Your Biggest Failures

[Maxed-Rockets]

I failed pretty hardcore just now, and was going to check if anybody else has fail-planted this hard.

I thought it would be cool to have a space station in geosynchronous orbit just above the space center. So, after construction went fairly steadily for a while, and I had a large number of items in or around the general area.

Then I just wanted to do a regular rocket launch (for kicks and giggles) looked away from the computer for a minute to pet the dog, and smashed right into one of the medium sized outposts.

So, what are your face-palm worthy moments?

[RyanGt04]

Back when I was still learning how get a Mun landing I was testing some designs that would give me enough fuel for a return trip. After making some small changes to the best rocket, I went for the Mun. I brought it down to just a few meters above the Mun surface for my first ever landing attempt only to realize that when I made changes to the lander legs I didn\'t turn symmetry back on :\'(

[RangerDanger75]

I wouldn\'t really call it a failure, but it\'s always disappointing whenever my satellite constellations start to deteriorate. Especially since I put so much effort into them.

[DomAzaris1996]

Dunno how bad this seems but back when I was a noob, I built a rocket to get to the mun... not necessarily back, but I just wanted to land there for the first time... So I was coming down, reducing vertical velocity, but by the time I realised 'Hang on, Im moving way to fast horizontally', it was too late..... Now, I have multiple munar bases and a perfected space craft dubbed 'Kerpollo'.

[Vanamonde]

This is my stock parts Lunar habitat mockup. I landed one on equatorial Mun and Minmus, but didn\'t realize how much extra fuel the big thing would have to burn to reach higher lattitudes. The third one ran out of gas just 3400m above its intended landing spot. Ka. Boom.

[leopardenthusiast]

Ohhh boy, where to start...

Well, the time I put 5 jet engines, 2 rocket engines, and 4 SRBs on a spaceplane was pretty terrible. Damn thing ripped itself apart. Then there\'s the time that I tried to have MechJeb fly a spaceplane. That was an embarrasing mistake that I will not repeat.

[Ifandbut]

I just had one and I really wish I had hit print screen.

I made just a simple space plane (first time with the editor). Managed to make it take off, did a U-turn and started to land. I got to about 200m and the windows sticky keys notification pops up. Next thing you know I\'m sending the clean up crews out once again.

[ddavis425]

Can\'t remember any specific failures at the moment, but here\'s one from today. Had a smooth landing in an airplane, but as soon as I turned on the brakes, chaos ensued.

[Randox]

I like to put radial fuel tanks on my second main stage to reduce the height of one of my rockets, and on one of my earlier versions I seriously messed up the staging sequence. I guess I noticed something was wrong right before the radial liquid fuel boosters mounted lower down ran out of fuel (there were 4 decouplers instead of two pairs of 3 like the last one), and I panicked and advanced the stage. Rather than releasing the boosters which would have been bad enough (I have done this a few times, and sometimes they will hit the rocket, other times they bounce and cause it to break up, which is survivable), I released 4 radial fuel tanks positioned above 3 pairs of boosters fastened to 3 center engines. Between the explosions from impact, and the explosions caused as the remaining boosters disconected and aimed their exhaust right into the center stack, the rocket only managed to live for a few seconds after that even as I frantically started trying to advance stages in the hopes of getting an engine running before it failed.

I also had a great one with my camera truck, where I stuck the camera out to one side and then accidently drove into my rocket. The truck took out too liquid booster stacks, and the arm impacted through two more and into the center stack (almost identical rocket to the one above). The truck exploded, alone with much of the camera boom. The rocket itself took about 5 seconds to die since the explosions weren\'t enough to take it out. Instead, the top section (everything above the first ascent stage) started leaning, and the ejector broke causing the top of the rocket to fall over on its side, where it exploded on impact with the ground. That explosion took out the rest of the main ascent stage.

There was that 1 second \'uh oh\' moment right before I drove into it where I realized I was going too fast and the rocket was right there. I don\'t think even the handbrake would have helped (that probably would have flipped the truck and caused an even bigger, but less comical explosion.

I spent several minutes going over the event log after that trying to piece together what exactly happened. I had thought the truck missed, and only the arm had collided, but I guess not.

[SiliconPyro]

I built an exploration lander. Wide landing base with a MechJeb pod on RCS and another MechJeb on a cart. Well, the RCS pod didn\'t have legs because they were part of the wrong stage, so it exploded as soon as it tried to touch down. Then the cart got stuck on the lander, so the entire thing was a wash. I almost prefer fireballs over a fully fuelled cart just sitting there helpless atop my lander.

[samstarman5]

When I neglected to fine-tune my staging and ended up lighting off my lander rockets along with my injection stage. 'We just lost the Mun,' never hit me so hard as then.

[Phoenix Aerospace]

I tend to err on the side of caution with my craft, thoroughly testing configurations with mechjeb before sticking a live kerbal in there, but there was that one time I tried to make an ogival wing... It flew just fine, but when I tried pivoting the wing, it veered left, spun out of control, and finally nosedived. Apparently, I didn\'t learn my lesson, as later I tried to make an autogiro. It went even worse.

...And there was the time I tried a rendevouz. I was doing very well, closing in at just a few meters... And my RCS ran out. Panicking, I hammered on the space button... And ejected my second-stage booster. That wouldn\'t be so bad, but I hit it again, and ejected my deorbit rockets. I finally gave up and hit 'end flight', but the debacle left me with a field of debris that would clutter my skies until the release of 0.15.

[Khrissetti]

My first space station sat on the launch pad, modules all linked up and ready to fly, stitting atop five 3m stage NovaPunch rockets. winglets, ASAS, mechjeb and RCS ready to control the unwieldly craft as it jerkingly flies into space.

Except I forgot to attach the RCS pods properly, as \'launch\' is hit all six RCS tanks drop like bombs onto the rockets and launch pad, and the space station is now flying with several large storage modules hanging and swinging from loose struts, destabilising the rocket and smashing like conkers against the shell of the rocket, the top stage of which explodes, dropping a fully loaded space station onto the incoming rocket which explodes, destroying everything save one or two connecting modules which dropped and were destroyed seconds later.

[Fendleton]

I have a basic, mechjeb-stabilised VTOL that I\'m using for various stuff. it doesn\'t (yet) have the range to get to KSC2, and I was trying to extend the range by attaching it to a carrier aircraft.

It...didn\'t go especially well. When I finally had an aircraft that could attach to it, I didn\'t have a structure that could turn, climb effectively, or get off the runway. It could deploy the dropship pretty well though once it spun out of control and started to break up.

Since then I\'ve just resorted to strapping more fuel to the side (this thing doesn\'t waste space on such niceties as wings), which makes it slower (and eats a load of fuel very quickly), but it\'s nice and stable. And can actually turn around off the runway and go in the right direction.

Now if only jet engines didn\'t shut down below 25% thrust or so, I could actually *use* all that nice shiny fuel. Right now you can\'t use everything because the engines shut down at a point above where they need to be set for a safe descent.

[Kreuzung]

I had a piece of plane fuselage in the ocean near KSC in .14. I wanted to shoot it in pieces using a jet armed with Sunbeams and particle cannons. After around 50 dead pilots, I managed to hit it while being in a train without my joystick. It was pushed in the air, smashed the plane into pieces and landed in 2 parts. Did it like real military, wasted money and lifes for just nothing. Fail.

[Bioman222]

I once was testing a mun lander on Kerbin and THIS happened ???...

[duckunlimited2]

I once made a pretty big interplanetary rocket - vessel thingy. It was destined to go into a Kerbol orbit about half the altitude of Kerbin then return back home. I succeeded in going into Kerbol orbit and returning back to Kerbin\'s sphere of influence. However I ran out of fuel just after retrograding enough to keep from getting slingshoted out of Kerbin\'s sphere of influence. Its a good thing the rocket had a small lander in its nose with some fuel and an engine that I estimated would get me atleast into Kerbin\'s atmosphere to aerobrake and land.

Now here\'s the facepalm part:

Right after I decoupled the lander from the main rocket - vessel thingy, I noticed my parachute was set to deploy with my engine start. I counted myself lucky I caught that cause I did not want my parachute to deploy in space and kill my kerbals upon landing. I did not have any stages above, so I thought it would work if I bring my engine start down a stage. So I did just so. STUPID MOVE. I thought when I pressed space, my engine would start and I would have one more stage to deploy my parachute upon reentry. Instead, I just heard my parachute deploy then and now. 'Okay, its just a minor set back, I just have to use my engine to slow my decent for a soft landing' I thought. Well, I throttled up, thinking my engine started with my last staging. NOPE, IT DID NOT. Because I moved my engine start down, It never activated. I was also out of staging so I couldn\'t bring my engine start up to start it. Yep, my kerbals were stranded in an elliptical around Kerbin. So close to home, yet so far. :\'(

Pictures

Here you can see my staging right before I decoupled the lander from the rocket - vessel thingy.

Here\'s the lander coming out of the nose of the rocket - vessel thingy.

Here you can see the modification I did to the staging.

*Hits space bar*............... &%#$!!

So close, yet so far. :\'(

[Kreuzung]

Why didn\'t you want to deploy the chute? i always activate it in space...

[duckunlimited2]

I didn\'t think it would work out in space and because it was activated already, it wouldn\'t deploy in the atmosphere. Yeah, I learned that wasn\'t the case after this mishap.

[Tarmenius]

So, a while back I was on my way to the Mun. Everything was going well: I had an efficient ascent from Kerbin, my orbital inclination was as close to the Mun\'s as I could want, and the TMI timing looked good (this was before the patched conics display). In the middle of my Munar Capture burn, my engine cuts out even though I have 4 remaining fuel tanks. Realizing the mission was doomed, I separated my Emergency Return Stage and maneuvered around to get a view of the problem. Here\'s what I saw:

Needless to say, I fired the Quality Assurance guy.

[Kreuzung]

Needless to say, I fired the Quality Assurance guy.

No, it was the fuel lines fault, it wasn\'t there ;P

[E. F. Kranz]

Well, the other day, while sitting on the moon, ready to head for home, I hit stage, and nothing happened. That happens, occasionally, so I just casually hit space again. The capsule popped off and smashed on the ground.

Only then did I realize I had the throttle at zero.

[Sigma117]

I think my biggest one was when I livestreamed me going to the mun for a friend.

My ship was built nicely, had a return stage too (I usually leave them there as monuments ^^'). As I was nearing the mun I went to hit M to see how far off I was...I hit space, I panicked and hit it again, separating my lander from my last booster stage...which still had thrust.

It ended up hitting my lander just right to knock the capsule of but leave everything else as it was.

Needless to say, the Kerbals on board got onto the mun, albeit at 300m/s.

[Markus Reese]

I wouldn\'t really call it a failure, but it\'s always disappointing whenever my satellite constellations start to deteriorate. Especially since I put so much effort into them.

QFT (quote for truth)

I was landing a massive lander today as part of a test for Bioman\'s challenge he posted, was going well, til I realized I was looking at the wrong fuel tanks and ran out of fuel 500m off lunar surface on the lander!

Edit: Another one was my first recording of my minimus landing. I did it as an unbroken stream, was coming in for a landing. Almost down and then instead of hitting shift, I hit space XS On top of that, my accend engines at the time was solid booster, no coming back from that.

[kknight13]

not nessecarily my biggest failure but certainly the most annoying

I landed on the mun but my engine fell off, i have a tower of fuel tanks, sas units and a command capsule all supported by landing legs but the engine has rolled away.