The Kraken has a Fat Finger...

[GarrisonChisholm]

I am on my first play through career mode (bought the game last week) and have made some mistakes (such as designing a $75k solution to a contract that only awards $54k), so I am hurting for Funds. I had orbited the Mun with a probe but had lost the probe on the second orbit due to an altitude complication. My probe to Minmus had also entered CoI with a terminal trajectory, but I decided to just skip the orbit and land the probe since I had such excess DeltaV. This gave me the brain-storm that I don't have to have a dedicated Lander or the skills to land it yet, if I could just get a Probe safely onto the surface of the Mun, then I could collect on that huge Explore Mun contract.

So, I design a probe with 3 redundant mini-probes, so if I kill all my fuel before landing I can at least jettison the mini's on the blind chance that one of them tumbles down a crater just right to survive to take a temperature reading. However that looks like an unnecessary step- I am in a 15km orbit with plenty of fuel. Decent is slow on the '45 engine (I have failed too easily on orbital burns with Terriers) but steady, trying to eliminate lateral velocity- I pass 4km, and speed is down to 200 m/sec. I do the "plot a waypoint at terrain" trick to find out how much time I have left and get 26 seconds, so I start decelerating more rapidly... I see shadow, speed is down to 20 m/sec, coming down, only a little bit of lateral velocity- coming up, 5 m/sec... contact! I'm down, but there's a bit of a tumble and I see a roll that doesn't immediately look like it will be slowing down. For an instant I hold my breath, thinking I just have to let physics do its work, but then I see the ship will briefly tumble to be pointing retrograde, so I lunge for a quick burst at 1% Thrust to slow things up- ...and hit 'Zed' instead. Whoosh! 65 m/sec lateral velocity before I can blink, the whole thing burrows into a hillside before I can rotate 10 degrees.

so, ... I actually think that was just a rehearsal... *f9!*

I love games where failure is fun.

Edited June 26, 2015 by GarrisonChisholm

[Boomshockpow]

There has been so many times where I make a similar but also fatal mistake by hitting X instead of Z. Oops seems like I missed that burn entirely..

[Senormeens]

yeah, I've had more than a couple miss haps where fingers where on the wrong key. I have started a career where there is perm death with no quick loading and all no verbal respawn, has made some landings... tedious to say the least. Especially she landing in the canyons on the mun.

Also a tip for a new player, try landing on minmus first, the lower gravity makes it easier, and a little more forgiving.