When your missions usually fails?

[A35K]

I usually plan my missions well, so I have only failed beyond LKO once or twice. (Except for rovers on any planet, I have accepted that driving a rover for more than 10 minutes without it exploding is impossible for me, so it is the only section of a mission where I allow myself unlimited quickloading). Other than that, launches from Kerbin ar by far the most dangerous parts of any of my missions, since they almost always disassemble at some point during the ascent:P. That is why all my manned missions are launched empty into LKO, and then the crew gets on board with a much safer and reliable SSTO spaceplane.

[Cairol]

1. Not enough fuel for the way back. Usually because I burned too much when landing somewhere or I messed up a circularization burn or intercept burn at some point.

2. Forgot to expand solar panels on transfer stage. It runs out of power and I'm stuck at the next manouver.

Happend to me 3 times yesterday and 2 of those 3 times I freaked the hell out because my ship didn't accept new maneuver nodes

in orbit map for no apparent reason....(except for the electronics beeing dead)

Why can't we stage those solar panels?? I'm actually glad that I'm not the only one to regularely forget those...

3. Wrong entry speed / angle when returning to Kerbin, causing the decision to burn the parachutes and then crash, or crash without deploying them because it's too late after heat effecs have ceased.

[Nansuchao]

Air intakes... I actually forget to put them on my spaceplanes almost 50% of the times. The other 50%, I just remember them while my mouse hover on Launch button...

[Skorpychan]

Most often: Landing screwups. Luckily for the kerbals, I quicksave before attempting landings, and consider quickload savescumming to NOT be cheating if it avoids a catastrophe while figuring things out.

Next most often: Launches. Either a new lifter design goes wrong, or I flub the gravity turn and it flips, or the boosters detach and mysteriously destroy the central stack. Or the staging got messed up when importing the standard lifter. 'Revert to VAB' or 'Revert to Launch' saves that.

Next is running out of DeltaV somewhere. If they're safely in an orbit, I won't savescum. I'll just launch a rescue mission. And by a 'rescue mission', I mean a boost stage with a Klaw on top to just brute-force shove the failed mission to where I want it. Usually a Kerbin aerobraking.

[Evanitis]

All the failures happen in the VAB. (By failing to prepare, you prepare to fail)

(...)

testing, Testing, TESTING!!!!

I totally agree, though I love my fails so I refuse to do testing and math. My favorite missions are when I forget multiple things and manage to work around my mistakes. Especially fun when the said mission's goal is to fix one of my earlier fails while rescuing the crew.

Guess that mindset will not be enough for a hard career, but normal is still too easy.

Edited June 15, 2015 by Evanitis

[Moar Boosters]

1. Launchpad

2. First staging event

3. Run out of fuel and unable to get home.

1 and 2 are a direct result of my obsession with giant rockets. They're spectacular when they do work, but are usually death-machines for the first 20 flights or so.

3. Happens a lot since I stopped using mechjeb or kerbal engineer. Normally I realize I'm short and leave them in orbit for an easy rescue, but occasionally mess up completely and leave them stranded in solar orbit.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

I totally agree, though I love my fails so I refuse to do testing and math. My favorite missions are when I forget multiple things and manage to work around my mistakes. Especially fun when the said mission's goal is to fix one of my earlier fails while rescuing the crew.

Guess that mindset will not be enough for a hard career, but normal is still too easy.

There are plenty of opportunities to screw up, even with testing !

[Loligoat]

My most common failure is not having enough fuel to return. Like a few weeks ago I did my first manned mission to the Jool system. After the Vall landing, I realized that the mothership didn't have the fuel to return. So I sent a re-fueling mission, and after docking I started back for Kerbin. I was 30 m/s short of returning...

[Enkiel]

these days, as i'm testing my Duna station rocket, most mission fail at about 9000 m altitude, where it stop gaining speed......

the station itself is roughly 100t... so its quite a challenge to get it in the air...