"How did I EVER get this here?"

[Draconiator]

My latest mission to Minmus inspired me to wonder...have you ever had tons of indicators early on that a mission was about to be a failure, but in the end it ended up being a complete success?

I'll start with my mission. Designed a brand new lifting vehicle to deliver a bunch of Kerbals to Minmus, using 2 of those 16 passenger modules. First stage boosters seperated fine, second stage boosters left me with 2 engines (instead of three) and an out of control rocket, so I got rid of the remaining booster and prayed to God that it would make it. Praise to Kerblord it did, but ended up with a new problem. For some reason the engines on the lander did not snap on straight and as I was burning I had a spinning issue on my hands. It wasn't too bad but it caused a landing issue on Minmus I had to fix manually with a few meters left to go. I landed it safely, but...damn how did I ever successfully complete that?

[White Owl]

(so far), a staging error decoupled the payload way too early. The launch vehicle was out of the atmosphere and coasting up to the apoapsis, but was not yet in orbit. I had to maintain extremely close station keeping with the payload for several minutes, while maneuvering both the payload and the launcher to align them for the burn at apoapsis, when I pushed the loose payload the rest of the way into orbit.

I recall another time - but can't find the video right now - a space shuttle was launching a huge nuclear reactor. I don't even remember what the glitch was with the launch, but the orbiter was reentering fast with a payload way too heavy to attempt a landing. So I turned the plane upside down, opened the payload bay doors, and shook the plane back and forth until the reactor fell out into the ocean. Eventually landed safely on the very edge of a beach with my last 1% of fuel still in the tank.

Close calls and desperate recoveries are fun!

[samstarman5]

Sent a multi-tiered mission to Minmus to achieve first landing, flag, science, and all that jazz. There was already a fully-kerballed station in orbit of the moon, so I set a drone to pilot the craft with the intention of rendezvousing with the station and transferring a couple kerbals over for the landing. Everything went swimmingly up until I was going to start my rendezvous burn...and got zero response from the craft. I checked the gauges and the batteries were plumb dry. Some guy back at the KSC, who we shall not name, had decided that the solar panels only needed to be on the nose of the lander. By the time the lander had reached the maneuver node, it had pretty much been in the dark long enough to drain the batteries. If I had a kerbal on board, I could have pushed it to point the panels at the sun to re-establish power, but since it was just a drone that was not possible. So I wrote that off with the intention of checking back in a couple game-months to see if any light managed to reach the panels.

The follow-up mission was a success as the VAB made sure it was adequately powered and supplied with solar panels. Rendezvous with the station achieved and the landing went smoother than a Minmusian sea. Once that mission touched down, I thought to check back on the drone ship, and lo and behold in that time the angle changed enough to recharge the batteries some. So I got the nose sun-ward, got the ship charged up, rendezvoused with the station to bring some kerbals home which was achieved with zero problems.

So it could be said I had a lot of indication there that things were going to go south, but as I hadn't had a craft go dead on me in a looooooooonnng time, I didn't think much about it until it had happened. Drone-piloted vessels are definitely a breed of their own, as they do allow for a bit of savings and zero concern for losing prestige. However, once something goes wrong, the craft is more likely to be dead in space, carrying a chunk of funds that you could potentially never get back. NASA and other space programs have lost valuable craft and missions because something went bust on a drone-piloted mission and there was nothing available to fix it, even in LEO. I do recall there were at least a couple valuable satellites lost while the shuttle fleet was grounded after the Challenger disaster, that were set to be maintained with a shuttle rendezvous.

Definitely food for thought the next time you wonder if you should bring an engineer along.

[Thomas988]

While back I was completing a contract that required five precision landings on Minmus. I wanted to get it over with, so I aimed to complete them all in one mission. However, right after the first landing I accidentally staged off the radial fuel tans, thus reducing my total fuel amount of two thirds. I was so tempted to revert, but I decided to use my skills for the better and go forward with the mission. I actually managed to complete the contract and return home!

[SkyRender]

I don't tend to run into that sort of situation with rockets any longer, but I sure as hell do with spaceplanes (at least, when working with FAR). I've launched more than one aerodynamically unsound spaceplane into orbit under the influence of FAR, which is no small feat. I've landed many of them safely and intact too, also no small feat.

[Daze]

After my first week in KSP (about 2 years and half ago) i planned a mission to Mun. During that time i absolutely know nothing about orbital mechanics and i thought that it was necessary to point straight to Mun and go for "MOAR BOOSTERS".

After 10 times of trying i found myself in an escape trajectory of Kerbin, warped at max speed for about 15 minute and i suddenly saw my ship reentering in a strange purple planet. Eve.

Poor Kerbals.

[Rusty6899]

I lost concentration a bit and whacked my Minmus lander against one of its ice oceans at about 50m/s. It destroyed the engine, but the rest of the ship survived. I don't use quick saves, so I was really annoyed until I realised I had some mono propellant and a couple of RCS engines. I did a quick delta-v calc and realised I could just about get into an orbit, where I had a station to top up the mono propellant. I managed to get back to Kerbin with about 2 units of monopropellant left.

[GoSlash27]

I can't say that I have. By the time I launch a mission I've done enough planning, calculation, and testing to assure myself that it'll work.

Best,

-Slashy

[KerBlammo]

I was building a station in orbit around Duna to support a future crewed landing there (never happened as it was all lost when my computer died). I was sending the pieces out using NERVA powered transfer vehicles. I trye to keep debris to a minimum and I didn't want to crash nuclear powered rockets into anything so I attached landing legs and intended to land the stage on Ike after use. Since I still suck at rendezvous I was using a MechJeb.

I docked a habitat module to the station and decoupled the transfer stage. At that moment I realized that I had attached the MJ to the decoupler. DOH!

So I had a spacecraft with power, RCS, fuel and an engine, but not even SAS! In true Kerbal style I headed for Ike anyway. Without even the ability to stay pointed in any direction it was a challenge to say the least. I got it into orbit around Ike and proceeded to try and land. Again very difficult when it won't stay pointed. I got close to landing on the legs several times but it was hard to null out the sideways vectors. Eventually I put it down anyway and it fell over, but it was intact! Mission Accomplished!

[Sampa]

Never found anything like that. Have I ever had a brand new launcher that I was expecting there to be a problem somewhere during launch but was surprised by the launch being a complete success? YES!!!

[AbacusWizard]

I've experienced a handful of launches in which jettisoning stage n accidentally leads to the engines of stage n+1 suddenly ceasing to exist... oops... but instead of reverting, I try immediately jettisoning stage n+1 and hoping that maybe, just maybe, I've over-built the thing enough that stage n+2 has enough ∆v to make it to orbit. Sometimes it works.

[Stubby]

I started an hard career mode, with no reverts, respawns, or quicksaves. I also installed FAR for the first time, so my piloting skills weren't 100%. (I'm not a heavy mod user, when I do install mods, they're purely visual, like clouds, particle effects, and other small things.)

As I got further into the career, I was short on science, so I decided to do a Mun fly-by mission. I sent Mitbrett up in a rocket with two material bays onboard. I was trying to build cheap aerodynamic rockets, with light payloads. It turns out the material bays was heavier than I thought. Instead of heading to orbit, I decided to just fly the rocket straight up, after aligning the Mun correctly, since it was much easier, and the rocket can slice right through the atmosphere. I achieved the fly-by, gathering both in-space reports for materials bays. But after I left the Mun's SOI, it flung my ship into a wildly eccentric and inclined orbit. I didn't have patched conics at the time, so I had no idea that this would happen. Consequently, I didn't bring the extra fuel to correct this.

At the apoapsis, I attempted a de-orbit burn, but I ran out of fuel. I was stuck in an orbit with a ~150km Pe, and a ~15000km Ap. I thought Mitbrett was done for, and I would have to rescue him in the far future. But I hatched a plan. I decided to time warp far into the future, hoping the Mun can fling my ship back to Kerbin. After many orbits, and a few Mun encounters that hardly had any effect, I finally got an encounter just 3km above the surface. The hills were whizzing by, and I was really nervous that I was going to crash. After I left the SOI, I was heading right back to Kerbin in a steep trajectory. I plunged into the atmosphere, and opened my parachutes. Luckily, I had landing legs on the rest of the craft, so the material bays were undamaged on landing. When I did touch down (at 18m/s), the whole ship bounced, and tipped over. An explosion occurred, but it only destroyed a battery. I was extremely relieved, and Mitbrett was declared a hero.

Mitbrett is now "retired", enjoying a world tour! (Totally not performing visual surveys of the planet!)

[Yakky]

I've experienced a handful of launches in which jettisoning stage n accidentally leads to the engines of stage n+1 suddenly ceasing to exist... oops... but instead of reverting, I try immediately jettisoning stage n+1 and hoping that maybe, just maybe, I've over-built the thing enough that stage n+2 has enough ∆v to make it to orbit. Sometimes it works.

Yes! I've had several of these and they are always the most dramatic. My favorite was a post-launch staging accident in hard career mode (i.e. no saves, no reverting) with FAR/DRE on a craft that had no re-entry or landing capability. When I jettisoned the first stage strap-on boosters at about 20km and 800 m/s, they impacted the second stage and destroyed its big Skipper engine. That left the third (interplanetary) stage, which had a puny TWR of maybe 0.25 and was never intended for atmospheric use. How the hell do I save the lives of my intrepid Kerbonauts? The TWR was not high enough to attempt a powered splash-down in the ocean and there were no parachutes.

The basic strategy in this kind of situation is pretty obvious, but it was nail-biting executing it. Fire up the engine, jettison every scrap of extra mass you can ditch, aim prograde and a little up, and hope you can gain enough speed to reach orbit before you fall back into the deeper parts of the atmosphere. I dumped two small and perfectly full strap-on fuel tanks that had been intended to help get the craft to Duna, leaving me with an improved TWR but vastly less fuel. I called upon the reaction-control thrusters to augment the craft's total thrust by holding down the "H" key, which gave a tiny bit more acceleration and helped deplete more mass.

The craft passed apoapsis somewhere around 65 km and 2000 m/s and then started to fall back to Kerbin. I thought about having the Kerbonauts bail out and use their jetpacks to propel themselves into orbit, but I realized I would at most be able to save one since I could only "fly" one Kerbonaut at a time. Fortunately, we were nearly fast enough by then to reach orbit, so I kept the Kerbals strapped into their seats and kept accelerating like mad (relatively speaking). We bottomed out somewhere near 55 km before finally picking up enough speed to start rising again. At that point I knew I'd made it. Whew!

I later mounted a rescue mission to come up and recover the guys. It pressed onward Duna without further incident.

- - - Updated - - -

Another good one: Re-entering a spaceplane in FAR/DRE that starts off OK but then hits that dicey unstable regime around 15-20km and mach 2-3, and sometimes tumbles out of control. Assuming you don't lose too many wings and controls surfaces to atmospheric forces, it's a fight all the way to the ground to try to recover and land safely. Sometimes the craft becomes flyable again as it goes subsonic, sometimes not. It really makes you feel like a test pilot in those situations, especially if you manage to recover a damaged craft that has lost a few wing panels and/or control surfaces.

Even assuming you do recover control, you still have to deal with landing. Usually the big tumble has taken you out of range of the runway, so then you have to deal with finding a flat patch of land to put down. I've had several cases where I'm able to recover but then can't stick the landing because the terrain isn't perfectly flat. This is one reason I don't usually trust myself with SSTO spaceplanes when playing hard mode.

Edited March 13, 2015 by Yakky

[AbacusWizard]

I've experienced a handful of launches in which jettisoning stage n accidentally leads to the engines of stage n+1 suddenly ceasing to exist... oops...

It happens almost every time I use radial decouplers to jettison large (Rockomax and up) fuel tanks. I blow the decouplers; the discarded (empty) fuel tanks drift outwards for a moment, then start to rotate a bit (the top drifts outward slightly faster than the bottom, presumably due to the extra mass of the engine), then bump into the engine of the next stage and destroy it.

I've tried putting Separatrons on these outer tanks to quickly carry them downwards and outwards without bumping into the inner tanks, but sometimes that seems to make it worse--as far as I can tell, the thrust and/or heat from the Separatrons is hitting the inner tanks and destroying them.

[KerBlammo]

I've tried putting Separatrons on these outer tanks to quickly carry them downwards and outwards without bumping into the inner tanks, but sometimes that seems to make it worse--as far as I can tell, the thrust and/or heat from the Separatrons is hitting the inner tanks and destroying them.

Angle the Separtrons outward so instead of pointing directly at the tank they are at a 45 degree angle. That way they still push booster tank away but the exhaust doesn't hit the inner tank.