My most spectacular failure yet.[Sorry, no pictures]

[Fredonia]

It all started with me trying to land a DEMV on Mun...

My lander ended up being a 223 ton, multi-winged, MechJeb'd(I like making rockets and mission plans, not that great at flying) ASAS'd out monstrosity... Struts everywhere.

The entire flight to Mun was smooth with no mishaps. Jeb was grinning ear to ear. It was the perfect mission with a behemoth craft.

The problem was on descent. There was no way this thing could land safely, just the way Jeb likes it, darn near impossible. It came down just crooked enough and just fast enough to break into two pieces and topple over on the Mun. Through some odd miracle, Jeb, Jeb's smile and the DEMV survived. Even though the DEMV looked as if it was undeployable.

As was the original plan, Jeb stayed put in the command pod and waited on Bill, Bob and Jerton to come aid in the research of a Mun arch.

The return ship was ready. Three man pod with a crew tank underneath. The main XL parachute and four smaller chutes to ensure that the return would be safe. The lander was all set.

Bill, Bob and Jerton were off to meet Jeb.

Through ill timing, Jeb ended up on Mun at the tail end of the Munar day, so the rest of the crew arrived right at the beginning of the Munar night. Too dark for EVA, everyone stayed put.

At Munar daybreak, Jeb goes for broke and deploys the DEMV, it actually lands on the wheels...after kind of landing on the back end and falling on its wheels, but it didn't blow up, so it was good enough. Jeb exits the command pod by falling onto his back and boards the DEMV, never to board the wrecked rover lander again.

He drives the 200 meters to the rest of the crew, who then ride to the Mun arch after going back and examining the wreckage. Poor engineering is blamed for the crash.

After a time of research and collecting samples and Jeb seeing just HOW all terrain the DEMV Mk. 1 is, it was time to return.

Jerton was to board the crew tank with the samples, while Jeb took his usual seat.

It was at this point, that the mission began to go downhill. The MechJeb did not work. At all. Not even a screen display to pull up.

No problem, this baby is just small enough to easily maneuver it back home manually(I'm at least that good). Just use the ASAS and all is well.

Launch from the surface, everyone is happy...screaming is happy right?

It was at roughly 5000 meters above the Munar surface that everything went bad. There's no ASAS, just the non-functioning MechJeb.

We're beginning to loose altitude and spin. Not uncontrollable spin, but darn close. We can manually land this and just send another rescue crew up to save us, right?

Nope. The lander came back down WAY too hot and lost a lander leg, smacked down and lost the main chute as well as two of the smaller chutes. What I can only describe as a bug sent me back upwards instead of blowing me up entirely, which only adds to the level of fail.

It was at this point that the decision was made to not wait on the inevitable crash, but to regain control and do it on purpose. This just barely happened. I got enough control to put the nose down and full throttle the ship right into Mun at about 250 m/s

R.I.P. Jeb, Bill, Bob and Jerton Kerman, your efforts in Munar research will not soon be forgotten. Especially your faulty construction on two consecutive crafts. We're REALLY not forgetting that.

[Cby]

Hahaha I liked that bit at the end.

Just in case you didn't know, you can EVA when it's dark by using the lights on the helmet. Use L to turn them on.

[Qumefox]

ASAS isn't required to fly even large builds. I've gotten several things to mun and back 100% manually. (well I don't use mechjeb so everything I do is manual ). Even done a few manual engine stands on mun in ships designed purely as orbiters.

The trick is to just NOT get carried away with the speed of your attitude adjustments. Kerbin (or the mun, whatever the target) will still be there, and generally launch windows are wide enough to give you some leeway on maneuver timing.