What is the biggest mission failure you have ever had?

[purpleivan]

On my first manned attempt (after some some unmanned tests) at an Eve return mission, back in the days of v0.24, I found that after flying the vehicle to Eve, getting into orbit, landing and taking it's pilot for a jog around the landing site, it had one fatal flaw

One of the many fuel lines on the vehicle had all that time been blocked partway to its intended recipient of delicious fuel, meaning that the draining of fuel was off balance, dooming its return to orbit.

Here's a pic of the fixed version that finally made it back to Kerbin.

 

Actually it's a pair of failures really, as the original replacement for this vehicle had another design flaw, which thankfully was discovered in Kerbin orbit. So I had to send up another (almost) identical vehicle to meet with it and swap the crew over (can't remember the reason for doing that, other than the ship being named Malzor's Folly after the pilot).

 

[stenole]

I was constructing a space monstrosity in LKO, adding modules one by one. I had one module rendezvous a little too aggressively... I frowned, then I smiled, then I frowned again. I fought with myself to not revert to launch.

[FlyingCola]

Making eeloo return mission, and forgetting the parachute....

[firefly77]

Was performing a manned Duna return mission with Bill, Bob, Jeb, and Val. Being their was only 3 seats in the capsule I put one of the kerbals into a hitchhiker module thinking that I could just ferry the extra Kerbal back down to Kerbin once I'd returned. Long story short, I underestimated my fuel expenditure and my only option was to either ditch the hitchhiker (extra weight, no heat shield on hitchhiker) and just barely get an aerocapture into Kerbin via rcs, or go dancing off into space because I wouldn't have enough fuel to circularize. Needless to say one Kerbal wouldn't be returning home. Jeb bravely took on the task, and is now orbiting for eternity in solar orbit. 

[purpleivan]

16 hours ago, firefly77 said:

Was performing a manned Duna return mission with Bill, Bob, Jeb, and Val. Being their was only 3 seats in the capsule I put one of the kerbals into a hitchhiker module thinking that I could just ferry the extra Kerbal back down to Kerbin once I'd returned. Long story short, I underestimated my fuel expenditure and my only option was to either ditch the hitchhiker (extra weight, no heat shield on hitchhiker) and just barely get an aerocapture into Kerbin via rcs, or go dancing off into space because I wouldn't have enough fuel to circularize. Needless to say one Kerbal wouldn't be returning home. Jeb bravely took on the task, and is now orbiting for eternity in solar orbit. 

Stuck in solar orbit you say... I smell an excuse for a rescue mission.

[Nuclearsheep]

    A flight to the other airbase. I had build a large plane and crash landed on the island. Then i sent a rescue mission to that, which also crashed. 3 attempts later, i flew a badly made rover over and picked up everyone. It was also my first mission.

Edited September 3, 2016 by Nuclearsheep

[Fred Cop]

Any time I try to build an SSTO.

[322997am]

So I was flying a solar glider on eve. I decided to go close to the ground and accelarate away up. But about 300m above the sea, the engines locked up at no thrust. And I could not accelerate away so I wrote that mission off but did build a basic house with the plane and KAS. I rescued him a while later and the game deleted the house as debris.

[Aegolius13]

I got a contract to put a wheeled base on Ike, with 6,000 liquid fuel and a bunch of other stuff.  I planned to land it mostly empty and refill with ISRU.  This was the biggest, most complicated rover build I've done.  

Launching, flying and especially landing were tricky.  I had to do some crazy fuel transfers to keep the thing balanced on landing, since I was using side mounted engines to land wheels-down.  When I finally landed, the rover would not stop rolling due to the wheel bug.  So I had to reload and painstakingly land in another spot.  Then, finally, my rover was ready to refuel and complete the contract.

That's when I realized I forgot to include an ore tank.

[The Raging Sandwich]

Probably when one of my Explorer spacecraft and a lander were docked at Minmus. I tried to undock the lander to go down to the surface and investigate a rover, but 1.1.3 bugs didn't allow it to undock. So I just headed home with the lander still attached. Still docked, I jettisoned the service module and attempted reentry. It started spinning out of control and the capsule exploded. Oh, but of course the lander stayed perfectly intact. 

On 9/9/2016 at 4:52 PM, Fred Cop said:

Any time I try to build an SSTO.

If I could like this multiple times I would! 

Edited September 20, 2016 by The Raging Sandwich

[steedcrugeon]

My second Mun mission. this time I had meticulously planned my stages, worked out roughly how many tanks of fuel I'd need there and back and loaded up on all the science I could get. I remembered parachute's this time round (this is what scuppered my first Mun landing leaving a Kerbal to be rescued. However I had forgotten to set the atmospheric switch on the parachute and it deployed with the drogues. I had not discovered the quicksave and quick load buttons by this point so I watched on helplessly as the return capsule and its occupant collided with the sea at 40m/s. Twas a black day and the second Kerbal lost at my hands, even after so much planning!

[TopHeavy11]

Mine was when I was landing a rather large crew module at my successful Minmus base. Everything was going smoothly when I thought, "Hey the base lights aren't on!"  So I switched vessels mid-landing to turn them on. That's when everything went to krap. I attempted to switch vessels back to the ship, but because of the games "No switching to a vessel that is crashing" protocol, I couldn't. The awful thing was that it was on a direct collision course with the base. I managed to get Velhmy out just in time to watch the module and the base get destroyed all at once. So Vehlmey was stuck on Minmus. She stayed in an old module that was launched pre-1.0 and a rescue mission was sent, which also failed. So now I have 3 Kerbals sitting on Minmus, waiting to be rescued to this day. Out of fear of another failure, I haven't sent another mission for them.

36 minutes ago, The Raging Sandwich said:

but 1.1.3 bugs didn't allow it to undock.

Thank God that hasn't happened to me! But why didn't you mess with the config file for it to undock?

[adsii1970]

Way back in .22, I had  built this monstrocity of a space station that housed 25 Kerbals. I spent the next few days making sure that the station had all 25 Kerbals and took a great sense of pride when I had achieved it. Then the unthinkable happened. While undocking the supply capsule, I accidentally triggered the mainsail engine instead of using the thrusts and knocked the station from its 78k orbit. No matter what I tried, I could not stabilize the orbit With only enough room to evacuate 5, that meant the other 20 would face certain death...

My daughter and I watched in horror as the station entered lower and lower into Kerbin's souposphere. We watched as the station slammed hard into a mountain island, broke apart into a bunch of pieces and explosions, and roll into the sea. Surprisingly, out of the 20 Kerbals on board, two in a science lab survived. Since then, I've had a rule added to my game play - each station or large vessel must have enough escape pods to ensure complete crew evacuation.

[The Raging Sandwich]

46 minutes ago, TopHeavy11 said:

But why didn't you mess with the config file for it to undock?

'Cause I don't know how. Plus, I don't even know what config even means! 

[Sereneti]

A Complete mission to duna, perfekt.

at least, the struckture of the re-entry vehicle was to weak...

[Deaf3279]

My biggest fail... building station within path of other satellite it was pure unlucky.

[W. Kerman]

1 hour ago, Deaf3279 said:

My biggest fail... building station within path of other satellite it was pure unlucky.

AAAA! The website you used for those pics redirected me to a spam website!!!!!

[Provisional Name 12]

Before I discovered quick save (1.0.4 or 1.0.5) I stranded some tourists and crew on the mun and decided to get KIS/KAS and that I would use a winch to tow the lander back. What I didn't realize is that trying to fly a craft around with a winch dangling something below you is hard as hell. Fortunately I did get it off the ground, but had to reconnect the winch every time I had to fast forward time, which was an enormous pain.

Recently I installed a bunch of mods including remote tech and life support and found that my space science station that was around the mun needed coms and a much bigger habitat space. I sent it up with clampotron jr ports and had to use an engineer to place the one on the ship that was there. When I started to use my thrusters at max the craft was bending at the port quite a bit. I had to dial it down to 30%-40% to stop the craft from flailing around and flexing. Not sure how I will get it to minimus orbit but I am probably not going to take it to solar orbit. as I had initially planned. Thinking of de-orbiting it as a minimus station instead. but it would be a pain to put the lander legs on by hand.

[Higgs]

was sending a pair of comm sats to Jool to replace a pair lost to reasons, i failed to notice a building glitch. the docking ports i used were literally melded into each other and acting like a single part. no decouple possible. SO, the mission being lost to a build error, I sent the probes into Jool. Biggest failure in a long while. 3 years game time... <shakes head sullenly, walks off>

[Deaf3279]

2 hours ago, W. Kerman said:

AAAA! The website you used for those pics redirected me to a spam website!!!!!

Sorry! I use photobucket. They used to dont have spam

[Alpha 360]

In career mode I was going to do my first fly-by of the Mun, orbit from the Mun and return. Poor Jebediah. It was doomed from the start. I had forgotten the heat shield. After some very successful sciencing and orbiting, I was returning from the Mun and I finally realized that I didn't have a heatshield. And worst of all was that I had deadly-reentry installed. Now That I think of it, I could have prevented distiaster by Uninstalling deadly-reentry. But you know the rest, I had tried using the transfer stage as my heat shield and in a prefect world it would have worked, but I had the decoupler which is very easy to burn up and after doing some complex manunvers with the Mun trying to slow down enough, I figured out that it was impossible to get back in the atmosphere, but I realised that when I was burning upin the atmosphere for the third time so I let it go for a second and it blew up, so sad.

Edited September 21, 2016 by Alpha 360
"Kouston, we have several problems, but that doesn't matter so we want to continue on with the mission."

[wrobel-cwirek]

Every plane I try to build. EVERY!

[Flamingo]

This might not be the worst fail, but certainly the dumbest.

I've started a new science save in 1.2, and decided to go to Minmus for a couple of easy sciencepoints. It was gonna be harder than i thought, not getting there, but getting back to the ship again. After landing, i decided to go to a nearby slope to get more science, i had control over how much EVA propellant i could use since i did not want to walk back to the ship. But when i came back with just enough EVA propellant to save me from rolling over the surface of Minmus forever, i went over to my ship and remembered something. I do not have the retractable ladders yet, and i just used the stock "PT Munsplorer" to get here, so it doesn't even have other ladders then the one on the pod. So here Jeb stands, just waiting for Val to come pick him up, but she wont, cause she is almost out of fuel orbiting the Mun. I did actually send a mission out to save her, but forgot an extra seat

 

[Higgs]

@Flamingo Mind if i save jeb? You are on minmus, just turn to face the ship. Turn your eva pack on. Jump. Slow your drop with eva and grab the hatch.  

[Nikolai]

2 hours ago, Higgs said:

@Flamingo Mind if i save jeb? You are on minmus, just turn to face the ship. Turn your eva pack on. Jump. Slow your drop with eva and grab the hatch.  

Note the remaining propellant in his pack.  He's going to need to time a good jump, and won't be able to slow himself.