What is the biggest mission failure you have ever had?

[Firemetal]

The mk1 cockpit is not very heat resistant. When I was about to re-enter Kerbin, my game crashed and I lost the opportunity to revert. Jeb then blew up. I spent half an hour trying to get him back and went to sleep very upset. No problem really since I got him back the next day but that was a horrible experience.

[dafidge9898]

On 7/28/2016 at 10:38 AM, JacobJHC said:

Simple as that. What is the biggest letdown/ failure you have ever had in KSP. Mine was probably the time I was attempting the Jool 5 challenge and met the Kraken out at Tylo, resulting in the loss of the lander's ability to function. So what's yours?

I was playing Realism Overhaul, and my space station ran out of supplies. I sent up a resupply probe. It took a long time for me to rendezvous with the station because I had not yet mastered the skill of under 10 hour orbital rendezvous (my rendezvous took about 4 days). I was burning to match velocities with the space station, and when I was only 500 meters out from the station, the crew died from dehydration. All seven of them. Like, the timing couldn't be worse. 

[MedwedianPresident]

24 minutes ago, dafidge9898 said:

I was playing Realism Overhaul, and my space station ran out of supplies. I sent up a resupply probe. It took a long time for me to rendezvous with the station because I had not yet mastered the skill of under 10 hour orbital rendezvous (my rendezvous took about 4 days). I was burning to match velocities with the space station, and when I was only 500 meters out from the station, the crew died from dehydration. All seven of them. Like, the timing couldn't be worse. 

If you are using a Life Support mod, you should maybe add a emergency contingency module that contains supplies for those situations when ships arriving are about to run out of supplies or air at a distance of less than 20 kilometers from the station. These supplies may be either delivered via EVA (either a Kerbal from the station takes a spacewalk or somebody from the shuttle gets it) or via unmanned probes that are launched at low to medium speed in the direction of the shuttle.

[MedwedianPresident]

I usually don't record failures explicitly because they are normal, but a couple of minutes ago I launched a rocket that I reinforced with many struts which still wobbled like a wet noodle and exploded in midair upon commencing gravity turn.

[Peder]

I build a big interplanetary ship that had everything in the cargo such as rovers/base/tanker/drilling rig, crane and allot of other stuff.
It took me like 10 launch and docking in orbit to assemble the ship.

Finaly the moment came to travel towards duna, and I fire up the engines and see my long ship compress and the dockings ports exploded due to the enormous presure from the engines..
When the docking ports collaps the rear of the ship having the engines basicly blast though the middle and front of the ship crushing everything making it explode.

Later I reload the ship and tried again and again, but found out that no matter what i did my ship would never fly streight due to it being more heavy some places than others..  ;-(

I ended up taking the ship apart and using the various things in other ships and missions.

Edited August 7, 2016 by Peder

[specialopsdave]

Heading to Eve to plant a lander on it's surface. After one hour of work, I realized that I had failed to remember parachutes. Or landing legs.

[JacobJHC]

On 7/29/2016 at 10:17 AM, cantab said:

Physically biggest failure: This RUD of a large (4,000 tons to orbit) refueller.

Oh my god. This may be the most kerbal image on this website.

[Xyphos]

One time, my manned space probe launcher SSTO took off and flew without it's crew; I didn't realize it until after the probe was released and I couldn't de-orbit the spaceplane;
it was also the first time I had to send up an emergency rescue mission, to rescue a vessel instead of a Kerbal.

Edited August 8, 2016 by Xyphos

[Magzimum]

Biggest facepalm: Building a very efficient rocket with KLAW as well as tourist accomodation, to do a Minmus tourist-landing and to retrieve some lost piece of equipment around Minmus. Nailed two missions in a single flight, only to find out I forgot to add parachutes to my ship. I had save games, so I had a good laugh, fixed it and nailed it completely in the next hour.

Biggest actual problem: My Eve mission consisted of 3 ships: A lander, a return vessel, and some auxilliary fuel in a 3rd drone ship. Took me 2 days to build it, test it, fly it to Eve, refuel the lander in Eve-orbit, only to find out that no matter what I try, the lander would flip to prograde (the heat shield was at the back side) in Eve's atmosphere, and then explode. I had to go back to my saved game of several days before and just start from scratch. 

[X-SR71]

Biggest facepalm: Planned a long term laythe mission, where I would deploy a bunch of small ISRUs around the various islands, send a plane, and play around exploring and refueling everywhere, eventually establishing a base there.

 

Many days spent building the extractors and the transfer ship, fitting everything together. Half a million credits mission. Sent the whole thing to laythe.

 

When getting there, surprise surprise! Laythe is mineral miserable! Ore is present on only one island, and even then, the concentration is like 1%, which my small drills can't extract. Couldn't use the extractors on any other moon, as they would depend on chutes to land.

 

Was so disappointed I let the whole contraption burn and explode in the atmosphere.

[linuxgurugamer]

For me it was my first real space station.  Built with 1.25m parts, it was longer, skinny and had reaction wheels in several places.  Switched to it, and watched on disbelief as it started oscillating back and forth until it exploded

[Mycroft]

I think mine was when I *cough* accidentally crashed a 101,000 ton ship carrying 220 Kerbals into the VAB. Biggest explosion I have ever seen in KSP. I didn't have the heart to let the poor Kerbals stay dead, so I reverted.

[Jarkko279]

I remember one mission to mun. It was a kethanne drill thingy, with 2 orange tanks and wheels. I get the thing to mun orbit no problem, but i screwed up the landing and the thing toppled, it was upside down basically, but intact.

Now im thinkin what am i gonna do. So i built this foldable driveable crane thingy with winches and excrements. infernall robotics and some I spent pretty much a whole weekend on it. plannin and testing at kerbin, the hardest part was to actually make it fold symmetrically (COM) so that you could put it in top of a rocket in a fairing and launch it  , i play with ferram. Once at the destination and the crane to folded I had to use those struts that you can place with your kerbal during EVA to make the thing rigdid enough,it was rather high. Probably my best design with robotics. But the mission was a succes, and i got my kethane mining operation goin. And it was alll for fun and profit. This must be couple years back..

 

[Xyphos]

6 hours ago, Jarkko279 said:

So i built this foldable driveable crane thingy with winches and excrements. infernall robotics and some I spent pretty much a whole weekend on it.

you could have just landed an engineer on it, KAS a winch and skycrane'd it as the kerbal left the mun, released it, and try the landing again, but I suppose the use of infernal robotics was a great challenge, I find them too wobbly and unstable to actually use.

[Stratzenblitz75]

I once tried to build a giant rocket SSTO:

I did manage to get it off the pad eventually. Unfortunately, it would usually have an "anomaly" half way through the flight.

 

[Xyphos]

5 minutes ago, Stratzenblitz75 said:

"anomaly"

we call those, RUD

[Aragosnat]

I usually don't record my RUDs as they usually happen in Kerbin's SOI or nearish to the launch pad. I'm still capable of making basic mistakes dispite many many hours into playing the game.

[ag3nt108]

without doubt my experiment with mining, spanning multiple days and many different vehicles and stations. Its currently useless as over time the various bugs have destroyed modules, solar panels and eventually even all the tyres on my craft.  It left around 7 kerbels stranded at various locations in space and cost millions and millions of Kerbal dollars.  Eventually even my probes at the landing site exploded I'm still not entirely sure why,

[W. Kerman]

Massive 1700 ton craft using asparagus staging with no struts, yeah, you guy know what happened next.

[magnemoe]

Most memorable was my first mission to Eve, probe mission who wanted to land rovers on Eve and Gilly, this was back in 0.18 so it was an one piece moded probe rover, 
three rovers around an 720 liter fuel tank as carrier, each rover had an small decent and deorbit stage. two had parachutes for eve and both was mounted on the lower part of carrier next to the LV-N.
Deploy rover 1, found that the two bottom ones had the decopler the wrong way so it blocked the engine, put carrier suborbital and dropped second rover for Eve, it landed but splashed down in the middle of ocean.
Of to Gilly, this took more dV than expected, I hoped the rover decent stage had enough fuel to land me on Gilly so I used the last fuel to put the carrier on impact trajectory with Gilly,
Decople rover, press space  once more to activate engine, quicksave and find that second push had decopled rover from decent stage. all 3 parts hit Gilly
 

[Jarkko279]

7 hours ago, Xyphos said:

you could have just landed an engineer on it, KAS a winch and skycrane'd it as the kerbal left the mun, released it, and try the landing again, but I suppose the use of infernal robotics was a great challenge, I find them too wobbly and unstable to actually use.

Yeah totally could have, but thats not the point  Did it just for the challenge. Iwe build all sorts of things with infernal robotics. If you have akward payloads, iwe used IR many times to fold payload to smaller dimension, for example wheels of a big rover.. But you should never attach IR parts to docking ports, it messes the mod up big time. Dont know how it is today, iwe been away from KSP for almost a year. Just thinkin of jumpin back in..

[IncongruousGoat]

Let's see...

Most time lost: I was testing a Grand Tour ship, or more specifically the bit designed to go to the inner system. Got all the way through landings on Eve, Gilly, and Moho, including a monstrously tedious few hours aerobraking at Eve, just to realize that, as I returned to Kerbin, I had underestimated the amount of delta-V I would need. After that, the 600+ part save file for the vessel corrupted, and I was forced to abandon the mission. Efforts to reconstitute the save file and rethink the design have proved futile, as the asymmetrical payload is, needless to say, difficult to launch.

Biggest facepalm: Doing an unamnned Mun flyby for the caveman challenge. The rocket flew like a charm, the payload got to the Mun, collected science, and even survived all of re-entry, at which point I realized that I had forgotten the parachute, and that I couldn't revert because I had loaded a quicksave.

[KerikBalm]

On 8/8/2016 at 6:49 PM, X-SR71 said:

Biggest facepalm: Planned a long term laythe mission, where I would deploy a bunch of small ISRUs around the various islands, send a plane, and play around exploring and refueling everywhere, eventually establishing a base there.

 

Many days spent building the extractors and the transfer ship, fitting everything together. Half a million credits mission. Sent the whole thing to laythe.

 

When getting there, surprise surprise! Laythe is mineral miserable! Ore is present on only one island, and even then, the concentration is like 1%, which my small drills can't extract. Couldn't use the extractors on any other moon, as they would depend on chutes to land.

 

Was so disappointed I let the whole contraption burn and explode in the atmosphere.

#1) This is why I send scanning probes before sending a large mission

#2) You may have given up too easily. Minerals are distributed by biome, but the overlay averages things geometrically. That overlay is really really bad.

As the ocean biome is set to always have 0 ore, when you get the "smear" effect from the interpolation of the overlay, islands with ore can rapidly disappear. Additionally, I think the biome map is rather bad:

Spoiler

Note that in many cases, entire islands lack any "shores" or "dunes" biome, and their biome is "the sagen sea"... set to 0 ore by default.

In my game the shores and dunes biomes do have ore (not much, but its there)... so finding ore means finding the narrow shores band of biome (note for some islands, its basically a dot)... which is oddly enough not at the shores. In theory, you should be able to find a fair amount of ore at those biomes shown above... but the areas are so small, and the survey scanner's overlay is so bad, that I don't see any ore show up on the overlay, even when there actually is ore. You need to use the narrow band scanner, or make a scout plane to go fly to the locations and use the surface scanner.

IMO, they reallly need to fix the laythe biome map so that the "shores" biome actually corresponds to the shores of the islands, and that half the landmass isn't reduced to 0 ore as if it was underwater (and for that matter, why can't we have underwater ore now that water related stuff has improved?!) I've considered "fixing" the laythe biome map myself.

Until then, I built my laythe bases to be air-mobile so I can relocate them to other islands

Spoiler

Test base on KSC runway:

Load individual modules in orbit, deliver 1 at a time to surface:

Mun Test-Base

Testing deployment and retreival of modules on Laythe:

More testing... an orbital rapier and turboramjet variant, and a panther+wheesley amphibious variant:

 

 

My point is there's probably more places with ore on laythe than you think, its just harder to find

[proxyde]

I'm still recovering from my biggest mission failure.

I built an aircraft that would glide the Duna skies, landing in different biomes to collect lots of science.  It has LFO engines to give the glider a boost now and then, but it has a pretty good unpowered glide.

I spent hours in my career game designing the plane.  I even ran "simulations" by transferring the craft file to a sandbox game and using HyperEdit to put the craft to Duna orbit.  That way I could test entry, lift, maneuverability, and flight range/duration in Duna's atmosphere.  After many simulations and design improvements, I was satisfied with how my plane performed.

I built a suitable launch vehicle (it's not SSTO--I can't get those to work), which was no small feat as it's a fairly large plane.  I selected Valentina as my pilot and Gilina as mission scientist and launched to Duna!

My plane performed beautifully on entry and flew magnificently through Duna's atmosphere.  I was excited to set her down and start collecting science data, so I selected a landing site and descended.

The one thing I forgot to simulate:  Landing.

I knew that Duna's atmosphere is much thinner than Kerbin's, so my design accounted for it with larger lifting surfaces and more control surfaces, but it didn't occur to me that even with larger wings, my ship needs to be going much faster to maintain the same amount of lift.  It's not a big deal flying around through the air, but when I tried to land, I was going much faster than I had anticipated just to keep from falling out of the sky.  If I had a really long, flat surface to land on, I could set the plane down no problem.  But there were no landing strips in sight.  I tried landing it probably 30 times, and each time ended in explosive disaster.

I eventually decided to abort the landing, and I had enough fuel to return to orbit.  Now Valentina and Gilina are stuck in orbit for a few years awaiting rescue. 

I've improved the design with copious airbrakes and a pair of Mk-55 Thud retrorockets, and simulations show that I can land it pretty well on Duna's dunes (and take off again).  I'm just waiting for the next Duna launch window!  The spoiler has a pic of my science glider stuck in orbit:

Spoiler

 

[Terwin]

Probably my biggest uncorrected fail would be when my grand tour hauled an asteroid into low Tylo orbit for refueling after achieving or bit, only to discover that if the ship was light enough to lift off from the surface, it did not have enough fuel to reach orbit.

I loaded a pre-landing save and resumed my partial tour, but Lathe and Tylo are still on my list of 'never visited with a Kerbal' (Eve is the only other member of that list)

 

More recently, I Was trying to deliver a refueling base to Moho in preparation for a manned mission, but it did not have enough fuel to land. 

The first fuel tanker was too aggressive and did not have enough remaining fuel to meet up with the refueling base.

The second one did not look to be much better.

The third tanker seemed to be on a much better approach(stopping by the Eve fuel station for a refill), but the second tanker actually arrived with enough fuel to allow a landing, so it turned out to be unneeded.

 

In a later game(1.0.5) another fuel-station fail occurred when I was attempting to refill my Eve Scansat at my Gilly fuel station, but it refused to send the fuel drone.

Turns out USI-MKS had deactivated the logistics center functionality, making my Gilly fuel station little more than a elf-fueling rescue pod.  (I also had a fuel station on Ike and one approaching the Jool SOI, but without logistics, they were just expensive probes without science on board.