* being in the same stage

[Carsogen]

staging errors, mostly. Most common being chutes and engines being in the same stage and launch clamps and main engines *not* being in the same stage

*Launch clamp clang*

*Ship drops*

Cue explosions

I know that feeling...

Cas.

[Mynar Moonshadow]

This is Kerbal Space Program.

We don't abort launches.

We bring plenty of marshmellows and hotdogs instead so it isn't a total waste!

~M~

[Carsogen]

This is Kerbal Space Program.

We don't abort launches.

We bring plenty of marshmellows and hotdogs instead so it isn't a total waste!

~M~

So thats's what's in the snacks compartment!

Cas.

[Arameas]

Forgetting to add struts and girders to the outer stages and watching them waft gently in the wind.

[LameLefty]

In order of frequency:

1. Staging sequence errors

2. Wrong Kerbal sitting in the command pod

3. (Much less common) Insufficient first stage control authority (MOAR FINZ!)

[Yemo]

There is a mod for more reasonable auto staging:

https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/398/SmartStage

[aleis]

Main engines and Radial decouplers in the first stage.

"FIRE THE MISSLES!"

*space bar*

[ghpstage]

Like everyone else, staging mistakes depending on severity, but also recently, loss of control due to the shock from staging jet engines at 20km has become a bit of a nightmare!

[Epthelyn]

Recently:

- Heading the wrong way to reach orbit on a Mun mission. My "training" rocket for engineers and scientists to hit level 3 ASAP has 4 pods around a central stack with a probe core. I forgot to switch to the probe core and didn't notice my mistake for quite some time.

- Boosters destroyed the upper atmosphere/transfer stage of my interplanetary science probe, leaving it with not enough fuel to do anything useful.

- Launched a single stage rocket to do a quick aerial survey. Parachutes were in the first stage and opened on the launchpad. No Kerbals harmed, but still annoying.

- Plane landing on the tier 1 runway flipped on a bump on touchdown. Miraculously this happened with one of only a few planes I've ever built that have an abort system and the Kerbal lived to see another experimental flight and got some surface samples.

- Set the SAS mode to antinormal on launch by accident. Only a small rocket so it was over quickly

Edited January 6, 2015 by Epthelyn

[Frank_G]

Yeah, sausages grilled in fumes of burning rocket fuel and a sip of icecold oxidizer...

I usually abort a launch, when the staging is wrong or Jeb somehow climbed into the capsule. Or when noticing, that engeneering forgot to add necessary hardware like ladders, RCS blocks or parachutes.

Sometimes i abort accidently, when i put the abort sequence commands into the staging action group AGAIN...

[Dr-Drunk]

By far the most common cause for aborting launches for me is forgetting to strut the whole thing together. I mean using KWRocketry, those Thor 2 SRB's will rip themselves right off the decouplers.

Second most common reason would be forgetting random parts like solar pannels, batteries, control surfaces etc.

[AbortButton]

Noticing that I forgot to attach the lander to the docking port.

[cantab]

For scrubbing rocket launches, pre 0.90 it was usually the blooming kerbals sneaking onto a ship that's meant to go up unmanned. Staging problems generally don't mean an scrub since you can fix it right there on the pad. Lack of struts usually doesn't reveal itself until the flight, although there have been exceptions:

During flight I'd say the most common problem is simple failure to reach orbit. Especially under the new career mode limits I'm partial to low TWR upper stages to keep the weight down, but they're also much more fussy about the ascent profile since you can't just power your way out of trouble. For an unmanned launch though I don't see this as an abort per se, it's just a launch failure. Next most common would be rapid unplanned disassembly.

For aircraft test flights the most common problem is falling on its rear end because the rear gear were too far forward. After that it's forgetting the air intakes or leaving the fuel tanks empty. *facepalm* Once on the takeoff roll or inflight crashes are common but aborts are not, I need better safety systems.

[Hodo]

All I build are SSTO space planes, in this recent version I have disabled the revert button so I have been testing flights in stages. First step is take off and climb to 15km then turn around and land. I have had a test SSTO worth about 160k go up and have a wing failure, (pulled to many Gs on climb and the right wing snapped off) the craft went into a tumble and began to come apart from 10km. I had the crew begin evacuation of the craft, it didnt have an eject system in it because of the size of the craft. Only 1 of the 5 crew managed to bail out and deploy his chute.

This career mode has been a blast without the revert button. The failures that have lead to mission aborts have been a challenge bringing the craft around for emergancy landings.

[MGCJerry]

Radial decoupler bug

There's also a few other times where "Bill had to use the bathroom"...

[merendel]

Forgetting to add struts and girders to the outer stages and watching them waft gently in the wind.

You must build small if they are only wafting gently. More often if I forget struts the outer stages are drooping like a pair of saggy old tits hanging off the spacecraft (although ones with a surprising amount of bounce till physics settles)

Most of my aborts are stageing errors, particularly if the design is going to be a standardized design after the first run. Better to go back to the VAB now and fix it on the saved craft than to do an inflight fix and then forget and have to do it agian next launch

I also get the occasional jeb sneaking into the pod issue although thats not as bad since .90

Saggy rockets and bad controll athority tie for third place although the later tends to not get a revert as its only discovered in flight.

I dont get spontanious dissassembly all that often anymore but I do get separation errors that take out an engine from time to time to round out my launch failures.

This list does not include stupid things forgoten from the mission profile like geting up to AP with an unmaned probe and discover I forgot a power system or didnt deploy the pannles.

[alexman142]

There are many times that I have almost launched, only to realize that I forgot something basic like battery packs or RCS thrusters on my rockets.

[Vanamonde]

Probably my most common is discovering that symmetry changed its setting sometime during construction, and I'm missing fuel lines or landing legs on one or more sides.