derp question

[HvP]

19 hours ago, Spacetraindriver said:

Built a huge craft with jets...

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

Forgot Air Intakes

Yes, it's always me too with the forgotten intakes. It's so annoying to believe you've got the perfect balance on a craft only to go out to the runway and hear that pathetic little *pfftt* sound as your engines immediately flame out. Thank goodness for radial intakes.

-

My most memorable derp moment had me trying to attach a robotic arm to my orbital station using Infernal Robotics and KIS/KAS. I thought I had it planned out brilliantly. The arm would be folded up underneath a fairing on the top of the delivery rocket with a docking port to separate them. There was an open docking port on the top of the station to accept the new arm assembly. My plan was to approach the station with the delivery vehicle; reach out with the arm and grasp the side of the station with the electromagnet; undock the arm assembly from the delivery vehicle and then use the arm in reverse to attach itself to the docking port on the station. I had remembered to make sure there was a probe core on the arm assembly so that I would maintain control throughout the process.

It was going well. Getting the electromagnet to attach to a handy place on the side of my station was a bit delicate, but after several minutes of repositioning I was ready to undock from the delivery vehicle. Undocking was uneventful, and the arm was folding in nicely while I slowly teased the two docking ports almost into line with each other. At about five meters from contact I watched helplessly as the electromagnet shut down and disconnected, leaving my powerless arm assembly to tumble serenely off to one side, dead. The probe core, now my only source of power, had run out.

I remembered to bring enough batteries with me to operate the robotic arm, but it helps to put them on the stage that needs them instead of leaving them behind with the delivery vehicle when you undock.

Edited February 11, 2017 by HvP

[Zeiss Ikon]

My recurring mental failure is leaving out decouplers (and once a heat shield), or duplicating heat shields.  Duplicate heat shields do no real harm, other than being a mass penalty (costs dV), but missing decouplers, (especially under a command pod with no engine, hence preventing explosive decoupling) and heat shields cause trouble.  Had to cancel a Mun landing for that, because I couldn't detach the lander from the transfer stage command pod (and explosive decoupling was a bad idea, both because of the transfer stage pilot and because the lander wouldn't have enough dV to get home from Mun after an attempt to land -- which was the only reason decoupling was needed).

Recently, I had a lander without a decoupler between the ascent stage tanks and the command pod; wound up reentering on a Mun return with the full ascent stage.  Held up fairly well, fortunately; the lower of the pair of 1.25 m RCS tanks and a couple Puff engines exploded, but the command pod was intact when the vessel slowed enough to jettison the heat shield (still attached to the second RCS tank).  I've seen in a video of an early-career orbiter that reentered retrograde and used a Reliant engine as its heat shield, then retroburned to land intact in the ocean -- orbiting before unlocking parachutes!

[Archgeek]

A single-shot, 2-kerbal Eve return lander I'd designed with a friend some versions before the aero overhaul made it all the way to the surface with Bill and Roley Kerman, and seemed set to actually make the ascent--as the custom legs, which clearly had a design flaw, had managed to hold out in Eve's gravity:

Spoiler

Even the carefully designed and over complicated ladder system to get down and up via actually worked.  However, upon liftoff, something was clearly wrong, as the ship gently floated downward on its skipper engines, eventually going up just before the next stage.  'Turns out that though we'd designed the thing nicely and it made quite a decent Duna ship on its own, we'd used KER to do the number crunching, and it had quietly remained set on Kerbin TWR, so the nice 1.4 we were reading, was more like .8.  Later analysis showed the dang thing would've worked if the first stage had used a pair of mainsails instead of two more skippers.

[Hodari]

Usually for me it's launching a rescue mission, completing the rendezvous, and only THEN realizing that Bill and Bob had snuck into the seats that were supposed to be used for the stranded kerbals and I now had nowhere to put them.

[Ultimate Steve]

I get a contract for the Mun. I ready a perfectly capable rocket. Launch, go into map mode. Plot node. Do burn entirely from zoomed out map mode. Time warp. Do orbital insertion burn.

 

Then I switch back to normal view and realize I'm orbiting Minmus.

[paulprogart]

Took a contract to put a satellite in a funky tundra orbit of Minmus.  Get it there without issue, then decided that because I had a couple of sat deployments under my belt I was now a superstar and thus didn't have to be so finicky as before about matching the orbit, so I just kinda quickly eyeball it.  I do the final burn and the checkmark goes green, so I separate.

Sure enough, the resulting force was enough to kick it out of valid orbit.  It had no propulsion or docking port, and the ship had no claw.

Then I realised I'd forgotten the two requisite science instruments.

I renamed it the 'MINMUS-FAIL 1' as a permanent reminder of my complacency.

Oh yeah, as a bit of an encore, when I eventually sent a replacement, I forgot to try spacing it out to at least make the -FAIL semi-useful as an extra relay.  The two ended up just a few degrees apart.

 

[Magzimum]

First Duna landing ever. "Hatch is obstructed". Boo.

[TopHeavy11]

I launched a crew exchange to my Minmus Base in Career Mode for a contract. When I got there I switched to my base to make sure it was ready for the landing...as I was landing. The game registered the landing ship as "crashing" so it wouldn't let me switch back, and I had to watch as my ship of 5 kerbals dropped out of the sky...and into my base...head on. After that I literally rage-quit and did a rant on the forums (which got deleted for good reason). To this day, it remains the only time I have quit KSP out of pure rage.

[CaptainTrebor]

Build a miner ship and sent it to Minmus, only to realise that I forgot a drill. I then sent a drill-equipped rover, which flipped and crashed in the low gravity.

[monstah]

The usual: realized the reentry-pod had no parachutes during plasma reentry phase, bailed Valentina out right after temperature dropped enough to, and landed on the ocean on her helmet. She got better.

[TheKorbinjer]

When you're building a rocket, launch it..  press spacebar, twice, realizing your previous stage isn't moving, you take a look and realize you decoupler is attached backwards

Edited February 15, 2017 by TheKorbinger

[HvP]

18 hours ago, Magzimum said:

First Duna landing ever. "Hatch is obstructed". Boo.

Awwww. Yea that's a bummer.

It does though make me think about the way that Buzz had to squish up behind the inward opening door of the LM to let Neil EVA. Imagine if they couldn't get by each other in the tight space, or if like what happened to Leonov that their suits had inflated too much to let them fit through the hatch.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. We can't fit past the door."

Edited February 16, 2017 by HvP

[suicidejunkie]

I designed a nice big all-in-one ISRU+Greenhouse base module for supporting 8+ Kerbals.  I was careful to measure and make sure the strut legs were long enough to clear the Strut&Spacedock "X-pad" it would be built from with EL.

After many many days of work, it was ready to deploy.  And then it immediately started a slow tip over and shattered into pieces on impact, because I'd forgotten to remove the Xpad copy I'd stuck on the bottom to measure the leg height.

 

The south pole radio tower team is working on a second copy of it now, but at least the process is going faster now that there is a big pile of scrap metal to supplement the terrible rate on the drills.

[Numerlor]

On 15. 2. 2017 at 11:01 AM, Magzimum said:

First Duna landing ever. "Hatch is obstructed". Boo.

You should try Kaboom mod, saved me on my Eve mission

[DavidHunter]

My first ever crewed Duna landing. Was doing a powered landing with MJ set to surface velocity minus. Overcooked the landing and started going up, which caused MJ to steer sideways (while the engine was still running for a split second). Landed a big orange fuel tank, a mainsail, and a cupola on its side. Thankfully, I planned for this inevitability, and actually put landing legs on it sideways in case it happened (my earlier probe landing crashed due to landing on a hilly site). 

I was able to launch back into orbit by lowering the landing legs that were close to the engine (leaving the legs near the cupola extended, thereby pointing the rocket just above the horizon).

 

#wining

 

Then I realised that I forgot to do the surface science experiments.

[suicidejunkie]

Launched an SSTO spaceplane to go rescue a Kerbal in Mun orbit.  Packed on the pilot and four passengers to deliver while I was heading to Mun anyways.  I got to the Munar station, and swapped out my 3-star passengers for the local 1-star rookies, and took off to finish the training.

Just as I finished the escape burn to take me to Minmus, I realized I forgot to pick up the rescuee.  And this was the third bus to have flown past the poor, stranded, very forgettable Kerbal.

[Rocketscience101]

Got the life support mod and stranded Val on the surface of mun. After my most skilled and precise and fastest ever landing on the mun, I rescued Val, and just as I got to escape from muns soi, Val suffocated because the solar panels where placed where at certain orientations, they received no power. 

[Kerbal101]

Forgot to switch Orbit speed mode back to Surface mode and smashed the probe on Dres.

[W. Kerman]

Was tired of waiting to land. EVAed out of craft ten meters above the surface. 

RIP Jeb.

(Who has survived 500 meter drops....)