What's the most Kerbal thing you've done in real life?

[selfish_meme]

made an bomb, who behaved like an rocket, and went after us

As teens we found we could make an bomb out of confectioner's sugar and some weedkiller who my father had an big sack of.

First we made some small bomb with coke cans, it worked well so we wanted to scale it up to an pipe bomb.

Fond a short pipe we could add caps to both sides, drill hole for fuse, we gotten some real fuse for this not home made.

As this was dangerous we went to an field where it was diged two 3 meter deep holes 7 meter from each other for an drainage project.

Put bomb in one hole, light fuse and jump into the other hole, this should keep us safe from explosion and fragments.

Waited and suddenly an load noise but no explosion, however the bomb jumped out of its hole and down into our where it was spinning around. We jump out of the hole and felt pretty stupid.

Later we tried making rocket out of this, metal cap in bottom as engine and a plastic tube as body. It did not work well because of low twr. mostly the went up 3-10 meter before tipping over and going sideways usually in our direction

Two fun features was that it burned real hot, far hotter than gunpowder and it made lots of smoke.

How many federal laws were broken in this post lol

[annallia]

Not something I did, but something I saw: a mini-bicycle that had been modified to be powered by an electric drill bolted to the back. VWRRRRRRRRRR

I actually see a lot of similar stuff around here...

Seen a tricycle (not the little kid ones) with a lawnmower motor mounted on it... Scooters with varied small motors (not sure where they are salvaged from).

As for me personally? I used a combination of duct tape and storage crates to keep my car seat upright when it broke. That count?

Also used to fire bottle rockets out of a roof hatch where I used to work... Had to be careful not to hit any of the rungs on the latter though or they deflected inside, more than one made it out to the dining room

[T.A.P.O.R.]

I went to art school.

This is what I did in my 20's (sigh) should have done engineering.

Now... now its just balancing ledgers.

Mid life crisis any day now.

[n.b.z.]

As a kid, I experimented with fitting a brake chute to my bike. This way, I learned intuitively that drag must somehow get much stronger the faster you go (had no idea what "exponential" or "square" is). When you go slow, the chute is useless, when you go fast, you better hold on tight. Stronger chutes led to the development of a proper release mechanism, as using one hand to throw the chute behind me turned out to be impractical (and painful), if I didn't get my hand back on the handle before the chute opened.

During youth, small pipe bombs and firecracker-powered guns. I did many very stupid things in my life but I can definitely point out the most outrageously stupid thing I've EVER done. It's that method of closing/sealing a pipe bomb by bending and folding the end of a pipe while black powder is already filled in, then using a LARGE HAMMER to flatten the bend. For some weird reason, the laws of physics were slacking on that day and I still have 10 fingers, 2 eyes, and can hear well.

Later, when according to my birthdate I should somehow have grown up, got into model airplanes. My most kerbal one is the "Gerafflon", a remotely german word that I can't really translate as I made it up. Built mostly out of junk and designed as I went along building it in about two days, it is characterized by a pigheaded disregard for aerodynamics in the way the RC equipment is attached, and the replacement of the concept of proper airfoils by flat plate lift. It is one more example that anything with (1) a somewhat proper CG and (2) sufficient propulsion will fly.

It actually flew very well, as it was almost impossible to stall. In case I somehow managed to separate the airflow from the wing, no problem: with full throttle, this plane made its own airflow over the wing, enough for the ailerons and elevator to be effective at all times, and rapidly accelerated to where it was pointed. This plane is now used up. Thinking about it, it flew very much like a plane in pre-1.0 KSP - it was this wrong. Control authority as if it had a friggin' KSP reaction wheel, and a ridiculously OP engine!

I obviously had to start FPV-flying (and did so with friends in 2009), something I prefer to not discuss in too much detail. In very general terms, the amount of aviation laws that stand in the way of using the potential of a small electric motor and a simple battery is staggering.

I don't know if it is particularly kerbal, but I also flew a paraglider (and consequentially, myself) into a tree. Naaah, that's just a dumb noob mistake.

When I found KSP, I was utterly dumbfounded as to why some dudes in Mexico had come up with the idea of making a game that was obviously specifically made for me.

Edited June 17, 2015 by n.b.z.
Misspelling "It" as "I" means that a whopping 50% of letters are missing in a word. Beat this.

[heng]

once glued two bottle rockets together to... err, well, just for the lols.

held it in my hand while launching to get a bit of additional height.

expectation: it flies higher and/or faster and gives a double lightshow.

reality: the first 'stage' fired, lifted for about 5 meters, then the second 'stage' finally started and fired perpendicular - even slightly upwards...

i learned:

- igniting two bottle rockets at the exact same time is difficult

- rockets can make a 90° turn in midair

- people are not amused if bottle rockets fly straight into a group of them

- if it's dark noone is able to tell me apart from anyone else :-D

- there is no revert flight button in real life

- friends will not lend me duct tape anymore around new years eve

Edited June 17, 2015 by heng
typo

[Bosun]

So, ah.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter..... yeah. Not my fail, but I thought it appropriate. My favorite out of the several that NASA has had. After all, if you're going to make a game about how silly space exploration can be, it helps when you have real world inspirations and role models.

[Goddess Bhavani]

I had a small motorcycle that I got for cheap in near junk condition. I like restoring and maintaining such horrible stuff that people usually find not worth restoring.

Anyways I discovered some flaws from its old design, including losing considerable engine power when passing or being passed by heavy vehicles, as the low pressure zone would suck all the air out of the airbox.

The fix came in the form of...

ADD MOAR INTAKE!

I simply drilled a few holes in the airbox cover so air entered the box directly in front of the filter, and the bike sounded and performed better ever since.

I also made my own 'water injection system' using discarded plastic bottles and air lines from a fish tank, and although it's just a gag project to make me look like a mad inventor, the thing actually worked, making the little 200cc engine produce absurd amounts of power on hot days for about 15 minutes like some parody of a Luftwaffe methanol-injection system for 'war emergency power'. And yes, the bike had problems with hot weather performance before that.

On a side note I also mastered how to tune a carburetor because local mechanics always made them run lean at operating temperatures, and I got sick of the lame stock powerband that required maximum throttle and RPMs to produce any useful torque. I simply got to work with a screwdriver and reversed it, producing maximum torque at low RPMs like a proper cruising motorcycle.

Edited June 17, 2015 by pandoras kitten

[Evanitis]

Something like this. Mine wasn't that technologically advanced.

(It's a high-pressure CO2 cartridge for making sparkling water - in case you didn't live in the socialist Europe)

[ComradeWolfe]

Most of my Kerbalisms (yes, it's a word now) were born out of necessity and lack of funds:

I had a mower that would not run (later turned out to be a leaky float). What I did have was a blow torch, some tubing, PVC pipe fittings, and duct tape. I believe the air filter involved some of my wife's old underthings... Throttle came in the form of turning the valve as needed. It would run roughly 20 minutes on an 80F day before the tank would freeze.

My truck's engine was very much the same... This page inspired me to try water injection. Most of the emissions gear was stripped off by the previous owner, so I got some tubing and a pair of needles. One was inserted in to the side of an old peanut jar full of water, the other was "IV"ed into one of the rubber plugs blocking an old emissions-related port on the carb. Results were underwhelming.

That truck also has an electric radiator fan. The stock was belt-driven, but I wanted to play around so I mounted a junkyard pulled electric using bits of scrap from a chain link fence project and wired a switch to the dash. It works great as long as you care to watch the temp guage.

I'll also mention something with black powder from my teenage years. I actually recounted the tale for a creative writing assignment once, so if you'll forgive how long it is I will cut and paste:

---------

In the field of chemistry, I haven't much to contribute... As a teenager, I did once attempt to make a large trick candle. As a civil war reenactor, I felt there would be some benefit to having full-size candles resistant to wind. The small ones are made by using a wick which is soaked in saltpeter -- a substance which I lacked, however I did have a supply of black powder which is largely comprised of saltpeter. I cleverly ground it up with wooden implements and proceeded to mix the fine black flour in to the white wax of some melted candles. My wick was of jute twine which I assumed would take up sufficient saltpeter thru the wax it would wick up when lit.

I poured the candles in to paper dixie cups and dipped the wicks. I filled the first cup with wax nearly as white as when I first had melted it. The second cup and candle was a light grey in color. What remained in my original melting vessel was a small quantity of dark sludge too small to pour a candle, and too viscous anyway. This I formed into a small lumpish mound around a piece of twine.

It was now time to see what success could be gleaned from these experiments. After finding a suitable location free of flammables I set out the first candle and proceeded to light it. The wick took the flame readily enough and proceeded to burn as a candle might be expected to -- a small flame of dull yellow like any ordinary candle. It was easily extinguished and gave no sign of re-lighting on the first or any successive attempt.

The second candle, grey with powder as it was, fared little better. I lit it with great expectation and stood back. After half a minute or so, I did perceive that the flame was emitting the occasional spark, but not nearly so often as a typical trick candle. A few attempts at extinguishing later and I determined that this too was a failed attempt -- once the flame was gone, the wick would smoulder but never return to life.

My attention now turned to the little black lump of wax, formed around its jute wick. Placed in the safe location again, I touched a flame to the wick. Being of hand formed wax, none had melted in to the jute and so it smoldered without holding a flame just as any twine would. Eventually my lighter melted enough of the wax to coax the candle in to providing its own weak flame. I perceived it to be slightly pinkish relative to the previous attempts. As it was observed, the flame began to produce a spark -- then another. About every third or fourth second a small point of sun-colored light would rise on the flame with a faint hiss.

Without warning there came a small pink flash accompanied by a burst of sparks, but it subsided nearly as soon as it started. The seconds passed... Nothing but a pathetic flame... Pssht! Another flare, another hiss. Clearly the powder had formed in to pockets within the wax... Psssshht! The half inch flame had jumped for nearly a full second in to a three inch fireball, but again it was gone. Gone too was the bulk of this "candle", as without any cup to contain it the wax had spread in to small pool on the concrete. Amusing as the small show had been, I resolved to put out the flickering remains and consider the attempt at a wind-proof candle a failure as the results were either underwhelming or too volatile to be practical.

I suspect closer examination would have revealed that the spreading wax had left behind a lump of paraffin-soaked powder at its core, but I did not have time for such an observation -- as I leaned in to blow out the experiment, the pathetic flame that remained morphed in to a blinding ball of pink the size and shape of a small melon. Accompanied by billowing white smoke and the sound of a small rocket this flame continued undisturbed for a period of perhaps ten or fifteen seconds. It felt like much longer, however, as my teenage brain simultaneously processed senses of both wonder and dread -- amazement at the intense orb, and fear what consequence might come if it decided to spread and include my parents' home.

After cleaning up the area and somewhat responsibly discarding any remaining materials in the nearest waste bin, I decided that the risk to home and property was too great for a second attempt. Of course at that age the firmest of resolve is only good for a few days at best -- and much shorter when tempted by the magic and spectacle of home-made pyrotechnics.

About a week later, having forgotten how out of control my unintentional flare had been, I proceeded to melt a small quantity of wax and perhaps three or four ounces of powder. My new theory was that if I made the wax as concentrated as possible and applied it by hand to the wick it would yield better results. I did just that, massaging the strange semi-solid in to the fibers of a considerable length of jute twine until it was thoroughly impregnated. For good measure, an additional quantity was formed around it to produce a core the thickness of a pencil.

These cores were cut to a length of 6 inches and dipped repeatedly in to fresh clean wax until they became candles of approximately an inch in diameter. From there, the experimentation began anew. Each produced a standard yellow flame of ordinary dimensions, occasionally with a flicker of spark and a sputter of pink. None, however, were self-lighting and none were willing to provide anything resembling the fireball of a week before.

Confronted by what was another failure, I melted all remaining candles and wax (powdered or not) in to a metal cup and set it aside to cool. Once safe to handle, I broke the new puck in to small pieces and disposed of them one by one using a second metal cup and the aid of a propane torch. This progressed uneventfully for the most part, save the occasional sputter or flare up as the wax was depleted and the flame found a portion of powder.

Perhaps five pieces later, I began to lose patience and began to do two or even three pieces at a time with similar results. Seeing that there was no harm to be had by this method of disposal I decided it would be safe to dispose of the fifteen or twenty pieces that remained all at once. The torch made short work of the wax, melting it in to a pool of perhaps eight or nine ounces liquid which was readily depleted in a few minutes time. As the torch's downward blue flame reached the bottommost dregs within the cup, it was greeted with a short sputter of the familiar pink flame a time or two... Psst... Psshht... Psssshhhhhhhhh!!!!

Without perceptible warning, all that was left ignited in to a rocketing inferno of pink flame and white smoke. I recoiled, pulling back the torch but too late to save the hair which once adorned by right forearm. The most I could do was stand aghast at the ever growing column of flame which was now half my height. As it crested four feet and some inches, my concern shifted from the metal cup to what was above. The location of these tests, a tarpaulin covered carport, had been quite reasonable for the small flames emitted by prior experiments. Confronted with a plume so intense, however, my decision of bulk disposal in such a closed space seemed completely reckless. If I had chosen such a secluded spot for privacy from the intrusions of any neighbors, it would likely have not have been so secret if engulfed in flames.

As fate would have it, a period of thirty or more seconds was enough time and the flames abated nearly a quick as they had emerged. Save the hair upon my arm which would eventually regrow, there was no lasting damage to be had. All that remained of this folly was a tin cup and a ephemeral yellow flame, the last vapors of paraffin weakly evaporating off of heated metal and burning by a residual heat not their own.

[TheSaint]

How many federal laws were broken in this post lol

Yes, never admit to breaking the law online. You would be surprised who is reading and how much they can find out about you.

[Akadion]

There are three things that come immediately to mind, or at least that I'm able to share without legal advice.

The first was when I was a tech at a big box store, in the early 90s. This was when computers were starting to get popular, but a year or two before the Internet started to get popular (I was getting online through a creative loophole involving the university's gopher portal.. Turns out you could just suspend the process and get to a command shell.). We would sometimes have bits that would always test fine but were returned repeatedly because they would fail at the customer's house. Early in my time there we could just send them back as defective, but then we got a new manager who insisted that if I got it to work we had to try and sell it. Usually I could figure out a way to creatively fail an item if it was returned twice.

There was one item, a soundcard (Turtle Beach as I recall) that was particularly vexatious. Every time I plugged it in, it tested fine, but it was bought and returned a bunch of times. Finally, enough was enough and I turned on the bench power supply after hooking up some leads and cranking the power to max. I touched two random contact. There was a brief buzz before parts of the microchip that exploded bounced off my glasses and cheek. There was a rather large crater in one the main chip and a funky smell that lingered for hours.

Number two was a 3D printer I was trying to build out of an old piece of lab equipment. I cobbled together controllers for the motor, machined new mounts for the print head, and got it largely working before plugging the heater line into the stepper controller. When I tried heating the print head, the motor controller found itself trying to handle 12 volts and a crap ton of amps instead of the nice little 5 volts it was expecting. It quite literally burst into flames. Disconnecting the power slowed, but did not stop the destruction.

The third? When my kids and I go skating, they'll sometimes yell "Oberth effect" as they skate up behind me. I'll reach back, take their hand, and slingshot them in front of me as hard as I (safely) can. Not engineering related, but entirely because of KSP.

[justidutch]

I am not an engineer in any way, nor was ever a plane or rocket hobbyist, so no cool amusing tales of ad-hoc explosions.

But in my younger days I sure loved to drive rovers cars really fast, sometimes too fast and therefore bumping into things. Driving cars on icy winter -36* C roads is like driving rovers on Minmus.

[Mikki]

Ahhh, yess.

I think its time to confess my mechanical and engineering sins.

First: liquids other people buy for lots of money, i mix by myself for cheap. I refuse to say what sort of liquids.

Second: i use to weld exotic composite metals, others dont even know they are weldable. And i dont mean alloys or forged steels and Bulk Iron gearhousings.

Third: instead of cleaning my car outside by myself, I let it clean by the rain. i only clean the glasses and the mirrors. The Paint is still in perfect shape, its 10 years old and only my cats make some scratches with their claws (...) on it. I love the Cats.

Fourth: I dont feed my cats, i tell them to look around at the neighboorhood for food. I really dont know why they stay with me. I also dont know where exactly they came from.

Sixth: I use to sharpen a proper woodchainsaw (wide chain) when its dark and i am drunk.

Seventh: I measure Oiltemperatures of running engineblocks by hand (left), no joke, +/-2°

Eight: My girlfriend puts my car sometimes into the Carbox, she sais i am not able to.

Ninth: I smell while sleeping when my girlfriend makes coffee. Then i wake up and want to have coffee too. (begging her)

Tenth: I installed a Fogchamber (Cloudchamber?) in the backyard for entertaining

Please Universe, give me absolution from my Keballike behaviors!

----------------------------------------------------nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo---------------------------------------

[SubzeroSpartan7]

I may have filled a plastic coke bottle with butane once (or whatever are in lighters). And then lit it. Yeah, not very exciting but it probably wasn't a good idea.

[Soda Popinski]

Growing up in Southern California, any fireworks that exploded or flew were not legal.

I may have turned those whistling "Piccolo Pete" fireworks into small rockets by breaking off the heavy base and pealing off some of the paper cylinder, increasing the TWR. I may have also used some household products mixed together to blow up 2L bottles with a bang.

Not sure how many times I burned myself soldering parts from toys I dissembled / broke. What was my dad thinking letting me use a soldering iron at that age (10 or 11?).

[panfish5]

I had a potato cannon and I was really bored so I put a firework inside it but when I shot off the firework it didnt come out the hole and blew up my cannon .

[spudman2]

My entire PhD thesis has secretely been my impression of what a Kerbal would do if he decided to be a biologist instead of an engineer.

As a bio major myself, my curiosity has been piqued. Care to share?

[LN400]

When I was way younger I nicked some black powder from my dad and shoved it into tubes to make tiny rockets. Mostly they did nothing but burn out doing nothing exciting but once in a while I had them fly a few 10s of metres. It all ended when he found out and told me in very straight forward terms to knock it off.

[OddFunction]

I don't know if this is a particularly Kerbal thing or not, but all my other stories are just blowing stuff up and not flying, so here goes.

My Uncle Monty flies private planes. My Uncle Monty has a famous deadstick landing. This is where you can land the plane with the engine off. He has pulled this stunt off 99 times out of 100. On the 100th my Dad and I decided to fly with him.

After we got done flying over the Pacific NW, we're lined up to land with me in the back and my Dad in the front. Monty turns the engine off to impress us with his deadstick landing... note... there is a difference between turning the throttle off and turning the engine off. One allows you to speed up quickly and regain altitude, the other means you have to wait for the engine to start up.

So we're comin in fairly hot... no engine... when Monty realizes we aren't going to make it. Too short for the runway. No problem, just start the engine up, gain some altitude.

Except the engine doesn't start. He tries again, and again, and nothing. Not even a sputter. So he tells us to hang on... and we glide in... and ten feet off the ground the wheels of our plane hits the top of a fence, and it causes us to crash land upside down. All I remember is the ground getting closer and closer and the next thing you know everythings a blur and we're upside down. No explosions, no injuries... but there was one fatality that day. Montys pride.

/STORY

[Penguinhero]

I sat shotgun in a car with my legally blind grandfather driving when i was 12,

he claimed her could see "perfectly fine",

AND NEXT THING YOU KNOW we are on the wrong side of the road and almost hit a corolla head on

[Jr6150x]

Probably launching neutral and unstable rockets while doing a science fair project on how the location of the CP and CG relative to each other affects stability and performance. Watching those rockets wildly spin was exhilarating.

[Xwingace]

Back in college my friends and I had a bunch of bottle rockets so we went out and got some of those balsa gliders from the drugstore. We nipped the warheads off the rockets and hot glued them to the fuselages of the gliders. We staged them so when the first rocket lit up it would light the fuse of the next one.

We tried single, double, and triple stage gliders this way. You wait until the fuse has burned out almost nothing and then toss it, the rocket kicks in and there you go.

Most of them would veer off wildly and crash pretty quickly, and one did a spectacular immleman came right at us. The best was a three stage job that worked perfectly, it went on a nice climbing glide at a shallow angle and flew a couple of hundred yards out over the field we were doing this at. Good times!

[Ace_Warbringer]

Way back when I was younger and stupider... Hehe.

I was in the armed forces. Army engineers. Heavy construction equipment operations.

we were given the task to dig a hole. X meters long, Y meters wide, Z meters deep. No problem, we have bigass bulldozers and excavators.

2feet down. Nothing but solid rock.

broke a bulldozer before we gave up.

sitting around said hole, we pondered, plotted, thought and ultimately we had an odd idea.

why not do it like a mining company? Drill a bunch of holes and drop a bit of C4 in, and boom! Broken up rock.

female butter bar Lt, blond, book smart as all get out, dumb as a post. Orders our explosives up. No biggie, we are alloted a certain amount for training purposes anyways. Order gets rubber stamp and we get our goodies.

we wanted about 10 kilos of C4.

someone moved the decimal.

during the month of Back and forth, some high poobah did something to the forms.

we got a hundred kilos of C4.

okay. Instead of 100 holes with a. Tenth of a kilo, we made a hundred with a. Full. Kilo. Of. C4. Apiece.

it rained gravel for a solid minute. At our spot a safe distance away.

our hole was a little deeper than expected.

[PB666]

Well, lets see how they rank

I threw a match into a container of leaves that had pour gasoline on not realizing my mom had just put out the fire I was trying to restart the gasoline immediatedly vaporized and the match fell into a gas bomb. Its amazing how much that 55 gallon drum look like a 1600L tank with a rocket on it when those flames came shooting out 20 feet up, from about 5 feet away it burned the hair off my hands.

I threw a tin gallon can that I thought meh it only has a few drops (maybe an once) of paint thinner (otherwise known as white gasoline) on a fire I was burning fence sections on just tossed an walked back to my work site when it took off like a rocket slammed against a mesquite tree went spinning around like a whirly gig and landed about 30 feet away. And I thought wow that was too danger....cool. A strut connector might have come in handy on that little booster.

- - - Updated - - -

Way back when I was younger and stupider... Hehe.

I was in the armed forces. Army engineers. Heavy construction equipment operations.

we were given the task to dig a hole. X meters long, Y meters wide, Z meters deep. No problem, we have bigass bulldozers and excavators.

2feet down. Nothing but solid rock.

broke a bulldozer before we gave up.

sitting around said hole, we pondered, plotted, thought and ultimately we had an odd idea.

why not do it like a mining company? Drill a bunch of holes and drop a bit of C4 in, and boom! Broken up rock.

female butter bar Lt, blond, book smart as all get out, dumb as a post. Orders our explosives up. No biggie, we are alloted a certain amount for training purposes anyways. Order gets rubber stamp and we get our goodies.

we wanted about 10 kilos of C4.

someone moved the decimal.

during the month of Back and forth, some high poobah did something to the forms.

we got a hundred kilos of C4.

okay. Instead of 100 holes with a. Tenth of a kilo, we made a hundred with a. Full. Kilo. Of. C4. Apiece.

it rained gravel for a solid minute. At our spot a safe distance away.

our hole was a little deeper than expected.

Why do all army and marine stories seem to end with I pulled out some primer cord and some C4. Hasn't the army learned yet to lock away the C4?

[Ace_Warbringer]

It was for training purposes....