Not-So-Great Moments in Space History

[DeadJohn]

I was designing a plane. Flight testing revealed some yaw instability.  The plane was flyable but twitchy. I burned a lot of extra fuel and had to be constantly adjusting my heading to fly straight.

The usual causes are bad rudder design or uneven drag. My rudder was large enough, far enough back, and set to yaw-only control. All high drag components located along the centerline.

I was then worried about a cargo bay shielding bug. I removed all internal parts such as cargo, docking ports, batteries, etc. The problem persisted.

Then I found it. Damn, it was a stupid error, all on me and not some complex issue. During an earlier iteration of testing I must have accidentally turned off part mirroring while adjusting the ailerons. Planes fly much better with the same amount of lift and control surfaces on each side.

 

[Cavscout74]

My most recent "not so great moment" was yesterday, when during Eve entry I realized I forgot the <insert appropriate adjective here> parachutes on my Mobile Modular Base.  The heat shield did wonders slowing it down, but it started spinning at low altitude & here was what I ended up with:

 

That pile of debris under the rover includes one of two radiators and the only solar panel

[KerikBalm]

Failed re-entry of the first stage of a re-usable 2-stage Eve cargo carrying spaceplane:

The design was workable, just a matter of proper ascent/descent profile, and piloting.

[RoninFrog]

I don't have any pictures of it, but Jeb once drove 300 km across Eve in a rover to get to a rescue vehicle that overshot the landing.  And the rover naturally turned slightly due to off-center mass and drag, so I had to monitor it constantly.  And it's top speed was 6 m/s.  And then the rescue vehicle didn't work.

That was my worst moment.  I abandoned that save after that.

Edited July 4, 2020 by RoninFrog

[DeadJohn]

19 minutes ago, RoninFrog said:

I don't have any pictures of it, but Jeb once drove 300 km across Eve in a rover to get to a rescue vehicle that overshot the landing.  And the rover naturally turned slightly due to off-center mass and drag, so I had to monitor it constantly.  And it's top speed was 6 m/s.  And then the rescue vehicle didn't work.

That was my worst moment.  I abandoned that save after that.

I cheat my way past tedious rover drives using Hyperedit's "Ship Lander". Wheel physics have too many glitches and spontaneous explosions.

[GuessingEveryDay]

Wow. Those are way worse than mine! Try attempting a burn for Duna, but you haven’t heard of quick-saving and over warping, and have to launch everything, only to forget changing the staging and popping the fairings inside the big fairing setting off a R.U.D.  And then accidentally pushing Alt-F4 instead of Alt-F12 to turn on infinite energy.

[Klapaucius]

On 7/2/2020 at 9:03 AM, DeadJohn said:

Planes fly much better with the same amount of lift and control surfaces on each side.

 

Oh, I don't know about that...