You Will Not Go To Space Today - Post your fails here!

[Stratoroc]

My attempt at a large SSTO resulted in a plane that is freeee as a bird, and flaps like one.

[Othuyeg]

From Win to Fail to Win. The life of a kerbal is a rollercoaster...

http://www.twitch.tv/othuyeg/c/3801861

That is me experimenting with a spaceplane that I built without any planning. I was playing around with friends and we had nothing to do so I cranked up a stream and built a spaceplane. It went around the world on the first serious try, yet as you will see in the video, there were a few complications.

Edited March 12, 2014 by Othuyeg

[Xacktar]

This is what reentry testing is for...

[The2ndPete]

Well, my fail seems to be more of an inability to land stuff on the Mun.

I'm playing in 0.23 career with a stock install.

After a set of manned flights all over Kerbin and doing everything sciencey possible in every biome )did you know there are 3 different ones alone in the KSC?) to me netted enough science to unlock the first tier of technologies I did a manned flyby of the Mun.

So far, so easy. My orbital burn went without a flaw, the transfer into munar orbit was equally easy and apart from a slight excentricity on returning to Kerbin all was dandy. Lots of new science and the Stayputnik probe core.

Yay! Unmanned test flights to the Mun!

Well, my probe basically consisted of:

- Stayputnik core

- FLT-100 tank

- LV-909 engine

- two goo canisters and

- four landing legs (long enough to hold the engine clear off the ground)

The Mk.I was flown around the KSC to test stability and train landing since I remembered that landing on the Mun was particularly hard from my previous dabblings before the career mode.

These test showed: You need MOAR POWER. So was born the Mun Probe Mk.II with three battery packs (why more, the engine generates charge, no?) and the Commutron antenna (a hindsight since my manned flyarounds showed: no antenna = no transmit).

Slap on some SRBs, a stack of liquid tanks with LV-T45 and off goes the Mun Probe Mk.II!

This flight... its fiery untimely reentry led to the creation of the Mk.III with MOAR Boosters to get me out of the lower atmosphere!

Well, that allowed me to do some Goo science in low and high Kerbin orbits which allowed BIGGER Boosters! Sadly the transmit totally drained my batteries since I forgot to throttle up first :/

Hello Mk.IV!

A central stage of two FLT-400 tanks on a LV-T45 getting the Mk.II Probe with some added thermometers to the Mun.

Four sets of FLT-400+FLT-200+LV-T45 to push the center into LKO and start the burn to Mun.

EIGHT large SRBs to get the whole orbital stage through the first 10km of Kerbins atmosphere.

Wow what a flight, easy into orbit, perfectly over to the Mun, just leave map and timewarp and... why doesn't the probe respond? Wha...? ARRRGH! No power!

Bye bye Mk.IV and hello Mk.IVb.

Same setup, this time with very careful monitoring of the electric charge to replenish it with short burns when necessary.

Needless to say, I came into Mun orbit and had my lunar transfer/landing preparation stage emptied. Ah shucks, shouldn't return anyway! Let's look for a nice spot and touch down there, transmit some science home!

I looked at the orbit, chose a spot, set a node to get the right timing, estimated the remaining charge, judged it enough and timewarped. Exit at T-10s and... where's my power? SAS? AAARRRGH!

Welcome Mk.V:

Bigger tanks everywhere, basically. Because you have to compensate for the Science Jr. And there's gotta be a way to get down on Mun!

LKO, transfer, insertion into LMO, picking a landing spot: flawless!

Hmm, coming in quite fast with 180something m/s. Better slow down. Why am I drifting? Ah, the legs will handle that! Slow down, slow down, 4m/s above ground, roughly 2m, perfect! Slowly decrease throttle aaaand touchdontipnononostaaaAAARRRGH!

OK, still I saw that I had quite some fuel left so just try again, pick a better spot and go again.

Mk.Vb - dried out during Kerbin-Mun transfer and was without power to start engines.

Mk.Vc - timewarped too far into Mun encounter and tried to drill to Mun core

Then, finally: Solar Panels thanks to scraps of leftover science on Kerbin and a manned Minmus flyby.

Mk.VI: Added four small solar panels to the Stayputnik, rest stayed the same.

With that I was able to get my probe to Mun, go to a nice landing spot, touch down and tip over. But since the Stayputnik only broke the lower panel I did some goo science, looked into the Science jr, took temp measurements and transmitted all.

Mk.VIb - flew well until I tried to touch down: tipped over, I tried to rescue it and created a nice set of explosions. The landing legs survived.

Mk.VIc - crash and burn in Kerbin atmosphere due to untimely decoupling (thanks dog!)

That was the moment I decided that BIGGER = BETTER.

So welcome the Mun Probe Mk.VII: 6 landing legs around a LV-909, supplied from a FLT-200 fuel tank (for save returns). Topped with a Science jr. with two Goo Containers, one thermometer and a radial chute for ease of planned Kerbin touchdown. On top of that the Stayputnik core with Commutron and four small solar panels.

The transfer stage got two FLT-400s on a LV-T45 and is junked by 8 Sepratrons after decoupling. The orbital insertion stage got a four-set with two FTL-400 on LV-T30 (for more power). The initial booster is a set of eight large SRBs and for the necessary control winglets and an inline reaction wheel are installed.

The transfer was without trouble, until I burned the last fuel of the transfer and fired the probes 909er. It started wobbling. Not bad at first but definitely worrysome. SAS was on, gimbal unlocked so what caused that?

Can anyone guess?

Stubborn as I am I tried a slow descent to maybe eek out a touchdown but with every firing of the 909 the wobble got worse. In the end the Mk.VIIa did the same as many before: it ploughed into the Mun. No surviving parts but a nice stretch of explosions over some hundred metres.

When even some quickloads all did the same I decided to start a new probe.

Same setup for Mk.VIIb, thanks to a slightly botched start with less fuel in the transfer stage and thus higher orbital velocity for the probe core to kill. That meant more wobble and a nice compact explosion on the Mun surface.

Dangit!

Finally it dawned on me: that radial parachute. Only counterweight was a 2HOT...

I decided to quit for that day.

And add a set of RCS to the next probe!

After all: there's no working probe on the Mun.

Just a tipped one drawing just enough power to survive the night from the solar panels...

And a set of four legs, lying somewhere quite picturesque.

[pauix]

Well, my fail seems to be more of an inability to land stuff on the Mun.

Happens to the best of us. Here's Chad after a "successful landing":

And here's the rescue craft Bob tried to use get him back to Kerbin:

[FocalDistance]

I had sent up 4 satellites with the remote tech two mod installed. Everything was going great until I decided to view one of them to de-orbit the attached booster stage. It glitched itself and duplicated itself inside itself. So if anyone has seen the movie Gravity where all the debris was coming at them that was what the aftermath looked like. It then crashed the game. Come to find out through testing that it was remote tech that caused it.

I've encountered this bug as well, assuming you still have a save from before it is fixable however. Go to the space centre and there will be multiple copies of the satellite in the list of active missions - for some reason they have cloned insided each other. Delete all but the last in the list and you should now be able to use the satellite as normal.

[Dragev]

My current Mun landing program is a succession of failures.

1st flight of the Munraker Mk 1; I got into low orbit over the Mun and started descending. As the ship hurtled towards the surface at 77 m/s I thought "This is going a bit fast... what's the maximum speed for this stuff again...12 m/s?? Oh sh-" *WHAM*

Rest in pieces, Jebediah Kerman.

Fortunately, m quicksave enabled me to try again and the ship landed...successfully, before tipping over the side. After collecting the science and setting up the flag, I began rolling the ship around in the hope of making it face upward. After 15 minutes I finally succeeded and realised that my fuel reserve would take me to barely 20 000 m over the Mun.

Before I could organise a rescue mission, I needed science to unlock "very advanced rocketry". With this aim in mind, I set up the Munraker Mk 2 with more fuel for the lander. This time I landed straight, got Bill Kerman out to collect samples and saw I had forgotten to add stairs up to the cockpit. After a lot of fruitless jumping, I finally got him in there. The maximum apoapsis this time was 40 000 m, so better than before, but no cigar.

I now had two pilots stranded on the Mun and no science in sight. This very morning I landed the unmanned Munprobe Mk 1, which was able to transmit JUST enough science to unlock the bigger rockets. I expect more fun with the special rescue rocket, the Icarus Mk 1...

[SRV Ron]

Rocket so tall the launch clamp failed;

Then broke in half

[vidboi]

Mission control, we have a guidance problem, losing pitch and yaw control...

...ah...

[NecroBones]

I trusted MechJeb a little too much, last night. It decided to start my escape burn quite early, and put me down into the atmosphere. Living Jeb would have been much batter. After a quick reload, I did the burn manually as two burns with an orbit in between, and that was MUCH better.

When I was watching MechJeb from the map-view, I though it looked a bit low, and switched back to the spaceship view to find this:

[Nepos]

Rocket so tall the launch clamp failed;

http://i.imgur.com/qMltLvy.jpg

Then broke in half

http://i.imgur.com/uIqkbUL.jpg

Does this type of launch even work?

[User Unrelated]

Does this type of launch even work?

I messed around with NovaPunch 5m tanks/rockets for a while way back in like, .18 or something

and those 5m rockets pack a MONSTER punch!

[Semmel]

You are not going to space today. 30 minutes of sadness, explosions, death and quite a lot of failure. Its very sad to see this.

[Liowen]

Well I got into to space, but I tried to land.....on Jool

[plaiddragon]

The fuel is supposed to be at the station, not all over the ground!

time to launch my sta-*reverts*

note: this is supposed to be a station with the interstellar science lab and a default KSP science lab

also, docking with minmus like a boss

what was this again? oh yeah, a giant rover after applying boostahs

Logic.

Hmm...

improper use of blimp, unless you're Jeb

Para Debri!

sorry for all of the pics, but i had a lot

[SRV Ron]

Does this type of launch even work?

Once I added a ring of stabilizing clamps.

A successful flight.

[problemecium]

Haven't really had a good picture to put here... till today:

[smysha]

What happens, when you send unmaned lander to Eve, with Deadly Reentry installed and without heatshield?

Nothing good, belive me. And see, how that lander should look like.

[CatastrophicFailure]

Rocket so tall the launch clamp failed;

http://i.imgur.com/qMltLvy.jpg

Then broke in half

http://i.imgur.com/uIqkbUL.jpg

Kerbal Joint Reinforcement is your friend... Especially with 5m NovaPunch rockets!

[Jouni]

My unlucky cargo ship finally arrived Laythe, carrying some habitation modules for the base. Because surface bases with engines feel rather silly, the plan was to use a utility tug to deliver the modules.

The original idea was that the tug would carry a module from its top docking port. After the tug had maneuvered the habitation module to its final position, it would deploy the parachutes of the module, and then drop the module by detaching its top docking port.

That was a bad idea. The first landing attempt failed, because I had forgotten drag. Cupola modules should never be used in atmosphere, because they want to point retrograde real bad. That attempt ended in a crash, as the tug could not point its nose above the horizon.

Time for plan B. The utility tug would carry the habitation module on top of itself. When the module was above its final position, it would deploy the parachutes of the utility tug, detach the tug, and then deploy its own parachutes.

So far so good. Reentry would place the first module almost precisely to the planned base location on the ridge.

We won't need that top docking port anymore.

Then it was time to deploy the parachutes and detach the tug.

Oops!

Maybe I can figure out some way to save that habitation module. At least I have three modules still remaining on the ship.

[Xetalim]

I decided to be ambitious, and land on/return from Duna before I had even landed/returned from the Mun (I've mines Minmus for quite a bit of science, though)

I gave up, and decided to wait until I had unlocked some 2m engines

Sorry, no pics of that, I was panicking the whole time haha

You can land+return from duna with 1.5 meter ships. No need for 2 meter engines.

[User Unrelated]

You can land+return from duna with 1.5 meter ships. No need for 2 meter engines.

I know you can, but my particular design was sort of large and ambitious, and the real problem was that I hadn't yet unlocked the 2m FAIRINGS

and my girder/solid booster/command seat lander/re-orbit vehicle was just NOT getting along with FAR... no matter what I did, the craft was just too unstable to lift off effectively.

It had PLENTY of Delta-V (the main ship had enough to get to eeloo orbit and back, and the re-orbit vehicle could achieve orbit on KERBIN), but it was just too tall and wiggly, and the big un-aerodynamic nosecone didn't help.

a 2m main stack would have just been so much more solid.

I will be re-visiting the design soon!

Edited March 15, 2014 by User Unrelated

[DaPatman]

I once let Bill run out of jetpack fuel on the Mun, which wouldn't have been a problem except I hadn't put a ladder on the ship. I didn't want to leave it there, since it had science on it, so Bob brought a ship with a ladder, and Bill climbed into it while Bob flew to the first ship, and the two of them flew back.

While all of this was going on, Jeb was on his way back from low solar orbit. The trajectory he took meant he entered Kerbin's SoI at 8km/s. It turns out that when going at such speed, a 30km periapsis isn't sufficient for aerocapture. Worse, the ion engine isn't powerful enough to change this fact. Fortunately, I had enough xenon to get another encounter, this time with a 20km periapsis, so even if that still hadn't been low enough for aerocapture, I would still go low enough that I could deploy the parachutes.

[ayana]

"We regret to announce that Jebediah Kerman has died during a test flight of our newest spaceplane."

By some fluke all my control surfaces stopped working during reentry. There was a great splash. It went to space just fine but it didn't make it back.

[Kruleworld]

Here's an image of failure

those are the aborted SRBs going free...