Stupid things you noticed too late in a Mission

[TheLoki]

I was on a manned Duna mission with the target to bring them back home alive. Designed the vessel with many parachutes to save enough fuel to get back home. Everthing went fine and in low kerbin orbit i let Bill got on EVA to pack the chutes for a save return. Only to realise that i've never took Bill on a mission before and his level wasn't high enough to pack the parachutes.

[Enkiel]

I think it can go in the stupid things....

last night, or actually, the past 3 nights, i been engineering a rocket that would leave kerbin, go to the mun, minmus, then Duna and Ike.

On the orbiter, i had wayyyyyyyyy too much fuel (i duped pretty much the biggest "stock" tank 90% fuel on the mun surface). BUT, the lander on other hand was pretty fine for the mun and minmus, but when i got to duna......

i had 1200ish delta V to leave Duna and get back in orbit. under-engineered big time. I had to use monopropellant, i had to use ore, i had to pray to all god to make it to orbit. In the end it worked, but going that far with that little delta v was damn stupid...

luckily, leaving from ike to kerbin wasn't too hard (takes what, 600 delta v?) and i managed to land it safely... but it was its first, and last trip for that lander.

[SuperSecret]

I was planning to place a refueling station at Minmus, so I sent a probe to scan the surface for Ore. I built the probe, sent it to Minmus (with ion drives, so slow burns), placed it in polar orbit, and when I tried to activate the scanner, I realized I forgot the antenna to send back the data...

[dazhat]

I learn that parachutes take a while to open now about one tenth of a second before my capsule smashed into the water.

[windows_x_seven]

Sent an extremely detailed unmanned mission to Duna, with comm sats (RemoteTech), ore scanners and a lander. Everything was going well, until I decided to land the lander. When about 50m from the ground, I saw that there were no landing legs. I landed on my RCS engine (the puff one, I offset it and angled it so that I had only one RCS engine in the bottom of the craft, centered), and still managed to keep it upright.

[linuxgurugamer]

Too many times, I use MechJeb with autostaging. Launch the ship, and watch in frustration as ALL the fairings stage because they were right above the engine.

[Sidereus]

I had a combined manned mission to go to Duna with two landers - a smaller single seat lander "piloted" by Bob to land on Duna, and a larger one crewed by Jeb, Val and Bill to get the flyby mission at Ike and do some temperature scans at the surface. I got into Duna orbit just fine, detached the smaller one, got the Ike lander into LIO, then landed the smaller one. This is when the trouble started.

First thing I found was that neither of my landers had antennae, which was OK since I'd be recovering them eventually, but a bit annoying. Then I found my larger lander only had two landing legs, and also had a radial monoprop tank covering half the science instruments. Definitely need to be more careful with the symmetry mode in the future...it also lacked any solar panels. Good thing NERVs generate lots of electricity...

I did manage to set down the larger lander without using any legs, get most of the science I came for, and get it back to Kerbin OK though (it helped that the "surface" temperature scans were actually altitude temperature scans, which saved a ton of fuel as I only really needed to land once). Bob's still stuck on Duna, waiting for a rescue mission, but was part of the original plan, anyway.

Edited July 12, 2015 by Sidereus

[mythic_fci]

1. No solar panels on (insert planet here) probe.

2. "Hatch is obstructed, can't exit"

3. No batteries.

4. No RCS thrusters.

5. No docking ports.

6. Forgot the fuel lines.

7. Forgot the heat shield. (Hey look, I learned how to play BEFORE heating was added )

8. Forgot the landing legs.

9. No RCS fuel.

10. No landing gear.

Want me to list more? I've got a whole bunch back here...

[Killrog]

In RSS/RP-0 I can't say how many times I have forgotten to configure RCS ports. After spending hours getting the correct RCS and other fuel ratios, designing the entire launch system for the perfect TWR/Delta-V, and getting the payload into orbit then prep for a maneuver and RCS does nothing... Right click the nearest RCS ports and... Hydrazine. Wonderful.

[Sharpy]

I was on a manned Duna mission with the target to bring them back home alive. Designed the vessel with many parachutes to save enough fuel to get back home. Everthing went fine and in low kerbin orbit i let Bill got on EVA to pack the chutes for a save return. Only to realise that i've never took Bill on a mission before and his level wasn't high enough to pack the parachutes.

Heh. Send a minimalistic capsule like you did in the early career, land Bill to level him up and bring him back up in just the same type capsule

[RocketTurtle]

Batteries. Always the damn batteries.

[Moh1336]

So I have a few Tourist contracts with 6 kerbals who want to land on the Mun as well as a mun base contract capable of holding 5 kerbals, 1 antenna, and a docking port.

I figured I would use my tourist vessel to complete both. Since my tourist vessel comprises of a MK1-2 command pod and a hitchhiker compartment, I thought, slap on the antenna and docking port and kill two birds with one stone. It's not like the Mun base has to stay on the Mun so long as it's stable for 10 seconds.

All seemed to be going according to plan, not the most efficient Mun landing as I started to drift sideways with no RCS available. But other than that a good landing... That's when I realised I forgot my antenna and docking ports. The tourists all laughed at me, I was tempted to leave them on the Mun.

[Superfluous J]

I recently noticed that putting parachutes on a science Jr. is a bad idea, considering the Jr has terrible heat tolerance.

I noticed this during re-entry. Of course.

[Feradose]

Parachutes. And the landing gear. My shuttle is stuck in orbit now.

[worir4]

This is my worst of all time:

So I sent out a mission to Eeloo for the first time on that save. A ship with 12 kerbals on board. I get there, land okay apart from I misjudged the landing gear height and so my nuclear engine broke off (Not the thing i didn't notice, also I was using different engines for take of/ landing than for transfer)

So after i did all the science and planted flags, I sent them back to orbit and went to make a new rescue ship. This was supposed to be unmanned until the 12 kerbals could get on board. When I got to Eeloo, docked with the first craft, I realised that i sent the ship already full of kerbals....

In the end I just left the new kerbals in Eeloo orbit so that I could save the first ones. ( The second set of kerbals were only new recruits so no big deal right?)

[Bev7787]

Today for me- The SRBs on the launch pad were not powerful enough on their own. Annoying for my rockets

[StrandedonEarth]

Sent a station with tourists to Dres. By the time I got a decent intercept burn completed, I found I was about 110m/s short for the capture burn, even after transferring reserve fuel from the CRV and the Mining ship. By jettisoning the CRV, I gained about 450m/s. Now I just hope my mining ship can manage a landing. I didn't even bring a Klaw for mining Dresteroids; I wonder if I can mine one without actually grabbing it

I guess I should have tried to build a launcher for the MegaTug

Edit: Looking at the dV map, I should be able to pull off a landing. Hopefully I'll be able to use the miner as a CRV; it has 'chutes but no heat shield aside from engines and ore tanks

Edited July 12, 2015 by StrandedonEarth

[joekidd1992]

I just forgot about 300 or so science on an Ike Lander I abandoned.

[LABHOUSE]

I forgot the fuel in my duna lander return stage (xeon)...

I removed the fuel to find out the dry weight for re-entry.

[PanzerAce]

Parachutes. If I don't forget them outright, I put drouge chutes on instead on accident.

[Devoted Orphan]

Solar panels and antenna, every time.

Last mission I remembered them but attached them to the wrong stage

Parachutes. If I don't forget them outright, I put drouge chutes on instead on accident.

If you can get a kerbal below 30ms they'll survive a fall into water, had to use that quite often

[WeirdCulture]

I forgot the Wastecontainer on a long trip, they are still in orbit, but I don't want to know the smell inside the Mk1 Pod

[Bishop149]

I launched my heaviest most expensive mission to date in my career game, designed to deliver 3 ion power satellites to Jool in one shot.

Mission had quite a lot of issues, one of which was the interplanetary stage coming up short on DeltaV for the Jool burn due a bug in Engineer Redux.

So I separate the Sats to finish the Jool burn under their own power, shouldn't be an issue, they have tons of Ion based DeltaV themselves. . . . Only to find I can't control them, they don't even show up in the flight window. . . . . because they are debris . . . . not one of the Sats had a probe core.

Which is weird because they were attached as a sub-assembly which when I checked said assembly it most definitely DID have a probe core.

Still could have been worse, if it wasn't for that DV shortfall I wouldn't have noticed until planned separation upon entering Jools SOI

[linuxgurugamer]

I recently noticed that putting parachutes on a science Jr. is a bad idea, considering the Jr has terrible heat tolerance.

I noticed this during re-entry. Of course.

Put an oversized heatshield on the bottom of the Science Jr. Works well, just be sure it sticks out beyond the sides of the Jr.

[Superfluous J]

Put an oversized heatshield on the bottom of the Science Jr. Works well, just be sure it sticks out beyond the sides of the Jr.

This was during the Caveman Challenge. Every part (and ton) was precious. And thankfully the Jr didn't explode, though it came terrifyingly close.