Can a rocket/plane be 'Cursed' ?

[TimePeriod]

Every now and then I design something which on paper and in the VAB seems like it is perfect logic.

The rocket has fins for SRB burn at low altitude, it has vector engines for the mid stage and a decent amount of 909's for the final burn.

Everything on paper is perfectly well and I have done this hundred of times.

And yet, despite my every effort this rocket just blatantly refuses to fly straight. It just tilts over again and again regardless what I do or how I do it.

This was my experience with one particular rocket which just didn't work out.

So now the rocket resides in a dark hanger at the farthest edge of the spacecenter, tilted over on the side.

I'd like to ask other people here on the forums if you have ever experienced a rocket or aircraft which just didn't work out, regardless how much effort you put into it.

I'm talking about REALLY annoying, damned crafts which just won't work.

Even when you call the Kraken and ask him/her about what the hell is going on, only to be told he/her was on holiday at that time.

Update:

Apparently I didn't make myself clear enough. I do not want, need or require any form of help to 'fix' the rocket in question. It was all hypothetical and I was hoping that it was clear enough but apparently I didn't put enough underline under it. So to clear it up:

The rocket in question was hypothetical, the situation was imaged and I only wanted to hear if anyone else had a similar experience with the given situation.

Edited May 27, 2015 by TimePeriod

[Commander Jebidiah]

Pictures of craft help.

[Roderik]

Even when you call the Kraken and ask him/her about what the hell is going on, only to be told he/her was on holiday at that time.

the kraken can't be summoned anymore i think.

try adding more fins or make it bigger on the bottom with more fins. also don't transfer fuel from the top to the bottom.

AAAND don't go too fast when you're still in the atmosphere

[TimePeriod]

This was not about me needing help.

[ArchGaden]

There are underlying bugs in KSP that can be revealed under perfect conditions.... and then there are times when the bug is in what seems to be a perfect design, but a high level concept that you don't account for comes into play. Of course, the biggest cause of rockets flipping now is aerodynamics when you reach a certain speed at a certain pressure that your design can't handle.

Example 1) Attaching a probe core to the upper interior node of a utility bay. This looks fine on paper. 90% of the time I've done it, it worked just fine. 10% of the time, it results in a craft that wobbles out of control for no apparent reason. KSP bug! The workaround is to tweak the design to put the probe core in a different place, even if it results in a design that is less perfect on paper. Clipping parts in utility bays will cause issues much more often and more violently.

Example 2) Any seemingly normal craft...starts to wobble slightly and the wobbles increase in magnitude until the craft shakes apart. No clipping, no bays, gimbal on engines reduced to avoid notorious SAS gimbal feedback loop... it all looks perfect. However, due to some particular aspect of the design that could not be accounted for by the simplified math we use for VAB design, the craft experiences harmonically constructive vibrations. This is the result of an effective KSP physics simulation. You could do the math for it IF you had access to all the joint physics values and the unity physics code, but the math would be on the same order of complexity as the math for real world materials engineering. Similar real examples of such failures are common in history... buildings and bridges falling over in low wind, because the speed is just right to cause a harmonically constructive vibration in the structure. Real designs have to suppress these vibrations. I get this from time to time when I have a reaction wheel too high above the center of mass... which is sadly where I want my reaction when to go at launch, as I prefer not to add big reaction wheels to the lower stages. Similarly, two reactions at opposite ends of a large vessel can cause a sort of jump-rope effect... not fun... or lots of fun depending on perspective.

Example 3) You aren't flying a lawn dart design. You want to have a lot more drag at the back than the front. I've resorted to putting some pretty big wings on the first stage of some rocket designs just because they refuse to stay upright without them. Alternatively, you can throttle down a bit (ill advise) or fly straight up until you're mostly out of the soup (inefficient). The drag hurts efficiency, but markedly less so than having the engines pointed the wrong way. 1.0.2 aero seems to force me to put huge wings on the back of vessels. The designate rocket fins seem to be about useless... even slender profiles seem to need the bigger winglets at least.

[SpaceChipmunk]

Yes some are cursed. Also had a rocket recently I was going to use for a rescue on a bad elliptical orbit on a severe inclination between LKO and the edge of the SOI. Thankfully using KCT so never actually built it, but had to return to redesign it about 15 times. Weight distribution was good, TWR was good, ascent was typical, not too fast, not too slow. Added fins (of ever increasing size), added the Advanced SAS module and inline reaction wheel. Tried everything and yet, it would always flip just as I was about to decouple the first stage, every single time!!! Very annoying. Abandoned it in the end, just used one of my normal rockets to do the rescue and gently bump the pod into a Kerbin impact to get rid of the evidence.

[Warzouz]

I had a Mun space station inhabited by a poltergeist which would make the station rotate (with or without SAS). Sometime it would make the station enter heavy oscillation until explosion.

Hopefully, the poltergeist didn't migrate to my Kerbin or Minmus station

[luizopiloto]

Anything can be cursed...

You need a ritual of purification...

[DestinyPlayer]

At least you only have a single craft... I have a whole mission.

For testing purposes, I've wanted to try getting to the nearest resource patch, and mining some of it. About ten different crafts, almost none of them reached their destination, and the ones that did, for one reason or another couldn't mine anything. Even if I used an engine that turns gravity off and allows thrust in any direction, it still always messed up somehow.

Edited May 27, 2015 by DestinyPlayer

[problemecium]

Yeah, ships can be cursed... in a few ways:

- The software development term "deprecated", meaning "not supported henceforth and will be removed in a future update" comes from the Latin word for "cursed" - so "deprecated" basically means "cursed," or perhaps "doomed" if you prefer.

- The longer a ship is worked on in the editor and the more parts are added, tweaked, moved, and removed, the more opportunities arise for subtle bugs to arise that will eventually cause serious problems or even break the file altogether.

- The game's indicators don't give exact information, nor will it always be accurate. Often surfaces that don't produce lift produce significant drag, for instance, making a ship that seems like it should fly... not.

[Alshain]

Hold on, I'll ask my witch doctor....

...he says yes.

[Mister Kerman]

I had a Mun space station inhabited by a poltergeist which would make the station rotate (with or without SAS). Sometime it would make the station enter heavy oscillation until explosion.

Hopefully, the poltergeist didn't migrate to my Kerbin or Minmus station

I think it's possible you may have adjusted the trim on your station's reaction wheels. If you accidentally touch the alt key while piloting a craft with WASD it can maintain a control input. Alt+X will reset it back to normal.

Or possibly not. I don't use trim enough to know if it persists after temporarily relinquishing control of the craft. (AKA: Going to the space center or tracking station, switching craft, or exiting the game.)

[Zyffyr]

Curses definitely happen. I built a ship to do SAR and tourist work in the Kerbin SOI - it can fly out to Mun or Minimus do two rescue missions and return. The first 7 times I launched it, it flew perfectly. Mission #8? It insisted on flipping over during boost. Nothing had changed - I hadn't even loaded it in the VAB for any reason since the first successful launch.

Absolutely nothing I could do would save that launch. I tried slowing down my gravity turn, different throttle settings, SAS on or off, etc. Even just trying to go straight up would flip. After 12 reverts I decided that it was destined to fail so I did a launch, ejected the crew compartment, recovered it and started anew. It hasn't had a problem since then.

[KerikBalm]

I'll say yes... while I've posted many pics of my SSTOs.... there are some that I just can't tweak right, and they keep falling apart on the runway.

There was one... I never did figure out why... but it kept falling apart at about 70 m/s...

In the end, I just started over, and the next, very similar design I made had no problems.

[Camaron]

Can a rocket/plane be 'Cursed' ?

Of course they can. One of my biggest creations ever insists on loading in partially underground, which of course, ends very very badly.

[Temeter]

Cursed? No. Sometimes the game fails to understand the subtle brillance of my creations, though.

[katateochi]

I recently made a craft that was so cursed it killed every other craft in my entire save. Had to reload to a save that was before I'd ever launched it. Total demon craft.

The problem was something to do with a decoupler being clipped. The result was if I tried to go into time warp I'd get a phantom acceleration force on the craft in focus, and other nearby (within 2km) craft would start exploding. I tried switching to other totally unrelated craft and if I tried to time warp them they also got the phantom acceleration. No idea what went wrong there, going back to an earlier save was the only cure. (and I've since been too scared to try it again to see if I can repeat it).

[StrandedonEarth]

'Cursed'? No. Curse hosts mods. Rocket/plane .crafts use dropbox (correct me if I'm wrong)

[katateochi]

'Cursed'? No. Curse hosts mods. Rocket/plane .crafts use dropbox (correct me if I'm wrong)

or Kerbalx.com (craft hosting with automatically generated mod lists and ability to search for craft by required mods)

[StrandedonEarth]

or Kerbalx.com (craft hosting with automatically generated mod lists and ability to search for craft by required mods)

Thanks, I knew there was a place for them, but a (very) quick look in the SpaceCraft Exchange didn't enlighten me

[Vaporo]

This morning. Took me five or more tries to get a VERY SIMPLE rocket into space.

[NoMrBond]

Depends, something can go wrong very early in construction (with symmetry, or a lost strut stub etc) and then the construction can be bugged, but I wouldn't call it a curse.

My least favourite is engine symmetry making the placed one full strength and the other ones be less so, I have lost a lot of tugs, interplanetary transfer stages and fuel barges to that one because you hit the engines and the thing just starts pin-wheeling. I haven't actually checked this in 1.x yet, I should...

[Starwhip]

Oh, yes. Unspeakables have occured in my VAB and SPH.

[Tourist]

There are definitely cursed ships.

I had a interplanetary towing vehicle once.... its parts came from a spare parts store in an old abandoned theme park built over a burial ground.... ran by an old shaman.... so, completely legit. In particular the tow-ship had 4 nukes, which, the old shaman that sold them to me guaranteed were completely safe... I mean, he gave me all the usual legalese warranty mumbo jumbo... you know.... terms and conditions.... blah blah, don't refuel them after midnight.. blah blah... no seriously don't refuel them after midnight blah blah.... no refunds etc etc.

Anyway, got it into orbit, used to it ferry a lander to the Mun. Detached the lander, landed it, returned it to orbit and docked with the tow vessel around 12:01 KSC time. Found that after returning, I had heaps of fuel in the lander left. So, naturally I transferred the excess to the Nuke tanks. What happened next was the craft started oscillating, shaking and flexing like crazy and eventually shook itself completely apart. Strangest thing ever.

I tried to contact the old shaman, to collect on the warranty, but alas, when I returned, it looked like the spare parts store had been abandoned for years. I'm chasing up the warranty with Consumer Affairs of course..

Edited May 28, 2015 by Tourist
Horrible grammer... hopefully less not good.

[DarkGravity]

Believing in curses is layman's hokum. The ship is obviously haunted. There is a difference.