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

[Custard Donut (In Space)]

When i first got the game i had trouble even trying to get my landing gear to work, i attached girders and struts in such a way where all the legs went wonky, getting into space at that time was a far and distant prospect

Edited April 23, 2013 by Custard Donut (In Space)

[EricKilla]

Oh, I have just the thing for this thread.

So I was working on a cruiser, and I, being overly cautious, decided to test the aerodynamic stability of the ship's bridge. I slapped it on a rover body, clicked launch... and then realized that my wheels were facing the sheer edge of the launch pad, as opposed to the ramp. I thought "Oh this thing's big enough it can handle that drop." Nope.

Also, for kicks, here's a picture of me testing the joint strength of the completed bow and midships sections of the aforementioned cruiser.

Holy crap, that joint can take a lot.

Then the launch attempts. Oh god the launch attempts. I still haven't gotten this thing into orbit.

To finish off, here's a scene from one of my many launch attempts, where two of my lifter rockets separated from the main lifter assembly. There's nothing more scary than two runaway rockets that are made up of three orange Rocomax fuel tanks, one of the double-can Rocomax fuel tanks, and a mainsail.

[Immortalis Vexx]

So I have recently got the hang of putting things in orbit and I decided to try and reach the Mun. Built a simple lander, loaded it up with fuel, and headed off. The good news was that I indeed landed on the Mun. The bad news was that I landed improperly and caused an explosion that destroyed everything but the capsule. Trying to stay in the spirit of the game I decided on a rescue mission rather than ending the flight. The next two vehicles I produced managed to kill both pilots while attempting to get into a Munar(sp?) orbit. The third vehicle managed to land on the Mun safely \o/ but had a questionable amount of fuel for return flight. I tried it anyway and didn't quite make it into orbit around the Mun and impacted the surface at 300m/s.

TLDR

My initial attempt for the moon cost three lives. The rescue attempt cost me 5 more.

Space is hard.

[Tw1]

Love the XKCD reference in the thread title.

The "W's planet explorer 'Martin'" touched down on Duna without a problem.

It even had rover-probes, developed in a rush before the launch window.

Sadly, none of the rover-probes lasted more than a week.

Controlling them with a radial mechjeb thing on the bottom turned out to be a bad idea.

Landed a similar rocket on the Mun:

It wasn't supposed to land pointing that way...

But wondering if it could take of like that inspired a new line of vessels.

I wanted to make somthing like this go further:

(Aeropod "Dino" crew posing proudly after a successful test flight to another continent.)

Unfortunately, I ended up with a fiery fountain:

I did eventually get the funny looking thing to the Mun:

After some failures:

But after about a minute:

After successfully launching small things with jet engines instead of boosters, I tried upscaling things.

It didn't have the thrust to get up on its own, and I had no room for radial boosters, so:

Basically.. it didn't work.

But my abort system did though!

I think that's enough for one post....

Edited April 24, 2013 by Tw1

[Van Disaster]

No space today for that one...

[Julexus Quandem]

I have been experimenting with using jet engines instead of boosters to make SSTOs with some very... bizarre results at times. The funniest was the ship that instead heading up as planned instead hopped in a surprisingly controlled way off the launchpad and the continued on its merry way bouncing off its landing legs for each hop. Sadly I was laughing too hard to take a screenshot.

[foamyesque]

Complicated rockets can go wrong in complicated ways.

[Warscribe]

Well...no.

It miraculously survived the explosion of 6 stages...now its stuck at the launchpad..thrusting against it with the ant-engine.

[Psychoholic]

Must remember not to rest my hand on the space bar while launching.....

[frik]

It was one of my first attempts at launching lander+rover, everything was fine except that at 5km one of the engines kept going like "screw you guys, i'm going THAT way!"

[sadron]

I'm loving some of these tales of rescue. I just wish I was competent enough to make rockets to go past the Mun. I only JUST managed to make a successful one-man rocket to Mun. I didn't have enough fuel to leave Mun's orbit so I'm retrying to see if I can use less fuel falling to the surface of Mun.

[Malachai]

I'd like to consider the past week, up until a few hours ago, a colossal set of fails.

See, I got it in my head to send an unmanned rover to Duna before any Kerbals. You know, to get a feel for the place. And so I began my decent into madness. For two days, my upper stages were too heavy, and my lower stage fuel tanks simply buckled under the weight. Then, I shave off enough weight to prevent the tanks from getting crushed like soda cans, only to find I packed too LITTLE fuel. Then, I finally get to Duna's orbit, do a quicksave, and accidentally end the flight. I avoid panicking (I mean, it's right there on the cover of the Book), start a new launch, and find that it autosaved over my quicksave.

THEN! I get back to Duna only to find that the engines on my sky crane weren't pointed right, and I go spinning out of control. Today, I had to find out the hard way that opening your 'chutes at high speed kind of causes them to snap off. I finally land on Duna unscathed (still need to work on that sky crane design, though), and walk away from my computer to answer Nature's call, only to find discover that my rover went down a hill, picked up too much speed, and flipped over. Thank god for quicksaves. Oh, and then there was the time I forgot to put the launch clamps on the same stage as my engines, and my entire rocket dropped like a rock.

That I haven't committed defenestration on my monitor is a miracle.

[Fried]

everything failed in an otherwise common reentry. last pick before death.

[CalculusWarrior]

I tried to land a rover on Ike. Unfortunately, the skycrane picked that moment to fulfil his lifelong dreams of becoming a breakdancer:

[KerbActual]

I didn't have the mind to take screenshots, but, lets just say it involved a rocket with empty fuel, a steep approach, the moon, a skycrane, and a newly formed crater.

[Kerbface]

Well I was tryin to launch something really big, so I spent about 20 minutes waiting for about a minute and a half in-game at less than 1fps... and then I decoupled my outer engines and realised I hadn't put struts to support the huge payload on the inner engines and my ship very slowly crumpled in upon itself.

[Valentina Tereshkova]

After much pain and many vehicle explosions, kerbal deaths, and other gruesome issues, I finally landed an intact vehicle on the Mun. Then I went to EVA, and my first kerbonaut fell to his death. Then the second one.

Then I realized that if the ladders are not *perfectly* lined up, there is no way for a kerbonaut on EVA to shift over a meter or so. There is no fix for this outside of the VAB, so my one remaining kerbonaut had no choice to come back to Kerbal without ever having a crew member set foot on the Mun.

The return journey was a painful lesson in orbital mechanics, as I foolishly launched into a prograde instead of retrograde Munar orbit. However, I had overdesigned with plenty of fuel, and finally arranged an orbit back to Kerbal with a periapse of about 8 km. Perfect!

All was well until both parachutes failed after the full chutes opened. (I deliberately used two, where either one would have brought the capsule safely to ground.) None of my kerbals went home that day.

Edited April 30, 2013 by Valentina Tereshkova

[Felsmak]

So I tried to design an Apollo style mission where the lander had a proper ascent stage without making it larger than the CSM. In order to do this, I simply placed a lot of tiny fuel tanks inside the lander pod and it worked like a charm. The catch? That apparently counts as obstructing the hatch. No munwalk for me!

[reptile2001]

I've had missions like that myself - Murphy's law seems to have some sort of exponential effect on space travel...

[Lachned]

I love those moments when you launch and you hear something breaking. You go like "hmm I'm pretty sure I saw something fall off.....but we're going straight up with good acceleration so let's leave it at that...."

[soranno]

A tale of fail today, with the rather inappropriately named `Duna Lander`, on course for Lathe. Playing with deadly reentry plugin, I was very pleased with my solution to the heat shield problem with this ship. Here recreated in the VAB, I wonder if you can tell what the potential problem was that I missed..

Yes... well anyway, off I went and heading for an aerobrake around Jool, unfamiliar with the atmosphere of the green giant I apparently went in too deep and temperature began to rise. No matter, I thought, I will simply deploy the heatshield early, good thing I brought this.. and proceeded to inflate the shield.

Those of you perceptive enough to have seen in the previous image what was about to happen, will be unsurprised by this recreation on the launch pad at KSC..

Space ships are not meant to bend this way.. and thus ensued catastrophic structural failure. Among the elements of the ship blown off, was the heatshield itself.. and thus the remainder of the vessel hurtled through the atmosphere of Jool shedding more .. rather vital parts in heat related explosions.

Perhaps miraculously, some pieces of the ship emerged, melted maybe, but intact. and with one remaining nuclear engine and some rcs limped into an elliptical orbit of Vall many orbits and encounters later.

And there they await, 2 and half years passed, for a rescue.. I assure them will come sometime. Honest.

[Warscribe]

Coming back from Minmus: After checking i have enough fuel for a nice reentry trajectory, checking if the parachute is still there and asking bob if he wants to go home again, i decided to get the lander back to kerbin.

So far so good...Until i realized im coming in with 4000m/s

..Well, that lander is a revisited version of my Munlander, so that shouldnt be a problem. (the orignal Hadnur I came in with 3400m/s and landed just fine)

...Until i remembered that the lander is the final stage and i cant reject the pod.

I hoped for the best. We hit reentry..surprisingly 90° from sea level. The parachute activated at about 300m...i heard a crack and all except the pod splash down below me.

and then i wondered: why dont i slow down anymore? 80m/s..200m.

..The parachute cut itself off!

Splash at about 85 m/s

[Conarr]

I love those moments when you launch and you hear something breaking. You go like "hmm I'm pretty sure I saw something fall off.....but we're going straight up with good acceleration so let's leave it at that...."

Unless something major explodes, I just turn the music up louder to ignore the minor explosions. I feel like Mal in Firefly all the time, "Did the gorram [whatever] just fall off my ship?"

[kajoman]

It was one of my first attempts at launching lander+rover, everything was fine except that at 5km one of the engines kept going like "screw you guys, i'm going THAT way!"

The images of the two are perfect. "Where's the rocket goin Shepmon?" "I dunno Wehrdrin" "*oblivious*"

[Kerbface]

My most recent failure was because most of my middle stack of rockets just fell off while my outer ones were still burning.