What small mistakes did you make that ruined your mission?

[adsii1970]

Landing legs for my first Munar mission; I realized it when I was 56m from the lunar surface when I realized my mistake . I had just downloaded my very first edition of KSP, I think it was 0.22 and had a mere 50 hours of playtime. My second major project, a mission to Minimus ended in a RESCUE mission when I realized I forgot to include solar panels on the lander . I now have a checklist I use when designing craft.

[Enkiel]

landing on the mun for the first time brought a fair share of mistake. Some of my worst ;

- Only 1 fuel line for the 4 engine... lets just say that when it was time to draw from the big tank, i went spinning....

- Landing gear stopping me from dropping my 2nd stage

It took me close to 8 hours of attempt before making a perfect mun landing and Kerbin landing.

[Tex]

Heh, I've been there, done that... No batteries, no solar panels, no batteries AND solar panels, no parachute, staging errors, fuel flow errors, lack of struts, delta-v bugets, staging too soon... I've made quite a few mistakes, but the key is knowing that I'm gonna make a whole bunch more. It's fun!

[CaptainApollo]

On one of my very very early missions, I totally did not pay attention to symmetry, and a few seconds after liftoff, the ship came crashing back into KSC. The best time to revert flight..

[huntingpickel]

I forgot to add the main center engine to my asparagus stage. Made it kind of difficult to get into orbit with a missing engine.

[Mister Spock]

I had a contract to explore Eve (including landing and transmitting science). First mistake: I hit the atmosphere earlier than I expected, and abruptly I found myself on a trajectory toward water, not land. Second mistake: I frantically conducted in-atmosphere science experiments, thereby draining all my battery power.

I did manage to splash down safely, but I had no power left, and my solar panels refused to recharge. So I completed the "land" portion of the contract but not the "transmit science while landed" portion. Now a long wait for the next launch window.

[Feradose]

Forgetting vernier engines in my no-fins hardcore science mode for the first time. My duna mothership that carries a rover, a balloon with electric propeller and a science lander went double backflip then exploded on KSC shortly after launch.

[brdavis]

Nice one this morning. First career manned Munar landing, good. Making it back to a 28 km Kerbin perigee with only 12 units of fuel remaining, great. Forgetting to put a decoupler between the Mk1 capsule heat shield and the propulsion module with the landing legs etc… more than slightly exciting, as things started exploding during reentry.

[Ramh5]

Sending a probe all the way to Jool for a Bop exploration contract, without enough solar panels to power the probe that far from the sun.

[BlackAdder128]

1. Forgetting to *deploy* solar panels on a probe once I'm in orbit and need them.

2. Obscuring hatch with parachute, etc.

3. Keeping time warp too high on return to Kerbin and crashing into it. This and other forms of impatience is the #1 killer of all my kerbals

4. Design was a little too top-heavy + no fins.

[Excalibur]

Going back to Moho after a break from the game.

Thinking to yourself; 'I've played this for hundreds of hours, I know what I'm doing.'

Whizzing past Moho with empty tanks at 3km/s

Realizing you're not such a smart arse.

[mikegarrison]

Number 1 repeat mistake I make: not checking which part the ship is being controlled from after undocking.

[Shawn28]

i used to forget to add/deploy solar panels on probes, but i finally remember to (after a year of playing KSP XD)

my current most frequent mistake? forgetting to leave space for an extra kerbal when launching a rescue mission, or forgetting to empty crew cabin/command modules that auto-fill when i don't need them to.

[Prepper-Jack]

i used to forget to add/deploy solar panels on probes, but i finally remember to (after a year of playing KSP XD)

my current most frequent mistake? forgetting to leave space for an extra kerbal when launching a rescue mission, or forgetting to empty crew cabin/command modules that auto-fill when i don't need them to.

Yeah, this gets me every time. Playing a probe-only hard-mode game (so far), and Jeb is constantly hopping in the rescue wagon hoping for some action. Poor guy.

[selfish_meme]

This happened in .90, Jeb had gotten on the Eve Lander trike on the highest mountain on Eve. Mission control forgot to activate the brakes before swapping control back to the lander. The gentle slope turned into a nearly verticle 7km descent which no amount of brakes would stop. In the dark. Dear Jeb, sorry.

[luizopiloto]

I forgot to add 188Kg to the Dv calculations of a Eve return craft... the weight of the 2 kerbals... ¬¬"

[magnemoe]

Eve and gilly probe mission. Front was heatshield, probe with power, termometer and parachute. Aerobrake into Eve orbit, dropped Eve lander before raising Pe.

Found that parachute, was not on lander but on eve satellite

[Eleven]

I made more mistakes on this last mega mission than any I've done previously:

Not putting an antenna or science instruments on an ore extractor in which a contract also called for data being sent from the surface.

Forgetting to collect and transmit data from one orbit long after I've left.

Not realizing that my landers for 'land base contracts' didn't actually have docking ports, I had them attached to the mother craft with decouplers.

Forgetting to add KIS parts into the capsules for the crew to use to retrieve a space object.

I think that's it. It screwed 2 contracts for Sending Data from a surface, 1 for Sending Data from an Orbit, 1 for Retrieving Space Junk and 2 for landing a Base on a planet. That was half my contracts for that huge Jool based mission

[G'th]

During my first ever Duna landing I had set up a perfect automated encounter and landing using Remotetech, I forgot to turn on the main antenna (the one that could actually reach Kerbin from Duna) and didn't realize until I was entering the Dunian atmosphere, well out of range. But, it did land intact, so it wasn't all bad.

[Madrias]

Lately, it's been forgetting to use nosecones. The amount of wasted delta-V because I didn't think to cap both sides of my drop tanks, or to cap the top of my boosters...

Also, forgetting RCS thrusters, or using RCS engines and then wondering why I have no monopropellant for docking...

And one can't forget that Reentry is no longer "Periapsis to 20km, SAS on, and hold it steady while enjoying the reentry effects." Now it's "Carefully ease it down to 64km, letting the heat shed between aerobraking passes. Keep finger on Abort Sequence Button. Use Abort Sequence the instant anything explodes."

[G'th]

Lately, it's been forgetting to use nosecones. The amount of wasted delta-V because I didn't think to cap both sides of my drop tanks, or to cap the top of my boosters...

Also, forgetting RCS thrusters, or using RCS engines and then wondering why I have no monopropellant for docking...

And one can't forget that Reentry is no longer "Periapsis to 20km, SAS on, and hold it steady while enjoying the reentry effects." Now it's "Carefully ease it down to 64km, letting the heat shed between aerobraking passes. Keep finger on Abort Sequence Button. Use Abort Sequence the instant anything explodes."

How fast are you coming in to reentry if you need to start at 64km up? Thus far I've done Minmus returns at a negative periapsis and I hardly shed half the ablator in a 2.5m shield.

[The Destroyer]

Didn't realise kerbals incenearted at 1 km/s 50 km on an Eve return mission...

I just turned the damn thing off. I can survive 30 km/s in a lander can on kerbin but not 1 km/s 50 km up with an eva suit!?

[ftunk70]

Brought an engineer to repack the chute at Duna, but he was of insufficient level to do just that...

[LokoGz]

Sent a satellite to Laythe, got it orbiting, but forgot to put antennas. So it is a very useful satellite, yeah.

[BFalcon]

Oh boy... where to start...

Forgotten parachutes, antennae, separators (hard to use that final stage when it's glued to the previous one) - all sorts.

Operationally: deciding to go for mun-landing with far too little fuel... RIP Jeb. Too little fuel on my first successful landing (in this career run) resulting in a rescue mission being needed to rendezvous and bring the experiments (and the kerbals) home.

Oh and far too many staging errors to count (most commonly, staging the chutes before the atmospheric reentry burn, so they burn off) and construction errors where fins get popped by ejecting items and much mayhem and debris...

Still, we persevere...