What is your most facepalm-worthy moment regarding KSP?

[Dan Kerman]

Not a big facepalm but, recovered a module in Minmus orbit with a Klaw. Went to prograde for Kerbin and whoop.. out of control. Forgot to "Control From Here" back on the capsule... thank you quicksave

[VoidSquid]

Tourist contract for a Minmus landing, everything as usual, like the umpteen times before. After landing back at Kerbin, I'm wondering, why hasn't the contract completed?

Forgot to load the tourists...

[Emilius73]

A few days ago I checked back on a Jool probe I had launched a few months (IRL) prior. I decided to go get some Science from space near Laythe, since this probe wasn't designed with landings in mind. Anyways, after a 600-ish m/s correction burn I was set for Laythe. 

I never checked my periapsis on the Laythe flyby.

It was 41km, 9km into the atmosphere.

By the time I realized, it was too late and I never quicksaved. The probe crashed into the seas of Laythe.

Edited May 27, 2019 by Emilius73

[adsii1970]

57 minutes ago, Emilius73 said:

By the time I realized, it was too late and I never quicksaved. The probe crashed into the seas of Laythe.

Back in .22, I had a probe which struck Lathe extremely hard and fast. Not only was the probe destroyed, but Laythe exploded, too! Boy, those were the good ol' days!

[Raptor42]

Once I pressed Alt+F4 instead of Alt+F5

[Mikenike]

On 10/3/2018 at 6:05 PM, sturmhauke said:

Don't feel too bad, NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter because they forgot to convert to metric units.

I got one. So the first time I tried to land on Tylo was with a microlander, as part of an entire microspacecraft mission (a 40 T interplanetary spacecraft, assembled from four 10 T segments in LKO). When I arrived at Tylo and detached the lander, I discovered that the command seat was oriented the wrong way. You know that scene in Apollo 13 where they have to steer the capsule with the controls all messed up? It was like that, but with more explosions.

DON'T FORGET FAULTY PARTS!!!!!!!

 

Flying my Kerbal sr71 into the ground because of lack of control surfaces. I didn't revert. Rip Jeb and Val

Edited May 30, 2019 by Mikenike

[RocketSquid]

There are three that come to mind

1. In an old sandbox save, I wanted to send a fuel tanker to duna. Unfortunately, I had fuel cells on it, and I left one of them on while I warped. 

2. In a less old science save, I did a particularly bad job of sending a ship on a return trajectory from the mun. On its own this would not have been a problem, but I then proceeded to  warp nearly a year in the future before I remembered which button “kill warp” was.

3. In that same science save, I once tried to build a base using KIS but forgot both the screwdriver and the engineer who was supposed to use the screwdriver.

4. In a much newer science save, I learned that the trucks at the desert runway are physical objects that you can crash a rover into.

5. Later in the same save, I learned that because the center of mass changed as it consumed fuel, my VTOL was in fact a VTHL. Unfortunately, I figured this out while it was almost out of fuel and flying over the highlands. I ended up having to use hyperedit to refill the fuel tanks, since the alternative was having to restart the mission (which was already on the fifth try)

6. Just recently, I tried to send a scansat to minmus and somehow decided it would be smart to use the universal storage 2.5m to 1.875m service bay as an interstage fairing. Because the upper stage engine had a rather large bell, and because the service module has some little frame thingies to help hold the wedges, the service bay latched on tight after being decoupled, and because it’s rather heat resistant and the engine was a vacuum engine the engine could not blow it up even at full throttle. Fortunately, there was still enough time to revert to vehicle assembly and use an actual fairing, after which time the mission went smoothly.

[MaverickSawyer]

Reviving this one with a recent addition...

 

Decided to use the Delta parts from Bluedog Design Bureau to make a Delta III lower section to toss a crew capsule into orbit. Nothing tricky, done it plenty of times before.

Everything went great until I hit the first set of boosters burning out. The SmartParts sequencing I use to trigger the next stage a bit early to avoid the thrust tailoff of the BDB boosters triggered correctly... and then the entire bottom of the rocket came apart. Cue LES triggering and dragging my crew to safety, followed by a revert to VAB.

Double checked all of my parts for clipping, checked the timings, added a half second delay between the first and second trio of groundstart boosters, launched again.

Same point, rocket came apart again. Right at groundstart booster burnout. Huh. Revert to VAB again.

I start checking all the staging events in detail and find I had swapped one of the sets of radial decouplers to the wrong point. Instead of ejecting the spent boosters, it was ejecting the lit airstart boosters, which then promptly slammed into the core and caused everything to go kablooie. 

[TwoCalories]

I've had quite a few.

On my first Mun landing the way back in 2022, I sent a supply lander with BG Expansion surface equipment and a small LRV-like rover. I landed it, then I landed the crew with an Apollo-style lander. I landed several kilometers past it. *facepalm*

That was the second robotic lander, actually. The first landed on a slope, the second was that one, and the third was sent after the crew landed and it landed a kilometer away. It worked out fine, though, until I realized when it was time to head back to the CSM, I realized the RCS had drained the monopropellant and left not enough Delta-V in the Puff engines. *facepalm*

I was tired so I just cheated to orbit. So that Mun landing technically wasn't legitimate but whatever.

***

Almost two years later, I'm doing my first career mode Mun landing for my mission report, The Sky is Not the Limit.

Spoiler

this isn't an advertisement i swear

I'm doing the Apollo 11 thing where they kind of hover over the area until they find a suitable landing zone. I know where because I have the KER impact marker, that also shows how flat somewhere is based on how clipped into the terrain the marker is.

I find a good landing zone and ease in... and then the engines ran out of fuel. I only had to do a quick F9, but still. *facepalm*

***

Three months later, I'm sending a complex mission to Minmus. I have a prepositioned lander and hab module in LKO and I sent the crew in a CSM. They light the engine attached to the hab and off to Minmus. The flight goes smoothly, and I prepare for Minmus circularization... but then I didn't check my Delta-V and it turns out I didn't have enough. *facepalm*

I desperately tried to save the mission and use the lander's engine (which was way overbuilt since this entire ship was mostly designed for the Mun) to burn back to Kerbin, Apollo 13 style. But the game screwed me over, because I planned the maneuver as far away as possible for efficiency, which the game told me was still in Kerbin's SOI. But nope, I just zoomed out into Kerbolar orbit for some reason. Again, I just F9'd, but that was almost three hours down the drain. *facepalm*

[Engineer Gaming]

Had achieved Eeloo capture but apon trying to retroburn to decrease orbit high, realised when adding RCS i had symetry off so instead of having RCS on 4 sides of the long range mothership i only had RCS thrusters on 1 side 

[MaverickSawyer]

On 10/28/2023 at 12:59 PM, TwoCalories said:

I've had quite a few.

On my first Mun landing the way back in 2022, I sent a supply lander with BG Expansion surface equipment and a small LRV-like rover. I landed it, then I landed the crew with an Apollo-style lander. I landed several kilometers past it. *facepalm*

That was the second robotic lander, actually. The first landed on a slope, the second was that one, and the third was sent after the crew landed and it landed a kilometer away. It worked out fine, though, until I realized when it was time to head back to the CSM, I realized the RCS had drained the monopropellant and left not enough Delta-V in the Puff engines. *facepalm*

I was tired so I just cheated to orbit. So that Mun landing technically wasn't legitimate but whatever.

***

Almost two years later, I'm doing my first career mode Mun landing for my mission report, The Sky is Not the Limit.

  Reveal hidden contents

this isn't an advertisement i swear

I'm doing the Apollo 11 thing where they kind of hover over the area until they find a suitable landing zone. I know where because I have the KER impact marker, that also shows how flat somewhere is based on how clipped into the terrain the marker is.

I find a good landing zone and ease in... and then the engines ran out of fuel. I only had to do a quick F9, but still. *facepalm*

***

Three months later, I'm sending a complex mission to Minmus. I have a prepositioned lander and hab module in LKO and I sent the crew in a CSM. They light the engine attached to the hab and off to Minmus. The flight goes smoothly, and I prepare for Minmus circularization... but then I didn't check my Delta-V and it turns out I didn't have enough. *facepalm*

I desperately tried to save the mission and use the lander's engine (which was way overbuilt since this entire ship was mostly designed for the Mun) to burn back to Kerbin, Apollo 13 style. But the game screwed me over, because I planned the maneuver as far away as possible for efficiency, which the game told me was still in Kerbin's SOI. But nope, I just zoomed out into Kerbolar orbit for some reason. Again, I just F9'd, but that was almost three hours down the drain. *facepalm*

Ooof. That is a hard one. That's why I tend to run a 10% margin over what I expect to need, minimum. Longer range missions, like to Duna or further, I will usually do 15-20% buffer. Better to have to launch more payload/fuel than to find out that... yeahhhhh, that wasn't enough.

[Lisias]

Well, I have so many that usually I would need to ask if you want them in chronological or alphabetical order - not to mention if in the current period or something in the past.

Well, the last one is tragically comic - I decided to shove some communication and observation satellites around Kerbol (why not?), and one of them on a polar orbit. Of course, I'm a bean counter stand-up guy, so instead of using a traditional rocket, I used a plane as first stage (more os less like virgin galactic), then used chemical rockets for the second stage and third stage and finally ion engines for the final stage. Interesting enough, it ended up being relatively cheaper than a full rocket solution (the first stage is 100% recoverable, after all).

The boring part was to change the satellite orbit to polar in a reasonable time (I'm playing "Make Kerbin Great Again" style, so I need fast results instead of cost/beneficial ones - and I had already saved some bucks using a plane as first stage), so 5 ion engines made the trick - only 4 hours of burning on an orbit between Moho and Eve.

I'm on 1.4.3, by the way (the best performatic KSP on my rig).

Everything gone perfectly, I got even some Xeon gas to spare - what should had triggered that "ok, this is not normal" feeling.  

Once I managed to reach the desired orbit, I opened the menu to go back to the Track Station and plan the other two satellites (each one aiming to a 45 an -45o inclination), and promptly clicked on the Revert by accident.  Even worst, clicked on the Revert to Launch without even thinking about, so distracted I was - it took me about 3 or 4 attempts until I got the damned orbit right, so I essentially reverted due muscular memory.

I closed KSP and decided to watch some movies to cool down.  

Edited October 30, 2023 by Lisias
Tyop! Surprised?

[Engineer Gaming]

Just realised my resupply Frigate, space trawler and Duna station all have different docking ports from 3 different mods. Thank goodness for KAS

[AtomicTech]

When I forgot to disable cheats on an interplanetary mission.

[Tony Swallow]

Heaps of Facepalms..... But the one that takes the cake was the first time I did an asteroid capture mission, Didn't realise I had to have ore tanks for the ISRU to convert mining drill ore to to fuel. So I had to send another craft out that essentially just had to have an ore tank so I could do some mining, get refuelled, and go home!

[TwoCalories]

I was reminded of the time where I did a Minmus landing with Bill as the lone crew on the lander module. After landing and an EVA, I took off from Minmus only to realize I didn't have SAS because Bill is an engineer. *facepalm*

I did manage to get it to Minmus orbit and reunite Bill with his crew in the CSM, and the mission returned 500 science points, so it was still a win in my book.

[Lyra]

Made a post about it in a different thread already, but I forgot just how terrible the Science Jr's heat tolerance is and put it directly behind my heat shield for a Minmus mission... leading to this.

 

Edited March 5 by Lyra
Fixed dead image link

[ARS]

When you wanna takeoff your new aircraft, but forgot that it's too wide and hit the fuel tanks on the side of the runway

Edited December 15, 2023 by ARS

[Royalswissarmyknife]

Forgetting to add probe cores.

I do it EVERY time.

[TwoCalories]

I play with Kerbalism and every time I've ever built a space station, I've either A) forgot batteries or B) forgot life support. Both of these are even more critical with Kerbalism, and on the last station I built (SS Roadhouse, in The Sky is Not the Limit), I forgot to add both!

This is career mode, too! I can't afford to screw up like this!

Anyway, I installed a new module to account for these oversights.

[Engineer Gaming]

Just realised my Jool capture stage's activation is in the same stage as the separator. How do I know this? Because I'm now flying pass jool at an alarming rate trying to slow myself down with the Vall capture and landing stage. 

[miklkit]

Built a new design long range vessel and needed to test it, so picked up a rover repair contract to Eeloo.  Got the materials needed loaded, crewed up and launched.  Landed on Eelee at the base, refueled, then took off to the rover.  It was then that I discovered that instead of loading a scientist, engineer, and 2 pilots I had loaded a scientist and 3 pilots.  Doh!

Edited February 6 by miklkit

[blanoun]

My moment was struggling to launch a very large ship only to realize the second I got into orbit that I forgot some important component(IE solar panels, coms, etc.)

[king of nowhere]

I surmise the most silly was an accident happened during A'Twin maiden flight.

A'Twin is a ship designed to complete a real solar system grand tour with stock parts and kerbalism. kerbalism does add a bunch of additional complications to the game in the form of complex life support, difficult isru, radiations, and a bunch of other stuff. great to add extra challenge. to tackle all that, A'Twin was enormous. It needed a large habitable section to keep stress levels in the crew under control, and it needed 100 tons just for radiation shielding, and 200 tons of water to be able to support the crew in the long voyages between worlds, and it needed multiple spare parts to deal with malfunctions... and then all this huge ship needed a lot of fuel to have a good deltaV, it topped at above 7000 tons.

life support with kerbalism is a complex chain of events. kerbals eat, drink, breathe, and they produce carbon dioxide, waste solid, and waste water. and i had a bunch of processes to recycle all of that as best as possible, so that the total consumption of resources was only 500 kilograms per crewmember per year. in particular, after many calculations, I determined that the most efficient way to reuse solid waste was to burn it in a chemical reactor to produce carbon dioxide, which was then used to grow plants in the greenhouses.

it turned out, though, that the chemical reactor only burns solid waste if there is a "solid waste" resource. and i did forgot to include a solid waste container. so the solid waste produced could not be stored, and the chemical reactor could not burn it and turn it into CO2. the other sources of CO2 in the ship were not enough to provide enough to grow the plants fast enough for the crew to eat, and the whole life support system was made unusable.

Yep. I had a 7000 ton ship made unusable because i forgot to include a crap container.

I couldn't even fix the issue easily with eva construction: crap containers are kerbalism parts, and were not upgraded with the newest functionalities yet: they could not be manipulated with eva construction.

I had to launch and entirely new ship. A seven thousand tons ship. Because the crew could not be instructed to take a dump in a plastic bag.

Edited February 9 by king of nowhere

[kspbutitscursed]

accidentally turning off SAS on starship

 

 

 

do a flip the aerodynamics said.