derp question

[rockets-don't-make-toast]

Here's a question for all those who play ksp. what was your biggest derp moment in kerbal space program? like for example you send this lander to gilly for a plant a flag on gilly contract only to forget the kerbal. stuff like that.

[munlander1]

On a rescue mission for my crew on the Mun I landed pretty close to my last lander that ran out of fuel, but when I was eva'ing the kerbal over the kracken desided to show up. The kerbal died and well, the mission ended up being useless.

[George van Doorn]

During a Mun surface rescue mission, I had plenty of fuel to do everything until 500m up with a stage and then dropped it. Too bad I was so precise with my maneuvers that the dropped stage fell on the (what I was hoping to be) soon to be rescued kerbal and killed him! Sometimes, precision is not good for public health and safety ;). 

Edited February 10, 2017 by George van Doorn
clarifications

[Nathair]

Completed an absolutely flawless single launch 4 satellite Remotetech commsat constellation set-up and only then realized I had forgotten to accept the contract for the job before I launched...

Edited February 10, 2017 by Nathair

[p1t1o]

It wasn't really my fault, but on a trip to the Mun, I EVA'd a kerbal to have a look around (as you do) but on attempting to get bakc in, I discovered that my kerbal was already inside, he had been "duplicated" (apparently a known bug) and couldn't get back in because the ship was already full.

Some people reported that if you had a spare seat and got both copies in the same craft they would re-merge.

So I left poor kerbal floating in space for a while until I could send an extra unit with an extra seat to dock to the craft (so I could re-enter duplicate kerbal and try and fix the glitch).

When said extra unit arrived in the vicinity, the floating kerbal had glitched into a weird pyramid-shaped structure approximately the size of minmus...

Yeah, I had to revert to a previous save.

[ottothesilent]

Launched a HUGE Duna exploration mission, you know, station, orbiters, landers, Ike landers, etc. Got there. Forgot Kerbals.

Edited February 10, 2017 by ottothesilent

[pandaman]

I spent ages (an hour or more) trying to dock to a spent stage in LKO to deorbit it, but nothing worked.  No matter how carefully I lined up and gently approached the target it just refused to dock and bounced off...

...Then I realised I got the docking port on my retrieval ship the wrong way round.  That was the standard sized Clamp-o-Tron too, not even the Senior (which is a bit less obvious which way round it goes).  

[Blaarkies]

3 minutes ago, pandaman said:

I spent ages (an hour or more) trying to dock to a spent stage in LKO to deorbit it, but nothing worked.  No matter how carefully I lined up and gently approached the target it just refused to dock and bounced off...

...Then I realised I got the docking port on my retrieval ship the wrong way round.  That was the standard sized Clamp-o-Tron too, not even the Senior (which is a bit less obvious which way round it goes).  

Back in 1.1 with all those docking port bugs, i just decided to go all claw from now on...all the kraken-claw bugs were literally less frustrating

[Stewcumber]

Went to exchange crews at my LKO space station after a year in space, docked my shuttle with space station, no crew available to transfer... forgot them at KSC

Edited February 10, 2017 by Stewcumber

[p1t1o]

I presume we've all at one point sent up a manned craft with absolutely no power storage or generation, forcing an abort as soon as the capsule battery runs out a few seconds after main engine cutoff?

[Firemetal]

When I was trying to do an Eve round trip, I first had the idea for a very complicated mission where I would send the lander there and send a refueling rover to refuel it. I ended up scrapping that idea because I forgot the antenna for communications.  

Fire

[Sharpy]

Proceeded through all steps of a rather complex contract, except forgot to accept the contract first.

[MinimalMinmus]

Probably when I realised the wheels of my science module for my munbase were wrongly placed, so when I try turning half try to turn in the right direction and half in the wrong one... Fortunately I had BonVoyage so it didn't hinder my mobile base, but GOSH it was frustrating.

[KerikBalm]

docking ports the wrong way, decouplers moutned the wrong way. control point set to the wrong direction (quickload fixes that).

Early on, when I was attempting what I hoped to be my first mun successful landing - I didn't quite know the interface and I was clicking on my parts just to see what came up.

I didn't realize what the green arrow vs red x meant on the fuel tanks. My lander had 2x lv-909s each under a fl-t200. several minutes after I was derping around with the tanks, I was approaching the ground - I waspaying careful attention to my descent rate vs how quickly I should have been able to decelerate... so that I wouldn't start the suicide burn too late.

So I fired my engines... only one fired, the craft spun around and around and around... I didn't get it under control and realize what I had done and why one engine wasn't firing until it was far too late..

[Waxing_Kibbous]

8 hours ago, Firemetal said:

When I was trying to do an Eve round trip, I first had the idea for a very complicated mission where I would send the lander there and send a refueling rover to refuel it. I ended up scrapping that idea because I forgot the antenna for communications.  

Fire

Always the freakin' antennas, my #1 forgotten thing.

[Spacetraindriver]

Built a huge craft with jets...

Takes a LONG and I mean a LONG time to load.

Forgot Air Intakes

[Snark]

For the Nth time, got into orbit, rendezvoused with the stranded kerbal's derelict, got the stranded kerbal on the ladder to my rescue ship, only to discover that Jeb had stowed away in the capsule and there was nowhere to put the poor schmuck.

(Eventually this happened enough times that I got sufficiently ticked off to write a mod to make this never happen again.  It was easier than teaching myself not to do this.)

For the Nth time, launched a craft with lots of deployable solar panels on it... but forgot to put them in an action group, and don't discover this until I get it to orbit.  So any time I want to extend/retract, I have to tediously find every single one (often in the dark) and manually extend or retract them.  Grrr.

(Eventually this happened enough times that I got sufficiently ticked off to write a mod to make this never happen again.  It was easier than teaching myself not to do this.)

Things I've learned from the experience:

• I am a being motivated primarily by annoyance
• I am a slow learner

[natsirt721]

Brought a dual sided klaw chassis (no probe core) to allow my fuel truck to attach to the next series of landers.  Dropped it on the surface, but forgot to extend the klaws.

[Scoh]

Back when I was just starting my Mun missions for the first time I had an issue with a ship being a bit too tall and narrow and I landed on a hill just a bit too steep. My rocket tipped over slowly and I had already learned that a horizontal launch along the ground is not that great of an idea. I sent up my rescue ship which was admittedly almost exactly the same ship (took science parts off the top thinking it would help stabilize it on the hill). My rescue ship did the exact same slow motion fall as my first rocket. Rescue mission 2 was launched and I attempted, only god knows why, to land between the two rockets. I clipped my landing gear on one ship with just a bit of horizontal velocity and panicked and sent my 2nd rescue ship hurtling into my ship with my Kerbal at an alarming speed. Rescue mission 3 was not necessary

Edited February 11, 2017 by Scoh
Typo correction

[George van Doorn]

11 minutes ago, Scoh said:

Back when I was just starting my Mun missions for the first time I had an issue with a ship being a bit too tall and narrow and I landed on a hill just a bit too steep. My rocket tipped over slowly and I had already learned that a horizontal launch along the ground is not that great of an idea. I sent up my rescue ship which was admittedly almost exactly the same ship (took science parts off the top thinking it would help stabilize it on the hill). My rescue ship did the exact same slow motion too as my first rocket. Rescue mission 2 was launched and I attempted, only god knows why, to land between the two rockets. I clipped my landing gear on one ship with just a bit of horizontal velocity and panicked and sent my 2nd rescue ship hurtling into my ship with my Kerbal at an alarming speed. Rescue mission 3 was not necessary

What do you mean horizontal launches are a bad idea? Sometimes they're the only idea ;).

 

 

[munlander1]

7 minutes ago, George van Doorn said:

What do you mean horizontal launches are a bad idea? Sometimes they're the only idea ;).

 

With wheels it's great!

[George van Doorn]

Just now, munlander1 said:

With wheels it's great!

That's not the KSP (improvising when you **** it up) way.

[Epicdreamer]

Launched a kerballed Mun biome hopper. Landed the craft nicely on the mun and discovered that I forgot to give the ship enough batteries/ec. So I launched another craft to give the biome hopper a few batteries and solar panels (playing with kis/kas). Landed the supply-ship nicely a few tens of meters away from the biome hopper to discover I forgot to bring along a wrench...

[KerikBalm]

11 hours ago, Waxing_Kibbous said:

Always the freakin' antennas, my #1 forgotten thing.

Well, I've been playing for a lot longer than antennas were necessary, and most of the time forgetting an antenna just meant you couldn't get the science until you returned the entire craft.

Recently I semi-derped in the deployment of my Mun base... I built a minmus base with a skycrane style lander dropping modules. I had saved a version of it as a subassemly intending to launch it via a spaceplane, but then just built a rocket below it.

Then I went to make a Mun base, and I just dropped the subassembly into my SSTO's payload slot, and launched it with no thought... after all, it worked for the minmus base with no issues, right?

Wrong... at some point between saving it as a subassemly, and building the rocket to launch it, I added an antenna and solar panels. Its only a semi-derp though, because it still has substantial battery power, and the surface base core was self landing and had a RA-100 relay on it. I additionally had a RA-100 relay on my Mun station in orbit.

The basic internal antenna on probe cores was good enough for low kerbin orbit and the transfer burn to Mun. With hibernation, the battery was enough for the transfer, and the relays around Mun were enough to control the probe most of the time (and the other times, the partial control level with the probes ability to orient prograde/retrograde/toward a preplace maneuver node, etc, was sufficient). At times I revert to partial control on the probe, but so far every module it docks with to take down to the surface has battery/solar on it, and the battery is sufficient to get to orbit and dock with something that can recharge it...

so I made do with it, despite intending to have an antenna and solar panels on it.

There it is on the left sticking up vertically from the ground modules, no solar panels, no antenna... derp

Spoiler

 

[tg626]

Antennas these days, now that they are important.  I either forget them or badly comprehend their range.  Comprehension is improving, but I still forget.  Usually realizing it after I've built it with construction time...

Not leaving empty seats on rescue contracts is another fav...