Why does it take so long to realize you forgot something?

[maranble14]

I did an entire apollo style mun mission, crushed the docking like a champ, collected tons of science, and guess what I realized JUST AS SOON AS I START REENTRY? I forgot my freaking parachute. 


These are the types of events that instill a rage quit. I legitimately had to get up and walk away from my computer because I was so frustrated with myself.

Why oh why could I not have realized this mistake sooner? Like, you know, on the launchpad?

[Vanamonde]

Because you didn't test each stage of the craft as you added it before sending the final assembly out on a real mission.

[magnemoe]

A bit late to just remember at reentry.
I had an contract for an satellite around Eve, just sent an huge ship for crew rotation and bringing back Eve science and an stranded kerbal for contract, remembered the satellite as I entered mission control after the burn
 

[Blaarkies]

NASA has 500 people triple-checking all these details, but you are 1 person doing such a complex mission...it is hard to find all that is wrong alone, and it is bad for gameplay(the first few times is cool, we learn from it). Would it be cheating to Hyperedit a kerbal there, with some KAS equipment, add the chutes to the craft, and Hyperedit the kerbal and equipment back home?
(I would just HE land and recover the ship, relaunch it with the same amount of used resources and HE it to the last destination it reached)

[kiwi1960]

Next time you make a single forgiveable mistake.... remember me...

At the ripe old age of 56, suffering from Multiple Sclerosis and two of the symptoms are double vision meaning I don;t always see the obvious.... and the second is MS induced dementia... meaning I make mistakes like you did on a very regular basis... but then, I only play sandbox... means I don;t have to worry about science... but its freaking annoying....

I once launched a space station and only after 5 failed attempts did it achieve orbit and so I launched a capsule with the station crew.....

Only to discover I hadn't put any freaking docking ports on the station.... worse.... no docking port on the capsule either...

[Provisional Name 12]

I know I accidentally installed a mod the other day that locked up my parachutes, you can land it if you alt+f12 then hack and unhack gravity on your decent to slow you down.

Edited July 22, 2016 by SpaceCommunism

[Columbia]

I once prepared a long-ass rendezvous with an interplanetary mothership (My first one, never managed to go beyond Kerbin though) for the second module. When I managed to take hold of the module, I wrestled it to dock.. just to realize that I had attached a 1.25m docking port.

The mothership's port was 2.5m.

[StarStreak2109]

I like to forget small things... like batteries... or my all-time favorite: reaction wheels on an interplanetary probe... didn't have RCS as well...

[ag3nt108]

I flew a seriously long mission the other day with a craft capable of seating 15 kerbals, the idea being to hit all of my many many "rescue x from orbit of kerbin missions" in one shot.  I think total in space (real time) was around the 3 hour mark hitting all of the various rendezvous and transferring kerbals over.  Final kerbal refused to board the module, Jeb had stowed away the entire time!

Mechjeb flew that last rescue.....

[Wjolcz]

And that's why I always check the engineer's report before launching anything.

[cantab]

I built a mothership with a lovely little probe lander, flew it out to Jool, landed on the first moon*, ran the science experiments ... and found out I'd forgotten the antenna. That would be bad enough, but I also had nine more identical landers on that mothership and a second one. D'oh!

As for your situation, if you have and want to use a quicksave well before re-entry then it's savable. Adjust your atmospheric entry so you don't land but instead aerobrake into a lower orbit. Make that orbit stable (get out and push the capsule if you have to). Then send a rescue ship.

(*Dres, in fact, because I have a modified solar system.)

[eddiew]

6 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

NASA has 500 people triple-checking all these details, but you are 1 person doing such a complex mission...

And that is why I find quicksave/load to be completely legit, and will use them to avoid unplanned lithobraking

[Snark]

8 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

NASA has 500 people triple-checking all these details

...and even there, they've lost missions to boneheaded oversights.  We're human, it happens.

Some notable examples, in no particular order:

• Genesis:  Solar wind sample return mission.  Entire mission flown successfully, spacecraft reentered successfully... then crashed because the parachutes wouldn't deploy due to an acceleration sensor that had been installed upside-down.  Oops.
• Hubble Space Telescope.  Giant, ultra-precise mirror.  The most precisely-shaped large object ever made by humankind.  Accurate to within 10 nanometers over the whole surface!  ...Except that they discovered, only after launching it, that they had painstakingly (and at excruciating expense) ground it with 10-nanometer precision to the wrong shape, because one of the sensors had been installed wrong and was over a millimeter out of alignment.
• Mars Climate Orbiter.  Muffed an orbit-correction maneuver because one piece of software was using metric units, and talked to another piece of software that was using US units.  Result:  total loss of mission.  This sort of thing is why your science teacher keeps harping on always show your units, boys and girls.
• Failed laser test on space shuttle.  The idea was to bounce a laser beam off a reflector on the shuttle, sent from the peak of Mauna Kea. Shuttle had a computer program designed to point the reflector at the top of the mountain at the time of the test.  Unfortunately, someone sent it how tall the mountain was in feet, when it was expecting nautical miles.  So the computer on the shuttle decided "Okay, the mountain is 14,000 miles tall" and obligingly rotated the entire shuttle to point the reflector up instead of down.
• Mariner I, an early Venus probe whose launch failed, in large part, due to someone goofing when transcribing equations into the guidance computer.

...So don't feel too bad, you're in excellent (and considerably more expensive) company. 

 

 

[Curveball Anders]

8 hours ago, Blaarkies said:

NASA has 500 people triple-checking all these details, but you are 1 person doing such a complex mission...it is hard to find all that is wrong alone, and it is bad for gameplay(the first few times is cool, we learn from it). Would it be cheating to Hyperedit a kerbal there, with some KAS equipment, add the chutes to the craft, and Hyperedit the kerbal and equipment back home?
(I would just HE land and recover the ship, relaunch it with the same amount of used resources and HE it to the last destination it reached)

I have always keep a sandbox save to test various designs (including shipping them around the system with HE).

I do the design in the career save, then I quit that one and run a little script that copies the design(s) to the 'testing grounds'.

I don't regard it cheating, I regard it as a 'simulation of the actual mission'

 

[Kevin Kyle]

Not going to say I havent forgot things because I have. Those incidents have taught me to pay close attention to that little report button in the Assembly building. I very important button that doesnt get the credit it deserves. I still forget things now and then.

[RainDreamer]

This is why you should install KAS/KIS mod, so you can slap on a parachute module in orbit by launching a rescue team up with extra parachutes.

Though if you don't care about recovering the spacecraft, just send up a recovery craft to collect the crew and transfer the science over.

[magnemoe]

1 hour ago, Curveball Anders said:

I have always keep a sandbox save to test various designs (including shipping them around the system with HE).

I do the design in the career save, then I quit that one and run a little script that copies the design(s) to the 'testing grounds'.

I don't regard it cheating, I regard it as a 'simulation of the actual mission'

Yes, have luck making an Eve lander without this. 
Does not always help, during design of an Eve lander I tested landing, then the rover and finally accent, changes on access stage caused me to remove an ladder, this was minor tweaking of fuel tanks and I had tested it with kerbal a long time ago. 
Luckily kerbal can be transferred by KAS wires, rover had a winch and the lander an port. 

[ImmaStegosaurus!]

Before I launch. Checklists are a life saver.

[cubinator]

The first rover I ever made went to Eve, landed in the ocean (no biggie, it'll still get lots of science), I did the experiments, then looked for the antenna to transmit it home. It wasn't there! I always try to double-check everything so that stuff like this doesn't happen again, but on big ships or elaborate missions it can be really hard.

[Tex_NL]

15 hours ago, maranble14 said:

Why oh why could I not have realized this mistake sooner? Like, you know, on the launchpad?

I've said it before and I will keep saying it again: Sooner or later everybody cocks-up big time! Everybody does it and as long as you are smart enough to learn from it there is no shame in failure.

Trust me, it is very unlikely you will ever make this same mistake again.

[Curveball Anders]

8 hours ago, ag3nt108 said:

I flew a seriously long mission the other day with a craft capable of seating 15 kerbals, the idea being to hit all of my many many "rescue x from orbit of kerbin missions" in one shot.  I think total in space (real time) was around the 3 hour mark hitting all of the various rendezvous and transferring kerbals over.  Final kerbal refused to board the module, Jeb had stowed away the entire time!

Mechjeb flew that last rescue.....

I managed a related goof yesterday.

I had 5 tourists that wanted mun/minmus tours of various combinations, an expansion to Mun Orbital Station One, an Outpost on Minmus and some minor stuff like Kerbals stuck in orbits and on mun/minmus.

7 contracts in all.

Figured out a way to fill all 7 contracts (ab)using the infrastructure I had in place (stations over kerbin, mun and minmus, landers, taxis and return vehicles parked at stations).

Designed (and tested in sandbox) the vehicles needed, and made sure that I'd settle all 7 contract with only 2 launches and 1 return to Kerbin.

Launched the first, a 30 ton 7 seat (needed space to return the stranded Kerbonauts) 'tourist bus' and docked it to Mun Orbital Station One.

Launched a 35 ton Minmus Outpost/Lander and docked to Minmus Orbital Station One.

Right, time to clear contracts and earn muchos kesos and reputation.

The first one should solve itself as the 7 seat tourist bus fulfilled the requirements for the expansion to Mun Orbital Station One.

But it didn't trigger ...

What? Well, glitch is glitch, start to reseat the tourists who wanted to land on the Mun.

What? Where are they?

Check the contracts, no contracts active ...

I had forgotten to accept the contracts ...

I took some deep breaths, closed KSP, decided that I was worth it and poured myself a stiff single malt.

The next day I abused my automatic backup system and reverted everything that happened that evening ...

Today I started my evening by accepting the 7 contracts, and have now docked 'The Bus' at the Mun Orbital Station One (and ticked off the first contract), shuffled crew so the tourists who wanted a munar landing is in a fully refuelled (robotic) Munar Lander.

(Then RL called and I was obliged to paus for a visit at the local pub for social interaction with SO).

Now for the munar touch'n'go, refuel of the bus, launch the Minmus Outpost/Lander and step by step solve it

 

Edited July 21, 2016 by Curveball Anders
Profanity filter is prissy and doesn't know grammar

[RW-1]

Because you're, Human.

 

and even with 500+ people checking stuff, things happen:

Gravity sensor installed backwards on Genesis.

Mars lander burn up due to miscalculations (metric vs imperial)

I'd go on, but those two stand out for the length of time (and then the mishap) before it was discovered.

[Artheus]

Soo.. my Minmus Surface Observation base [TM] got bugged after attaching a mining rig to it, losing half of the solar panels and most of the mining rig itself. At every load, it flew a few meters in the air. So I wanted to make a new, better base. I came up with the SSMO, the Self-sustaining Minmus Observer, using a biome-hopper rocket with mining attached. The launch (done by a rather expensive 3.75m booster) and everything else went perfectly well, I landed within 500m of MSOB and nothing went to explode. I landed safely and started the Mining process, only to find out that I had forgot to attach an ore tank, since the ISRU has no ore storage on its own..

[pandaman]

My dad once told me 'The man who never made a mistake never made anything'.  So true.

Success is great, but failure is a far better teacher.  I have 'learnt' a hell of a lot in the three years I've been playing KSP.

[magnemoe]

10 minutes ago, Artheus said:

Soo.. my Minmus Surface Observation base [TM] got bugged after attaching a mining rig to it, losing half of the solar panels and most of the mining rig itself. At every load, it flew a few meters in the air. So I wanted to make a new, better base. I came up with the SSMO, the Self-sustaining Minmus Observer, using a biome-hopper rocket with mining attached. The launch (done by a rather expensive 3.75m booster) and everything else went perfectly well, I landed within 500m of MSOB and nothing went to explode. I landed safely and started the Mining process, only to find out that I had forgot to attach an ore tank, since the ISRU has no ore storage on its own..

This is very common, it was also an major issue with kertane back in the days.
Two solutions, first is the small docking ports or USB ports as I call them, simply send an probe with an ore tank, and dock at the port, probe decoples. 
Other is KIS/KAS, who make enginers essential. 
Even with KIS/ KAS the small ports are very useful especially on unmanned stuff, standard on all my satelites who is designed for more than contract or landing and forget.