Your Craziest Mishap During a Mission

[SteevyT]

I was testing drogue parachutes.....actually, I'll just let you watch it.

[Arrowstar]

Hahaha. That was hilarious. I guess we know the weak point of that design.

[ameseree]

MY craziest mishap would of had to be my first muner landing. It was like most landing, vertigo incline, burst when speeds gets too high, and constant watch on the altimeter. BUUUUT I was new that the ball thing and had a slight drift to the north and it was a hilly area. This was what always killed me before then. As I was getting close to the surface I noticed I was drifting over it and planned it to be no big deal. Simple put I hit the ground, destroyed half of my 6 landing gears and was still standing after even without the SAS on. When I got back they died horrible when the parachute fell off for some reason.

I'd love to see someone replicate that.

[Vanamonde]

Back in 15.2, I touched down on what looked like flat ground from above, but turned out to be the edge of a steep crater. The uneven landing popped off a lander leg, then to my horror, I watched as the ship began sliding downhill.

It got up to speeds of around 12m/s, scraped off an engine and another leg...

but somehow stayed upright, finally grinding to a halt just under a kilometer from the initial impact point (marked by the position of the first lander leg up by the skyline). You can see by the mission clocks that the slide lasted over 1.5 minutes.

Edited August 29, 2012 by Vanamonde

[simplemunrockets]

My first Minmus landing resulted in me losing one of 4 landing legs.

[spoiler=]

I didn't get to see how it flew because my brother restarted the computer, and upon resuming the flight the ship fell over.

[lmoelleb]

Second successful landing on the Mun. Did EVA with Jeb, then Bill. Decided to let Bob have a quick go before returning. He fell of the ladder and when hitting the surface he somehow got his big head entangled in the landing gear... knocking the entire lander over... and breaking the capsule loose from the rest. Bill and Jeb was so annoyed they wouldn't let him into the capsule again. In mysterious ways he did end up back at Kerbal so he could single handed fly a new lander out to get Bill and Jeb. Maybe they'll forgive him now he got them safely back.

[bigyihsuan]

LOL... I had some weird WTH moment for KSP 0.15.2. I was trying to get a make-shift space shuttle named "Space Shuttle I" into orbit, but I kept failing horribly.

Using the NovaPunch mod, a radial parachute mod and stock parts, I made a decent space shuttle. On my first attempt, the shuttle flew backwards and up into the air, making me eject the external fuel tank. Alas, the shuttle flipped upside down and took a nosedive straight into the ground. Bill, Jeb and Bob did not survive.

In my next attempt, I added two of the smallest solid boosters that I could find onto the back of the shuttle next to the tail fin. The shuttle did the exact opposite of Attempt #1. The external fuel tank clipped the launch tower and nosedived into the ground. For some odd reason the shuttle went straight through the ground and nosedived into some water underneath the Space Center. O_O

Attempt #3: I put two tail fins BUT one solid booster at the back of the shuttle. When I launched the shuttle, I got a perfect launch, that is, until I pressed the "S" key too many times. I did a vertical barrel roll and disconnected the external fuel tank. The "Space Shuttle I" nosedived into the ground (again) and everything exploded. I raged quit and went to get ice cream to eat. D:<

[Candlebor]

I tried to get to the Mun... I overshot and got into the Sun's orbit...

[Whatshtisthis]

The first rocket I tried to get into orbit around Kerbin manually ended up on an escape trajectory from Kerbin and is now orbiting the sun.

[Enture]

Now, that's not exactly a super "crazy" mishap, but undoubtedly a very funny one.. Here we go:

Third attempt at a munar landing; Jeb is the pilot of the Thorondor lander, Munar deorbit burn is completed successfully, and the crew of three is preparing for a nice targeted landing... when 1500m above the ground, upon deploying the landing struts, Jeb realizes the engineers back at KSC only assembled one of the three required struts! Emergency mission abort follows -despite Jeb's protests-, and some days later a couple of engineers "spontaneously" volunteered to test some of the KSC's newest spaceplanes designs.

[lucidLemon]

I had successfully touched down with lander made out of the new .16 parts on the Mun, near the equator. I remembered I had a satellite in an low orbit, so I sent a Kerbal to go see how close he could get to it. The equator was a bit aways, and I was impatient. I used his RCS pack to speed up the process. I got within 1 km of the satellite, but the process of getting there had used a good bit more than half the fuel.

I tried to use my remaining fuel to fly back to the lander. I ran out and smacked into the ground HARD, but I had slowed myself down enough to survive the impact. After about 7 bounces across the mun, I began to slow task of walking back.

I couldn't take the wait though, so in order to speed things up, I switched back to my lander. It had plenty of fuel, so I decided to take it to the lone astronaut. I took off, and pointed it towards my stranded Kerbal. That didn't work though, and it decided to point at the ground instead. The command pod was the only surviving piece from the collision.

After several minutes of trying to roll Katamari style, I decided that they could work out their own problems and returned to the space center.

[Werwolf]

Now, that's not exactly a super "crazy" mishap, but undoubtedly a very funny one.. Here we go:

Third attempt at a munar landing; Jeb is the pilot of the Thorondor lander, Munar deorbit burn is completed successfully, and the crew of three is preparing for a nice targeted landing... when 1500m above the ground, upon deploying the landing struts, Jeb realizes the engineers back at KSC only assembled one of the three required struts! Emergency mission abort follows -despite Jeb's protests-, and some days later a couple of engineers "spontaneously" volunteered to test some of the KSC's newest spaceplanes designs.

Oh wow, I bet you were swearing all the way back to Kerbin LOL

[Philip3101]

This happened about 5 minutes ago. I launched 2 missions to the Mun:

The first vehicle was to orbit the Mun at 60 (ish) km, the second one was to land and after some fun with EVA, rendezvous with the first one to transfer the crew and return to Kerbin. After the extravehicular activities I decided to use the ascend module in mech-jeb, cause I was to lazy to do it myself, but I inputted the wrong inclination. I realized it was wrong, I continued to circularize, then made corrections to the orbit. I finally got within 500 m of the first vehicle but the fuel ran out and the RCS block I was using didn't have forward and backward thrust so I switched to the return vehicle and got close to the lander but it was not enough. I switched back to the lander and went EVA and by the time it was the last member of the crew's turn to transfer, I realized that the return vehicle was going to crash because of the extreme maneuvers I did. This is where I freaked out. I thought - "What if there's not enough thrust to gain the vertical speed needed to avoid crashing? Still have a few minutes left, though. Might try to save that last kerbal." When I pointed my view toward the vehicle I saw it was spinning and thought there was no time to switch again and stop it, so I continued to approach it, crashed into it a few times but finally got in. I started a burn straight up and when the vertical speed indicator reached 0, the altemeter said 2,000 meters but I was so close to the ground that even Jeb started to freak out. That was one of the closest calls I've had in KSP. I was so excited after the successful mission that I almost broke my keyboard.

[zapy97]

i was doing a challenge on the forums it was the mass relayer challenge that is actually REALLY fun and as my early prototype was "warming up to fire" the maintaining legs that held the capsule in place failed and the capsule flew out on minmus trajectory which i was aiming for mun and so i had to switch to the other capsule extremely quickly and in a few minutes i had landed on the dark side of minmus by mistake and crashed but the kerbals survived and since then i have been working extremely hard on making it work just right.

Link to the challenge thread:http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/18987-Mass-Relayer-Challenge-IMPOSSIBLARG

[thesandbar]

One of my planes semiexploded =P

http://imgur.com/a/VkhJw

[Jaronimo23]

I was testing a new Mun Lander, all went well until i attempted takeoff upon which an engine was torn off and only 1 Kerbal escaped alive. Abandoned alone on the Mun amidst the wreckage, I sent a reinforced version of the same ship to rescue him. Landing went as plan, he jumped into the crewtank and we took off, only to discover that the fuel was gone before i could reach an orbit, so emergency EVA's put all 4 Kerbals into orbit around the Mun, and the Rescue ship sent to rescue the rescue ship cant get close enough. To the brave first explorers.....

Edited September 4, 2012 by Jaronimo23

[Vespasianus]

I land on the mun for the first time. YAY!

Then I close my computer down, and the day after I decide to bring Sigfred back. The thing is, I don't really think of what I'm doing, and press space instead of throttling up. I never had the time to rescue the poor lad before KSP decided to delete all my ships in orbit and on the mun... Never figured out how it happened...

Cheers!

[_Aramchek_]

This one is ongoing, I was attempting to land on the Mun, I bounced, while attempting to gain some altitude and correct it, I accidentally hit the spacebar and cut off my control, the capsule managed to stay stuck to the rocket. The throttle is wide open, and I am using the in engines, so it won't be stopping. The torque from teh capsule is enough to alter the trajectory of the entire rocket, at least to a point, so I am attempting to get it back to Kerbin steering only with capsule torque and fairly unsteady aim.

[Vanamonde]

I tried a night landing with the floodlights mod, but the ship crashed.

So I sent a rescue mission,

but unwisely tinkered with the design and it ran out of gas.

Since our motto at (my) KSP is, "Never leave a man behind, unless it would be a real big pain to get him back," the guys were on their own and tried to bail out.

Leaving a ghost ship.

After an extensive testing program, I can announce with some confidence that Kermanbraking

is not a viable re-entry technique.

By the way, this brings my rescue record to:

stranded 8 (11 if you count this mission's dual-stranding)

recovered alive 5

Rescue crew lost 3

Edited September 5, 2012 by Vanamonde

[MaverickSawyer]

First Munar landing was going great, courtesy of Kurtjmac introducing me to the Onion-class rocket style. Well, I am closing in on the surface, and realize that I am NOT going to make the crater, but will wind up in the mountains surrounding it. Crud. So I slow down more, and hope for the best. Murphy, that eternal bane of engineers, decided to rear his head and throw me a 1km high landing site, and I land a bit hard, despite my best efforts at a panic braking. Result: one of my four descent stage tanks has broken away. But does the rocket tip over? Nope! so, after some local EVA surveys, I foolishly try to launch a bit into the "air", and then seperate the stages and go for ascent stage only. I wind up smashing the lander to bits, even though I tried to stage. (not enough vertical speed to react fast enough.) Shockingly, as many people have found, the one-man capsule survived the 30m/s impact, as did the engine. (o.O) So, I EVA and go hopping after the engine, now gleefully rolling downhill on its side.

In the end, I did manage to rescue Bill, but he hasn't been quite the same since...

[wizard`]

Its not really my craziest but it is by far my biggest problem (yes It's even bigger than exploding rockets).

Many times have I accidentally staged my rocket when I wasn't meant to (usually whilst in orbit) and have had to abandon the mission or sometimes, and even worse, try and return them home from a mission with even less fuel than intended. This has led me to designing most of my rockets with more RCS fuel than needed on my final stage (in order to bring my crews home no matter what - within reason).

[Dizzle]

Just now I got all the way to the Mun with a rover, and was already descending on an arch when I realized that I forgot my lander stage. D'oh.

Then I realized Jebediah was the mission commander and landed the thing anyway.

[Spartan117]

All of these near death experiences for the various Kerbonauts got me thinking (uh-oh...), does the Kerbal Space Center have a psychologist on staff?

[EnDSchultz]

Admitting Kerbonauts into rehab for months or years after every catastrophe is expensive and inefficient. No, at the KSC, we just wipe their memory instead.

[LaydeeDem]

This is why I stick to rockets. Every Kerbonaut who flies a space plane thinks they're eligible for the Top Gun award, when they clearly aren't.