Your Craziest Mishap During a Mission

[Rocketman17]

my worst mishap was on my first trip to minimus. launch, orbital insertion, and minimus insertion all went splendid, but as i was landing, my dad came in and started talking to me. While we were talking, my ship crashed into minimus...

[freakazoid13]

I was testing out a new design for a three stage lander that could land on the mun then land on minmus and "safely" return to kerbin. During one of my tests I had forgotten to change my staging and once i pressed space it immediately started spinning out of control because only 2 of the 6 boosters went off. So I thought i could just abort it like all my other tests, and million stages later I ejected my capsule from the ship and slowly descended down the surface. Then one of the boosters flew straight into the capsule and obliterated it. All that was left of the ship was the other rogue booster spinning out of control. No one survived

In the end I accidentally deleted the craft file while trying to get rid of some old obsolete designs. I now only make regular two stage landers.

[flaillomanz]

I had one mission plagued with issues.

On the pad, I waited one second too long after the physics came back, and one of the engines fell off.

I launched anyway.

I had to immediately jettison the outermost stage, but that ripped one of my external fuel tanks off the side. Two minutes later this came to fruition as the left engine suddenly cut out. Another tonne or so of fuel wasted. I managed to get into a stable orbit at 125K, but then my old nemisis showed up, the Space Kraken.

This is the first time it has ever shown up outside of the extremes of speed and distance I commonly associate with performing a sun-drop. Sure, it only lasted ~5 seconds, but I still lost half of the stage I was on.

I then had to use the stage I had planned on using to slow myself down on the final approach to the Mun (I was in a retrograde equatorial orbit at the time) to get my orbit high enough to reach the Mun. By that time, I had missed the Munar injection burn, and had to wait a few orbits. Even then, I ran out of thrust just shy enough of the Mun to ensure that while I could get picked up on a future orbit, I didn't make it into it's SoI. Twenty orbits later, I was picked up.

I didn't have enough power to slow down, and I was slingshotted into Kerbin Escape. I used up all my fuel retrograde, and barely managed to be recaptured - but I was on a course for, of all things, minimus. With just a command pod, I knew my kerbonauts wouldn't survive the landing.

A rather hectic flight indeed.

[Guapo]

This happened to me too.

[ZootinZack]

Is that how you got your avatar?

No, that's part of a larger shot as a Kerbonaut jumped on the Mun, just as Kerbol was rising.

[SNapple]

Oh, ok. Well anyway, I Put it upon myself to make a base out of Wing Connectors, seeing as all the "Cool Kids" do it. It took a while. You see, during ascent, very high in the atmo, the whole rocket just exploded. I relaunched, Flying it differently, and... well... I got into an orbit. I then pressed G to see if my landing gear wsa long enough, under the really big engine. Yeah, it wasn't so when I did land, aswell as being extremely shocked, I also had to perform a manuever that involves me hitting the Mun at just the right speed that I blew up nothing but the engine. It worked, and I am surprised. But yeah... I got to blow my engine up. I don't really know if that is a mishap, or an absolute win.

[kodemunkey]

Orbited the planet for 10 days on an eccentric orbit, left the solar system on day 13

[simplemunrockets]

Yeah, it wasn't so when I did land, aswell as being extremely shocked, I also had to perform a manuever that involves me hitting the Mun at just the right speed that I blew up nothing but the engine. It worked, and I am surprised. But yeah... I got to blow my engine up. I don't really know if that is a mishap, or an absolute win.

He has discovered the ancient kerbal secret of lithobraking!

[Vanamonde]

I then pressed G to see if my landing gear wsa long enough

In the VAB, save your design, then delete everything below the lander, then take just the lander out to the launch pad. You can play with the ladders and landing gear to see if they reach the ground properly. Then return to the VAB, load your save, and make the necessary changes. DO NOT SAVE THE SHIP AFTER REMOVING THE LOWER STAGES, though. I know you know that, but it's an easy and EXTREMELY frustrating goof to make, as I know from bitter experience.

lithobraking

I love that term. The first time I ran into it, I laughed for several minutes straight. Whoever came up with it deserves a medal or a tiara or something.

[SNapple]

In the VAB, save your design, then delete everything below the lander, then take just the lander out to the launch pad. You can play with the ladders and landing gear to see if they reach the ground properly. Then return to the VAB, load your save, and make the necessary changes. DO NOT SAVE THE SHIP AFTER REMOVING THE LOWER STAGES, though. I know you know that, but it's an easy and EXTREMELY frustrating goof to make, as I know from bitter experience.

The thing is, I didn't expect it to make it all the way there.

Edited August 19, 2012 by SNapple

[Xel_AI]

During a flight to test out the newly requisitioned MechJeb( Yeah, I didn't dl that for a long time ) , I reached a circular orbit at 85 km. I sent out my lone Kerbal on a spacewalk / spacefloat , and after using RCS ...... he drifted too far from the craft.

To cut a long story short ,I spent 15 minutes trying to get him close enough to the craft to board it.

I forgot to take a PrntScn of him though......

[SNapple]

Don't use printscreen, press f2. After pressing f2, the screenshot will be put in your screenshots folder in your KSP folder.

[Cykyrios]

F1*, F2 will toggle the UI.

Using built-in screenshot functions is always easier than pressing PrintScreen and cropping (or not) the picture.

[BlackShadow03]

Reminds me of a couple of missions I did at the start of 0.16:

After downloading the new Kerbal update, I make a rocket with the single Kerbal capsule and (after a few tries) made it Mun-capable using some new parts. Jeb is at the controls! Surprisingly, Jeb sticks the landing like the boss and makes himself the first Kerbal to set foot on the Mun while it is still attached to his body! Naturally, after some photo-ops, I use the EVA pack to fly around the Mun. On my way back to the lander, I realize to my horror that I have had my finger on the throttle for far to long and Jeb splatted onto a slight drop off nearby the lander and died. He would have wanted to go that way...

My next mission involved me designing a Mun-capable rocket with a full, three-man crew. It took far more tries to get it right then the single capsule, but it was finally ready for launch. My new mission: Recover the previous rocket currently landed on the Mun! I had never tried to land close to another rocket on the Mun before, but now was the time to try it. I got far closer than I had though myself possible on a first try, but the stranded rocket was within visual range. However, the area of the Mun that the rocket was stranded on happened to have fallen into night. I gingerly approached the surface and hoped for a good landing spot. As I came down, it became clear that I was about to land at a bad angle....on a suspiciously familiar drop-off. As the lander started to fall over, I realized my RCS was used up trying to keep my hastily designed craft on course early on.....my only hope was to gun the engine and gain enough altitude to reattempt a landing. No luck, the craft had too much momentum to stop the tilt and crashed down the embankment in a glorious fireball. After holding my head in shame, I looked up to see a surprising sight: Three Kerbal thumbnails staring back at me. As the fire and smoke cleared, the only thing left of my lander was the Command Capsule.....not even the parachute on top survived! So what did I do? I hopped one Kerbalnaut out of the capsule, flew him (Gently!) over the embankment and across the short distance to the derelict lander, climbed the ladders to get in, and made a flawless return home.

.....Now, in full KSP fashion, I need to rescue the rest of the rescue crew....

Edited August 19, 2012 by BlackShadow03

[TheMonster]

Well, this is the first major one I managed to get on camera.

The plan was to just use those outer stages as de-orbitors, then land with(what I call) "the Weakling Engine". However, due to the extra amounts of fuel in the outer stages, Mission Control thought it would be a waste of good fuel, so they planned to land with it. However, that didn't really work cause the engine kinda ripped itself off in super low gravity slow motion.

Edit: Sorry, can't figure out how spoiler tags work. Thought I had it working, now I gotta go look it up again.

Fixed for you. You use [noparse]

Stuff

[/noparse]

Edited August 20, 2012 by softweir
Fixed spoiler.

[Paprika]

Today, I mounted a rescue attempt to save a guy on the mun. Using mechjeb to land the ship near him, it had targeted the descent perfectly and the craft was doing its braking burn, when the experimental 'rockets in front of the command pod' design (a fuel tank with radial engines put on the nose of the shuttle looking pod) blew up something important. The rest of the craft hurtled into the surface, wiping out not only the 2 guys there for the rescue but also the broken craft on the ground, the Kerman to be rescued (James) and the original craft's disembodied command pod. As sad as it was that James's beacon of hope landed on him like Jeb's mighty boot crushing the accelerator, I couldn't stop laughing at the whole event.

[cardgame]

Launch flight. Epic explosion on the launchpad.

Restart flight.

Not really sure if it counts, but it happened recently and seemed relevant.

[simplemunrockets]

How in the hell is he still alive?

And can I get that .craft?

[Ziff]

Haha! That was one massive explosion! Poor little kerbals and bits everywhere, I would imagine. This just happened recently to me during the 'Quickest time to Minmus' challenge. I had to leave for awhile in the middle of my transfer orbit, so I just saved the game and shut it off. When I came home and reloaded the quicksave, I failed to notice some erroneous bug that caused my .craft file to change a bit. If you look closely, the legs are position much higher than they were originally placed (at the bottom of the tank) and are somehow actually crossing each other.

I would like to mention that Jeb did manage to salvage the mission by landing spectacularly on the engine with one leg preventing it from rolling downhill.

[cardgame]

How in the hell is he still alive?

And can I get that .craft?

Let me know if it works for you, it really goofed up in my game.

[UNSC]

After a nice launch and getting a nice orbit; trying to save with the F9 key...

/facepalm

[flaillomanz]

This just in!

Make sure no debris is hurtling towards the launchpad from a decayed orbit when you launch your next flight. I had to do some CSI with quickloading to figure out why a random booster came hurtling down to spear my rocket. Turns out, the debris from my previous flight managed to re-enter just right to come down on the launch pad.

[Asmosdeus]

[kahlzun]

I keep having problems with my larger modded rockets (like that awesome BFE-5000) clipping into the launch tower when I am trying to build a rocket. Whole thing goes bouncing sideways. Crazy.

[SLAMS]