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

[CatastrophicFailure]

So....my initial proof-of-concept test for a mobile launcher...

...needs some work...

[KevinW42]

The largest spacecraft I've ever assembled in orbit...

...had a wobble issue and broke apart as soon as I fired up the main engines.

I used one of the lander engines to deorbit what was left, but after separating the crew capsule, I remembered that I had left two kerbals in the science module. Fortunately, this was easily rectified as I was still early in the reentry.

Primary mission objective failed, but all crew returned safely.

And now there's a nice little debris field flying through my usual parking orbit.

[eataTREE]

I, uh, forgot parachutes on one of my space station manned launch vehicles. No, there is not enough room on the space station to transfer all the crew aboard.

(It's OK: they have plenty of supplies and I can send a Rescue Taxi, but it's still a pretty epic fail.)

[Xacktar]

The road to a flying car can be a bit bumpy.

Edited September 17, 2014 by Xacktar

[brdavis]

Wish I had an image, but I don't…

It was a simple launch in career mode - core stage surrounded by three liquid strap-ons, with those being fed asparagus-style from liquid tanks perched on top of BACC SRB's. Worked great before. But somewhere an error crept into the craft file I guess… during this launch, the SRB's staged off just fine. But unnoticed by the ground crew (me), one of the three liquid strap-ons was burning fuel very slightly slower than the others. Upon "burn-out" of the strap-ons, two burned out while the third kept firing for a couple seconds. This resulted in the entire stack tumbling end-over-end, 20+ km up and rising, with three dead liquid-fueld boosters hanging on to one end. As ground control (me) tried to figure out the right roll position to get in so the wildly cartwheeling central core would pass between (and not into) the cast-off strap-on booster, evidently Jeb (channeled by my teenage son) looks over my shoulder, shrugs, and says "well you can't get that under control until you stage those things off" <hits space bar>.

Explosions resulted. Yelling ensued in ground control.

What was left after the unplanned disassembly was enough to bring it under control, reducing the spin to zero, and drop Jeb into the nearest lake for a thorough cooling off (not sure there if I mean the little verbal guy, my son, or me… but somebody got pretty wet after this sequence of events).

Probably the best accident I've ever recovered from during a launch anyway.

And no, I have no idea what was going on. Yes, all the fuel ducts were present, yes fuel was flowing, yes, it was all built with symmetry, and no the engine thrusts hadn't been tweaked (any of them). No idea. I rebuilt, and it worked fine. I then modified that, and re-invented the same problem (by modifying the fuel tanks on top of the BACC's). Weird.

[vardicd]

Wish I had an image, but I don't…

It was a simple launch in career mode - core stage surrounded by three liquid strap-ons, with those being fed asparagus-style from liquid tanks perched on top of BACC SRB's. Worked great before. But somewhere an error crept into the craft file I guess… during this launch, the SRB's staged off just fine. But unnoticed by the ground crew (me), one of the three liquid strap-ons was burning fuel very slightly slower than the others. Upon "burn-out" of the strap-ons, two burned out while the third kept firing for a couple seconds. This resulted in the entire stack tumbling end-over-end, 20+ km up and rising, with three dead liquid-fueld boosters hanging on to one end. As ground control (me) tried to figure out the right roll position to get in so the wildly cartwheeling central core would pass between (and not into) the cast-off strap-on booster, evidently Jeb (channeled by my teenage son) looks over my shoulder, shrugs, and says "well you can't get that under control until you stage those things off" <hits space bar>.

Explosions resulted. Yelling ensued in ground control.

What was left after the unplanned disassembly was enough to bring it under control, reducing the spin to zero, and drop Jeb into the nearest lake for a thorough cooling off (not sure there if I mean the little verbal guy, my son, or me… but somebody got pretty wet after this sequence of events).

Probably the best accident I've ever recovered from during a launch anyway.

And no, I have no idea what was going on. Yes, all the fuel ducts were present, yes fuel was flowing, yes, it was all built with symmetry, and no the engine thrusts hadn't been tweaked (any of them). No idea. I rebuilt, and it worked fine. I then modified that, and re-invented the same problem (by modifying the fuel tanks on top of the BACC's). Weird.

I've had this happen to me before. sometimes when you load a craft file or subassembly one of the engines will draw fuel at a lower rate than everyhtnig else.

[GreeningGalaxy]

I tried to take Bob out for some wing walking, but he decided he didn't want to after all, and hung off the end of the wing and pouted without responding to anything I said to him.

Later I used a hellfire missile from a VTOL to take out one of my landed bombers. Unfortunately, I was a little close to the ground at the time, and forgot that there were still bombs attached to the bomber.

Suddenly, the realization hit Herlong Kerman that she and Sidmon were going to be staying on Vall for quite a lot longer than the original plan.

A proper Europa Report-style takeoff.

[justidutch]

This was not done today, but I just uploaded the images today. Just when 23.5 came out I decided to have fun with the end of .23 by doing the Kesler syndrome thing. S I built this:

But then as the orbit was being circularized, disaster struck the ship that was intended to impart disaster on other ships:

If I remember correctly I did still manage to fire the sequence that separated all the parts to create the debris field:

They finally made their way back to Kerbin:

To be continued...

[justidutch]

I built another KS ship but couldn't get the orbit circularized. It looked like this:

[Freshmeat]

Going into space was smooth. However, I forgot to bring legs for my first career manned mission to the Mun. Jeb being foolhardy, he decided to land on the engine of the Kerbin -> Mun stage. If everything went according to his plan, the engine would break and the fuel tank would act as a base for take-off. Part a worked, but the tank toppled, leaving the return craft pointing slightly downwards. But after doing the science I found out that the reaction wheels where powergul enough to lift the nose about 20 degree above horizontal. Jeb says a prayer and hit full thrust, and much to my surprise the ship does not collide with rocks or the crater wall.

Orbit, and just enough fuel to get a periapsis of 58000 m. There is not a lot of air at 58 km. It has taken one and a half hour, and I am down to 56.5 km. I can see that I shave a bit more of the orbit every time I pass, but this is getting a bit longwinded.

[djnattyd]

I haven't been to space for days. Not because I haven't wanted to, the desire was there. The ability to choose which of the (many) mods I should remove in order to stop KSP crashing every couple of minutes was not there though. (They're all so good, DAMN YOU MOD MAKERS!)

Also, the fact that Kerbins atmosphere seems to be currently made up of kerbins terrain (don't ask, something has broken E.V.E) was making the guys in Mission Control a little anxious.

[Roflcopterkklol]

I haven't been to space for days. Not because I haven't wanted to, the desire was there. The ability to choose which of the (many) mods I should remove in order to stop KSP crashing every couple of minutes was not there though. (They're all so good, DAMN YOU MOD MAKERS!)

Also, the fact that Kerbins atmosphere seems to be currently made up of kerbins terrain (don't ask, something has broken E.V.E) was making the guys in Mission Control a little anxious.

I have gotten to the point where i have 5 versions of KSP for different things, 2 are completely stock 3 have different assortments of mods on them

[Whovian]

Not really a "you will not go to space today" rather than a "you will not return from space today." You see, I was in early career mode with assorted mods including Deadly Reentry yesterday when I got one of those "rescue this guy in orbit" missions. So I built a rescue craft with two Mk1 command pods to go rescue him; the plan was separate them and land them separately. Just as I was about to deorbit the rescue pod, I realized I'd forgotten a heat shield to protect that construction. And while the Mk1 command pods have a built-in heat shield, the way I mounted parachutes to make stuff inline meant that while the pod might be able to survive reentry via the heat shield, the parachutes surely wouldn't.

This is the story of my life. I might try deorbiting anyway and hoping I can survive reentry.

[GreeningGalaxy]

Not really a "you will not go to space today" rather than a "you will not return from space today." You see, I was in early career mode with assorted mods including Deadly Reentry yesterday when I got one of those "rescue this guy in orbit" missions. So I built a rescue craft with two Mk1 command pods to go rescue him; the plan was separate them and land them separately. Just as I was about to deorbit the rescue pod, I realized I'd forgotten a heat shield to protect that construction. And while the Mk1 command pods have a built-in heat shield, the way I mounted parachutes to make stuff inline meant that while the pod might be able to survive reentry via the heat shield, the parachutes surely wouldn't.

This is the story of my life. I might try deorbiting anyway and hoping I can survive reentry.

Just jump out, turn on the EVA pack, and hold shift until you bounce off the ground. Works even better than Danny2462's helmet method in my experience.

[Frannington]

I have gotten to the point where i have 5 versions of KSP for different things, 2 are completely stock 3 have different assortments of mods on them

I might be really off-topic here, but I bought KSP off Steam and there is only one install location for it.

I'd love to have multiple copies for different mod sets, but I don't think I can. Do you (or does anyone else) have a procedure for this please?

[EnderSpace]

I try to land in Moho and I'm sure that I'm the only one who did it

I land in a mohole , Lolololol

[sdj64]

I might be really off-topic here, but I bought KSP off Steam and there is only one install location for it.

I'd love to have multiple copies for different mod sets, but I don't think I can. Do you (or does anyone else) have a procedure for this please?

If you go into your Steam install location and copy the whole KSP folder to somewhere else, you can make separate installs. Just the only one that will still launch through Steam is the original in the Steam folder. I use that for stock and install mods on a separate one.

On topic: I was lifting off from the Mun and my game crashed. I reloaded later and forgot about that Mun lander, which was on a sub-orbital trajectory. I went to do something else and by then I had quicksaved and it was gone.

[SirJodelstein]

Early plane experiments in TinkerTech. Result: plane is extremely instable on the pitch-axis, manual control inputs are not advisable. We mourn for test pilot Richberry.

[TheFlyingPigs]

I got a contract to get the sepatrons tested in orbit. So I decided to do that with my Mun mission. So I get Ito a 100km orbit and decouple the atmosphere stage. In construction, I put the se patrons on the so-called TO THE MUN stage. I activate the sepatrons and realise 'wait, I'm going to hit the-' and I smash straight into the STUPID DEBRIS. As a good person, I can't revert. ALL MY FUNDING!

[Xacktar]

I got a contract to get the sepatrons tested in orbit. So I decided to do that with my Mun mission. So I get Ito a 100km orbit and decouple the atmosphere stage. In construction, I put the se patrons on the so-called TO THE MUN stage. I activate the sepatrons and realise 'wait, I'm going to hit the-' and I smash straight into the STUPID DEBRIS. As a good person, I can't revert. ALL MY FUNDING!

Bwahahaha. That... that is pretty good.

[TheFlyingPigs]

OMG, I GOT A COMPLIMENT (or insult) FROM THE MIGHTY XACTAR!

BTW I love your vids.You inspired me and my friends for The Flying Pigs.

Without you, It probs wouldn't exist

[Enterprise0709]

I still remember my first attempt at a mun landing... And lets just say that some people have to learn things the hard way. Trying to land a capsule on the moon... using a parachute. You only try that once! (that was 2 years ago)

[Johno]

I felt for someone who tried that, then angrily asked the forum why it didn't work.

Today I had the job of testing a RAPIER in a suborbital trajectory. Too late I remembered that Jets would only get us so high . . Further, the jet on the starboard nacelle flamed out first.

Oh well, I had the chance to trial my Spacecraft Recovery System (lots of parachutes)!

[Felsmak]

This little craft did not go to space. But that wasn't the point either.

[guitarxe]

This little craft did not go to space. But that wasn't the point either.

http://i.imgur.com/33gq9kU.png

http://i.imgur.com/aVnGeTP.png

"No, Jeb, this doesn't fly either. What's next on the list, the dump truck?"