Your Biggest Fail in KSP!

[Gamercow]

Had another epic fail last night. After failing to land my pod upright several times on the mun due to idiocy on my part(see landing strut issue above), and my utter inability to properly kill horizontal motion, I finally landed properly last night. I went to take Jeb out on a munwalk to plant the Gamercow Kerbal Space Program flag, and...

*thunk* *thunk* *thunk*

I had placed the mechjeb module RIGHT on top of the hatch. *facepalm* I also didn't have enough fuel to get back home, but that's a different matter.

[Mr. Rogue Ace]

~Not finding and buying the game sooner~

~Not having an amazing computer (or at least not a better graphics card) to run the shaders for this game~

~Stabbing a kraken with a flag and tried to get away with it (http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/37109-Easter-Hunt-%28no-spoilers-though%29-%28picture-heavy%29)~

[Lazro]

I built a massive military resupply ship for my fighter squadrons, made a massive radial launcher, added a few struts, and then realized that I had neglected to actually connect any struts to the central ship. Richsby barely made it out alive, he had an unbalanced ship of 45 tons and only four nuke engines...the ship hit the surface at 160 mph. Thank goodness the command module was mounted at the top.

[ronny]

The first launch platform I tried to hyperedit to Mun crashed into the ground and exploded... Otherwise my fails are usually design-related. Started a thread about failed designs.

[tommygunyeah]

Trying to land on Jool...

[Marshmallow_Man]

Parachutes work on the mün right? Yeah. They must. STRAP IN JEB.

At least he was smiling when he disintegrated

[Frederf]

I just got a huge 60t station and a Kerthane depot in Munar orbit, matched planes, same Pe/Ap, planning the rendezvous and...

Oh, they are on different orbits. Eastbound and westbound. ;_; So much deltaV.

[7499275]

Mine would have to be: Forgetting to put a parachute on a Space Station escape pod...

[catmando]

duct tape and plastic, thier not just for snotty nosed kids...

[Korbat]

Last time I landed my final base module on laythe, but when I wanted to go out on an EVA I realized that I had put one of the two main module chutes on the hatch so that is was obstructed and the kerbal couldn't get out -,-

[Death Engineering]

Developing my Eve-return lander and testing it on Kerbin several times landing it on the nice flat peat on the plains behing the VAB only to get the thing onto the surface of Eve with the landing gear just a tad too high on the side tanks, causing the only gimballing engine on the lander to snap off.

Next launch, with landing gear/engine height clearance fully tested and noticed after I had the beast finally docked to the interplanetary transfer vessel that I had inadvertantly attached struts to one of the 12 aerospikes causing another structural failure as I watched the aerospike drift off into space.

[KerbMav]

Up until now my biggest fail was to "sleep" during a burn and shooting a Mun orbit expedition around Kerbol with drained fuel tanks.

The rescue mission was supposed to be a technological breakthrough in ion propulsion.

Can anyone guess whats wrong in this picture ... -.-

[Sigma117]

Up until now my biggest fail was to "sleep" during a burn and shooting a Mun orbit expedition around Kerbol with drained fuel tanks.

The rescue mission was supposed to be a technological breakthrough in ion propulsion.

Can anyone guess whats wrong in this picture ... -.-

-Snip-

So very Kerbal

[AlternNocturn]

Spending hours designing, building, and launching pieces of an interplanetary ferry that ended up not working due to asymmetrical design.

[Sof]

Probably the biggest fail I had in terms of doing the exact opposite of what I intended was my first attempt to return to Kerbin from the Mun. Having known nothing about how to orbit, my rocket was a direct burn all the way there. (first attempt ended up in a crater at 5000m/s)

This time I had managed to land, but my return to Kerbin ended up out of fuel in an orbit around the Sun.

[Travisfv]

Undocking from my space station, I switch to orbit view. As I switch I hear the engines engage at full thrust. Aimed right at my station. Literally split it in half and sent it tumbling around Kerbin.

Later realized I left the throttle up on my joystick... Which is now sitting in the closet because I refuse to let that happen again.

[ARPOLLO]

Oh yes. My biggest failure... Here it go's:

A long long time ago, when the main goal of the game was to reach the Mun, there was a special little space ship I created to get there for the first time.

I had figured out the orbital mechanics in the game and i was fairly good at getting things in orbit, yet the moon had always been beyond my reach... So I made a bigger rocket with more stages than ever before, and set out on my epic mission. After a few fatal launch incidents the contraption reached orbit and I burned towards the horizon.

Once near the mun I retrograded until i achieved a good orbit around the rock I had wanted to set foot on for so long.

I chose a landing spot and retrograded more, initiating my descent. After burning enough to eliminate my horizontal speed I detached my lander at about 20 km above the surface. The lander now had to do the long anticipated travel to the surface of the mun, falling towards the surface.

Right about 10 kilometers above the Munnar surface I deployed the parachutes. Yes. The parachutes.

While still plummeting towards the hard rocks, 5 kilometers of falling to go; I realized what I had done, and that it was not going to end well.

[42undead2]

I'd built a Mün lander, with a decoupler between capsule and the rest of the lander. So I launch (And somehow going the wrong way around Kerbin), and try to go into a Mün orbit anyway. After 30-40 minutes of fiddling (It was a first) I manage to get into the right trajectory. I decouple the lander from the transfer stage, and somehow I manage to press spacebar twice, decoupling the capsule from the rest of the lander. I rage-quitted.

[Wanderer]

I never fail. I merely accept the many stumbles along the stairway to the heavens as, "learning how to succeed better".

But seriously all my big fails have to do with the spacebar and the improper or panicked pressing of it at the wrong time. For this incompetence I have lost a station, at least one really good encounter after hours of waiting for the maneuver... and lets not get into time accelerating past really really important burns... a lot... embarrassingly high number.

[ZeroTech Solutions]

Whenever someone messages me on steam chat, I have to be careful while hitting shift tab as I often throttle up when I hit the shift key .

[ScramblesTD]

Preparing to launch my first Duna UAV as a proof of concept. Talking to friend over ventrillo, push to talk key is left-ctrl.

The rocket powered down just enough for the payload container to push the nose down sending us into a spin and crashing into an anchored airship. Two(Four with the UAV and airship anchor/truck) vehicles destroyed before we even left the launch pad. My Duna program is off to a great start.

Edited July 8, 2013 by ScramblesTD

[Kodiak42]

Trying to fly a spaceplane on Eve, one that uses air breathing engines. Or all the numerous parachute-assisted dissassemblies I've had.

[rallyjeep]

Getting to Minmus and landing the stock rover on it. Tooled around for a while...decided to go check out the big ice field a dozen km or so away...

Balls...

[fatfluffycat]

Coming in to fast for a docking, I must have killed 10 or more kerbals on that station....

[Lanfranc]

So here's a little story, unfortunately without pictures, since I was too busy panicking while it happened.

A few weeks ago, after finally learned how to dock properly, I had constructed a couple of space stations, including a large refuelling station to support further explorations of the other planets. (The construction of the refuelling station itself included a minor emergency which left Fredfred Kerman floating in orbit alone in a detached cupola, but that's another story.)

However, ferrying new fuel up to the station all the time was getting to be a bit of a bother, and since I had also just started using the Kerbal Attachement System, I got the idea of trying to salvage some fuel from all the old rocket stages that were cluttering the orbit, and try to deorbit some of them at the same time.

This soon led to the design and construction of the Colossus Refuelling And Salvage Tug, a monster of a service/tanker craft with double winches, magnets, grappling hooks, extra attachment points, and everything else needed for doing some serious work in orbit (and so heavy that it took three attempts to get in into orbit.)

Everything went smooth at first, as I rendezvous'ed with a nice, big rocket stage, sent Thombury Kerman over to connect a fuel line, and siphoned off the remaining fuel. Then I exhanged the fuel line for a magnet, and made a good, solid deorbit burn – which immediately (and entirely predictably) sent the CRAST and the rocket stage into a spin around their common centre of mass.

Of course, what I should have done in this situation was get rid of the stage, get the tug under control, and try the whole thing again more carefully. But what I actually did was attempt to complete the deorbit burn anyway, which just made everything spin more and more rapidly until eventually, the CRAST's main engine got torn off. So at this point, it 1) was spinning uncontrollably, 2) was in a partly subatmospheric and rapidly decaying orbit, and 3) had no engines apart from a few RCS thrusters.

At this point, I was in a bit of a panic, so I scrambled and launched my Crew Transporter, which I used for transporting astronauts to my space station, and which I knew was relatively well-balanced and easy to manoeuvre with. And after a good deal of orbital acrobatics, I managed to rendezvous with the CRAST, transfer the three crew members to the Transporter, and deorbit down towards Kerbin and safety.

Then of course I forgot to cut the time warp during descent, the parachute got torn off, the landing module crashed, and all six Kerbals involved in the mission died, including my veteran astronauts Fredfred Kerman and Thombury Kerman. A very sad day for the space programme and all of Kerbalkind.

And that was the story of my biggest fail (so far) in KSP.

Edited July 10, 2013 by Lanfranc