What is the biggest mission failure you have ever had?

[Ultimate Steve]

1 hour ago, Terwin said:

if the ship was light enough to lift off from the surface, it did not have enough fuel to reach orbit.

Basically my Moho mission in a nutshell.

[Wildcat111]

What was the most tragic thing that happened to you in KSP? The most tragic thing that happened to me was when an armed bomb in my airplane exploded in the cargo bay. There were no survivors.

Edited August 10, 2016 by Wildcat111

[DualDesertEagle]

I made a huge somewhat Concorde-looking plane with an MK3 Cockpit and 5 MK3 passenger modules all full of kerbals. It was just during a turn that I realized I forgot to stiffen it out with some struts coz it broke apart and sent 84 kerbals on their trip to hell.

[Wildcat111]

1 minute ago, DualDesertEagle said:

I made a huge somewhat Concorde-looking plane with an MK3 Cockpit and 5 MK3 passenger modules all full of kerbals. It was just during a turn that I realized I forgot to stiffen it out with some struts coz it broke apart and sent 84 kerbals on their trip to hell.

I'm sorry for your loss.

[magnemoe]

20 hours ago, Aragosnat said:

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.

Same here, even if its recorded it has to be awesome to post here. 

I have one epic one with an huge miner lander tries to land on Mun back in 0.20, its a bit top heavy and too high horizontal speed to its tips over, this invokes some kraken as parts fly suborbital over half the Mun, its look much better in map mode but screenshot is lost, the fun part was that the MK2 landing can was not damaged and one of the few parts left. 

You also have pure bugs who can give awesome results but also an fast reload. 

KAS kraken, my minmus base might randomly explode then hooking up ships for refueling. 
Not an issue other places, disconecting everything from the mining module before docking the landed ship solves it. 
 

[spacebrick3]

In 1.0.5, I attempted the Eve Return Mission. The lander was a huge monstrosity of SpaceY 5m parts and Vector engines, and was pushed to Eve by a huge transfer stage of around 11000 liquid fuel and 4 Nervs. Once it got there, the landing took some doing due to the lagginess, wobbliness of the structure, and the fact that the parachutes insisted on breaking every time. 

Once it was landed, I decoupled the parachutes and watched as the decoupler hit one of my fins, breaking it. "No problem," I thought, "I'll just reload the quick save and try again." I reload the quick save, and immediately one of the lander legs crumples, smashing the whole thing into the ground. This happens on multiple attempts, until one time it didn't crumple.

"Okay," I thought, "I'll just plant the flag and leave. No need to jettison the parachutes." After climbing down the extensively tested ladder system and planting the flag, on the way back up it turns out the extensively tested ladder system doesn't work. 

I reload the quick save, and (after a couple tries), the lander leg doesn't break. I decide to just take off, and not even bother with a flag. But as soon as I hit "space", I discover the most basic design flaw. 

It does not have enough thrust to take off.

Having jettisoned the lander legs on "takeoff" , the ship crashed into the ground, leaving a field of debris and Jeb sitting there in his Lander Can, smiling happily at the destruction all around him.

I ragequit and delete the save as well as all my mods.

 

 

[valens]

Planning an orbital rendez-vous with MechJeb and watching my ship blasting through the station it was supposed to join.  Thanks for quicksave — wish I had taken screenshots though.

[vsully]

4 hours ago, valens said:

Planning an orbital rendez-vous with MechJeb and watching my ship blasting through the station it was supposed to join.  Thanks for quicksave — wish I had taken screenshots though.

It did join. It was just an aggressive joining.

My greatest tragedy was probably my recreation of the B-57 Canberra bomber. I was doing practice bombing runs on the launchpad, and when I banked away to avoid the blast, I flew straight into that dang water tower. Blew myself, the launchpad, and the water tower to bits. And I wasn't able to revert to save the crew for some reason. And that crew was Jeb and Bob!

Edited August 11, 2016 by vsully

[Combatsmithen]

Way back in KSP .21 I spent months building a space station around kerbin, a mun base, a minimus base and station, the station was going to travel to duna and beyond. It was equipped with kethane storage and processing, a kerballed lander, another kerballed mining lander and was propelled by nuclear engines. It was going to be my first time sending kerbals to interplanetary space (on purpose) and landiing them on another planet. As I throttled up the engines the landers flexed on the docking ports and if I accelerated too hard they would rip off. I was so sad. I didn't realize that things connected to docking ports flexed like that. I was super hyped and then I went to a super low. And didn't play KSP for a month or two.

[Clancy]

Early in my first career, once I had aircraft pretty much figured out, I accepted a mission to collect soil samples in the Highlands near the north pole. I build a small one-kerbal Mk1 plane and flew there, piloted by Ace Pilot Stelicca Kerman. After a few circles, I found a flat spot to land within walking distance of the Alpha site, so I landed, got out and walked to the target zone. I took the sample and started walking back. Then I had this conversation with myself:

"Hey, is the plane moving?"

"It looks like it's moving slowly backwards."

"It's moving faster! You set the parking brake didn't you?"

"..."

"RUN! We can still catch it!"

Stelicca ran as fast as he little legs could carry her. She almost reached the ladder just before the plane pitched over the edge of a cliff and smashed to bits 70m below.

I recovered Stelicca and what was left of the plane, but I still had two soil samples to get. I built another plane and flew again to the Beta site. Had to land on a hillside for this one but if I pointed the nose uphill and set the parking brake, the plane stayed put. Stelicca got out to collect the next sample. as soon as she's off the ladder, the plane tips up until it's resting on its tail. it doesn't roll downhill, but the ladder was dangling a few meters off the ground, out of Stelicca's reach. I had to recover them separately again and fly back again. Three planes for three soil samples. Not a major loss, but definitely a facepalm moment.

[Wildcat111]

3 hours ago, vsully said:

And that crew was Jeb and Bob!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Edited August 11, 2016 by Wildcat111

[Ultimate Steve]

My hardcore career mode. I had just spent millions of funds on a crew transfer architecture for my Mun and Minmus bases.

Long story short, as the crew SSTO was returning to Kerbin after picking up crew that had been on the Mun for a few years, it crashed into the runway light, killing all 6.

[Cunjo Carl]

On 8/11/2016 at 7:28 PM, Ultimate Steve said:

My hardcore career mode. I had just spent millions of funds on a crew transfer architecture for my Mun and Minmus bases.

Long story short, as the crew SSTO was returning to Kerbin after picking up crew that had been on the Mun for a few years, it crashed into the runway light, killing all 6.

Given how fragile the runway is, those lights are absolutely brutal.... I hope your agency/play-through recovered!

 

Edited August 13, 2016 by Cunjo Carl

[Deddly]

Two similar threads merged. Hope I didn't mess up anyone's conversation too badly.

[nascarlaser1]

Today I had the largest lost of life yet in my KSP lifetime. Space Taxi 1 was meant to take 13 Kerbals to Kerbin orbit, and possibly the Mun orbit as well. It never got to the atmosphere. The thing flipped over not long after launch and crash landed about 1km west of the launch pad. 1 survivor :(. Memorial to it is in progress, and Space Taxi 1's project has been totally scrapped and is no longer in development till further notice. R.I.P. 97% of my entire group of remaining astronauts and what was left of my self esteam.

Edited August 13, 2016 by nascarlaser1

[Andem]

The Odysseus lander. Two kerbals, to the Munar surface. They would be the second crew to do do so, but their mission will be remembered far more vividly. During liftoff to return to Kerbin, I accidentally hit EVA instead of IVA. I switched over to save the first kerbal, and then realized that the lander's engine was still running. So I, being a complete noob, chose to EVA THE OTHER KERBAL. They starved to death on the cold, munar surface.

[Sam Forte]

Made my first interplanetary ship to tuna in career. with Tac Life Support and all my kerbal died because I forgot to turn on the life support. 

[Sputnik 1]

So we all have had failures in ksp, but what is the absolute worst one you have had to deal with?

For me it would be one of two missions, after Valentina made a round trip to Duna she was killed after I realized that my parachute for landing on Kerbin was already used when I landed on Duna's surface. She splashed into the ocean at around 500 mph, losing about 3000 science and over 1,000,000 funds.

 

The second mission was also supposed to be for Duna, I spent three days building an interplanetary ship in LKO for six kerbals, however I had greatly underestimated how much fuel I would need to get in an escape trajectory and ended up having to slingshot around the mun to get the required delta V, but of course something had to go horribly wrong. While passing a few hundred meters over the moon I started a burn with my mailsail engine that I had not used yet. Well the stress was too much for my poor docking ports to handle and the ship split into four pieces, that proceeded to smash into each other. Half the crew was instantly killed while the other half (Propelled by the collisions) smashed straight into the mun's surface. There were no survivors 

[septemberWaves]

I think probably the biggest disaster I had was back in 0.90 when I first started playing. It was around the time that I was just beginning to understand how to put a rocket together to visit the Mun - the key phrase being "beginning to understand". I had yet to figure out how to dock, so all of my missions at that time had to be direct ascent. I also didn't know how to quicksave.

So I sent a kerbal to the Mun. The lander fell over. I sent a rescue mission: an uncrewed command pod with a probe core for control.. I neglected to include solar panels, so that mission flew straight past the Mun. The next mission I sent involved two command pods, one of which contained a pilot. I managed to land that within a couple of kilometers of the initial lander (oddly enough, precision landing from low orbits has never posed much of a challenge for me). Of course, that lander fell over too. I think I ended up having to send a mission to Minmus in order to unlock the 3-kerbal command pod, after which I sent a third rescue mission to the Mun to recover both of the kerbals who remained stranded there. That one was a success.

Another disaster I had was failing to include enough fuel in the ascent module of a Mun lander (this one used the Munar orbit rendezvous technique). I managed to EVA my kerbals into Munar orbit, but I forgot to pick up the several hundred points of science data that had been collected, and so the entire mission ended up being fruitless.

[nascarlaser1]

Space Taxi 1. Was meant to carry 13 Kerbals to Kerbin orbit and back. It never left the atmosphere. 2 minutes after launch something wen't wrong and flipped it over, sending it hurtling into the ground 1km south of the runway. out of all 13 Kerbals, 1 survived the disaster. Tat has been my biggest unintentional loss of life in the game so far. R.I.P. crew of Space Taxi 1

[Deddly]

A third similar thread merged in

[dazhat]

While aerobraking around Duna realised the landing legs were on upside-down 

[KerikBalm]

mission to duna and ike... lots of biome hopping, collected all the science... did other things, planets flags on other worlds, deleted flags, etc.

Check transfer windows... duna return is finally here!.... where is my vessel? my massive ship carrying 6 3 start kerbals including all the original 4... its nowhere to be found?

Did I delete the whole darn mission by mistake?

Digging through old files and tedious scrolling in the text editor, and I was able to re-add the ship and get it going.... but.... deletion of the entire mission is a pretty big failure

[Sonny_Jim]

39 minutes ago, KerikBalm said:

where is my vessel? my massive ship carrying 6 3 start kerbals including all the original 4... its nowhere to be found?

Did I delete the whole darn mission by mistake?

I've had exactly the same happen recently, and like you it was around Duna.  I do all my sciencing, including a little jaunt to the surface and back up again.  Put it in a nice parking orbit, set a reminder for the transfer window and went off and did something else.

 

Transfer window arrived, I went to go find the ship and *poof* it's vanished.  Unfortunately I couldn't find an old save to recreate it so unfortunately I've lost ol' Bill Kerman :\

 

I'm 99% there was nothing that was going to affect the orbit (ie wasn't close to Ike or anything) but I just shrugged and guessed that I must have left it a bit too close to Ikes orbit.  Having read your post it makes me wonder if it isn't a bug of some kind though.

 

Anyone else had a craft mysteriously disappear whilst in orbit of Duna?

[KerikBalm]

well, I had another ship that disappeared that was in a very similar orbit... they were actuallyin orbit of ike... PE was about 11km... maybe that was too low

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Ike#Topography

I guess I should have checked it better