Stupid things you noticed too late in a Mission

[Leoworm]

Just had the Idea of starting a Thread about that one single stupid mistake you make and realise too late, like forgetting a Parachute, or not having Solar Panels on a Probe.

I'll start:

I just recently tried getting too the Mun with a Mobile Processing Lab. After I landed, I decoupled the Capsule that should return, and left two Kerbals on the Mun in the MPL. Originally I had been planning to gather some Science there, then fly the MPL back to get the Science. That was when i noticed you couldn't control a Rocket with the MPL, and I didn't have any Antennas on it. The two Kerbals are still stranded on the Mun:(.

Edited June 18, 2015 by Leoworm

[LostOblivion]

Fun topic! I forgot to put a probe core on my Mun-rescue mission, so I had to send another one...

Btw, why do you capitalise so many words in your post?

[Thomassino]

Back in my early KSP days (0.23), I was trying to launch a MPL on the orbit. When I finally made it (after like 20 failures) I found that it doesn't produce science and needs 2 kerbals to work!

[Leoworm]

Fun topic! I forgot to put a probe core on my Mun-rescue mission, so I had to send another one...

Btw, why do you capitalise so many words in your post?

I'm from Germany, you capitalise much more words in German compared to English

[Speadge]

tzzeee....

forgot a decoupler on my eve Mission - so i had to land a 10k fueltank without landing legs....

[Dilli]

I used the non-retractable solar panels for a eve surface probe. Realized they had become non-retractable once already on sub-orbital path after all propulsion had been decoupled.

[Landwalker]

In my current career's first orbital flight, once I set my return trajectory I triggered the parachute stage before atmospheric reentry.

Which isn't a "stupid thing I noticed too late," because it normally isn't a problemâ€â€I've gotten to where I manually tweak the parachutes in the VAB to auto-deploy at 0.34 atmospheres instead of 0.04, so I can usually "trigger" them before reentry and then they will automatically pop out at a reasonable point (something like 7 km, I don't recall).

The stupid thing I noticed too late is that I failed to make that tweak on this particular craft, so the parachutes came out at 0.04 atmospheres, AKA really freaking high up. One Mk16 and two Mk2-R parachutes were dragging behind me as I ripped through the mesosphere. I was fairly convinced at this point that Jeb was on the fast track to a fatal case of lithobraking. The Mk2-Rs both incinerated during reentry, but miraculously the Mk16 survived and managed to slow the craft down enough that it didn't explode on impact with the unforgiving desert sands. Jeb and I both eventually calmed down. But it was a harrowing moment owing entirely to my own careless neglect.

Edited June 18, 2015 by Landwalker

[Bill Phil]

I'm from Germany, you capitalise much more words in German compared to English

Like all nouns.

I love German.

On Topic:

Lots of missions. Almost all of em, but I always pull through at the end.

[xtoro]

Deutschland ist toll!

I've used decouplers on probes I planned to bring back, but forgot the docking port to redock and bring it home...

[RogalDorn]

I forgot to put reaction wheels on my Duna Probe. I felt ridiculous using my super limited and totally necessary for landing RCS gas up every time I needed to get in position for a maneuver, plus every time I needed to adjust heading the thrust annihilated my carefully adjusted maneuver nodes. This was my first ever attempt to get to another planet though, so I wasn't going to let my failures end in mission failure. Managed to get it down safely (.85 Units of RCS gas left LOL) and deploy my rover garage onto the serenity of Duna's northern polar region.

[GehringGame]

Fun thread. Almost every time I design a lander for a land/return mission I forget some component necessary for it to return to Kerbin. For the first five or six Mun/Minmus missions in my career mode, what should have been an easy atmospheric reentry to Kerbin turned into an annoying rendezvous and rescue because I, A) didn't have parachutes, didn't have a decoupler, C) both A and B.

I get so focused on designing a craft for my destination that I completely forget about landing on Kerbin again!

[kStrout]

I recently launched a minmus space station with a lander and after spending months orbiting minmus I sent bob down in the lander(which is piloted by a probe core) only to discover on landing that I didn't add batteries or electric charge.

[Feradose]

I forgot to put a parachute on the new version of my reusable rocket (older versions couldnt do a mun return so I needed some weight savings. After part removing and reducing weight then replacing essential parts) for my new All-Kerbin-SSTO rocket. After countless quickloads, I managed to land it on a plain with rocket power.

[Mister Dilsby]

If you look very carefully at the Hummlebee Mk2 you can see a vestigial antenna embedded in the starboard wing. I must have misplaced it during the build. Also, as commenters to the comic helpfully pointed out, all the airbrakes are on backwards.

[monstah]

Something I learned after doing too much of the stupid thing everyone does: After you attach batteries, toggle off EC flow on the command pods, and leave those as backup electricity. You can re-enable it even if the juice runs out - hell, even with no connection using RT. If you're using RCS instead of reaction wheels, and your antennas aren't draining too much, even 10EC is enough to open/reorient forgotten solar panels.

[Enkiel]

forgot my tourist for an Eve mission, which was aiming at testing different part of the mission for them....

the "good" news is that i learned how close i could get to eve to be sucked in, which is much further than i though.

EDIT :

and i realized this AFTER landing on Eve...

[trevorpage]

Early doors for me. Only started playing a couple of weeks ago. Decided to do a rescue mission to Minmus as well as my first landing there. Built a craft with a mk1 cockpit and a lander cockpit to put the rescued Kerbal in (Gwenene). Saved the ship and quit the game before attempting the mission as I knew it would take me half an hour or so. No errors reported in the engineering assessment. Take off fine, Orbit Kerbin fine. Transition to Minmus fine. Orbital insertion fine. Orbital plane line up fine. Careful adjustment of orbit to line up with Gwenene's wreck fine - 8.9m separation. Gwenene EVA fine but couldn't board the lander cabin. Why? Bob Kerbin was already in there.... lol's. Damn stowaway.

Anyway Bob ended up in Gwenene's craft for three weeks while I completed the rescue, landed and took all the science back to Kerbin. Just rescued Bob from orbit this morning.

[A35K]

Back in 0.23, during my second Mun landing, I had this lander which was basically a 2 crew lander can with four radial fuel tanks with LV-909s on the bottom. It was supposed to land on Mun and return to Kerbin, which was why on top of each fuel tank it had a Mk16 XL parachute (or so I thought...) Everything went well, landed safely on Mun, after a few hours took off and lowered Kerbin periapsis inside the atmosphere. I was checking my staging when I realized there were no parachutes in any stage. I thought it was a glitch, so I checked the parachutes by right clicking on them... and they were nosecones:P. I had just enough fuel to land on Kerbin using the engines, BUT WHY DO NOSECONES AND PARACHUTES LOOK SO SIMILAR!!

[AbacusWizard]

I recently accepted a contract to recover a part from low Kerbin orbit... which turned out to be a Mk3 16-seat passenger cabin. Huge. I designed a very clever recovery system for it, involving a large rocket with a klaw and a heat shield plus two small detachable side pods each consisting of a klaw and a bunch of airbrakes and parachutes.

Sent it up to orbit, rendezvoused with the cabin, grabbed it with the main klaw, deployed the two pods, maneuvered them around to the other side, attached them reasonably well, burned retrograde to de-orbit.

Was waiting for re-entry when I happened go glance at the resources menu and suddenly realized: this craft is gradually losing electricity. I had completely forgotten to include any solar panels! Of course I didn't really need electricity for anything except SAS and keeping the probe core alive, but I still needed to maintain a retrograde facing (to keep the heat shield facing into the wind) and issue a few more commands with the probe core before landing. As soon as re-entry heat became visible, I (permanently) deployed the airbrakes, and as soon as the speed dropped to a safe level, I deployed the drogue chutes... and then ran out of electricity. No main chutes for me; they're just dead weight at this point.

I watched anxiously as the speed gauge and altitude gauge both spun down, desperately hoping the former would decrease fast enough by the time the latter hit bottom... 100 m/s, 60 m/s, 30 m/s, 20 m/s... and 20 m/s it remained until touchdown. *BOOM* went the heat shield and most of the main klaw stage--but when the dust settled, the cabin was intact! Mission accomplished!

[RogalDorn]

Well Played Abacuswizard! That's a great tale!

[KSK]

Putting a science station into orbit around Kerbin - and forgetting to include an antenna to send the science home. Time to redesign the crew transporter capsule so that the next crew rotation can phone home.

[samstarman5]

Sending up a drone-piloted mission to bring some kerbals home from a Minmus Orbital Station, and putting the solar panels on only one end of the craft. Got it into orbit, and about to start an intersection course, when it went dead because the panels were not pointed at the sun. Since there were no kerbals on board, couldn't send one on EVA to push it over. Had to wait for a few days before enough sunlight was striking the panels.

I had already sent another upgraded mission to retrieve those kerbals, which ran successfully, so I just brought that one back home. Gotta save some funds.

[fairytalefox]

A yellow fuel pipe plugged into a ladder segment.

A veeery heeeeavy and slooooow fuel transport for a Jool mission. Successful rendezvous with a return ship in Laythe's orbit, almost successful docking. Wrong docking port size.

Another Jool mission. Successfully circularized into low Jool orbit... 15 km deep into the atmosphere. Apparently the data on the wiki were outdated.

Eeloo mission, very long low-TWR transfer burn from Kerbin orbit successfully performed by MechJeb (I was busy away from the computer). On the way out of Kerbin's SoI, the ship collided into the Mun.

Unmanned Eve mission. Extremely difficult because full-fledged RemoteTech which I suck at. After many attempts and shenanigans, a probe is landed on Eve and can communicate with Mission Control. No science equipment on the probe. At all.

[InterCity]

So that was the one time I launched a mission to rotate a space station's crew and test that cool new spaceplane (that we've spent hours working on with my wife).

Except... I forgot the crew. I realized that when I docked with the space station. Oh, and I forgot to switch to long-range configuration, so the tanks were half empty from start. It turned out that it wasn't such a biggie, since the plane was heavily overengineered (Designed for souposphere, tested with FAR ). Still, I had to waste another truckload of funds to get a new plane up there and complete the mission. It was on hard mode...

[Xyphos]

you'd think I'd learn by now, but majority of my failures are dead-sticks; eg. no electricity, oh god, the engine won't start... crash!

and I usually don't notice until it's too late.