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

[Harvzey]

After lots of planning, failures, and shouting at the computer screen, i FINALLY got interplanetary for the first time in my entire time playing KSP. Unfortunately, I realised too late that parachutes alone won't save you from smashing into Duna. I started burning retro when I realised, but nothing could save it. Oh well. At least it kinda survived

[TimePeriod]

I forgot to check clearance between my engines and reserve fuel tanks for my mission to Eve.

[Felsmak]

You had one job, MechJeb.

[N8.8]

This is what I got after crashing a rocket into a missile launcher I was testing on the runway.

[TLATopHat]

Over-estimated the amount of fuel I needed in my transfer stage to reach Minmus. No big deal! I'll just use it to slow my approach, then dump it once I'm low enough. Bonus fuel for the trip back!

Dropping transfer stage. Stage is clear! Looking good. Firing the lander's thrusters for final apprâ€â€

...

The transfer stage bounced off the surface and took out one of my two LV-909s, and I just spiraled into the surface of Minmus. Crew survived, but are now stranded without any engines.

Time to plan a rescue mission.

[Vahal]

Yeah, launch straight to the sta... Oh, wait! Why this crap is bending on the left.

Ok... could be worse... At least Jeb enjoyed the ride and this stupid engine still working... Really this is so kerbalish

My beautiful rocket was sprayed around the KSC. It's unbelievable Jeb survived this fracking crash. Next time, open the chutes really really much earlier

[The Wrong Stuff]

It took 5 attempts to get this rocket to fly.....the first four can all be seen here.

I stranded my first Kerbal on the Mun in my current career. Landed on a steep slope which I thought was the edge of a crater. Spent 20 minutes trying to get the thing to stand up, it fell over, then I stood it up, just to see it fall over again. After breakdancing on the Mun for 20 minutes (I took video), the parachute broke off. but I managed to stand it up finally, got out to do an EVA to plant a flag, bumped the landing leg on my way off the ladder and knocked it over again.....I opted to give up there.

[Tiakatt]

Last night I did my first Duna mission - which I didn't expect to return from anyway, but still. It was largely successful, I didn't intend the polar orbit I came in with but that's no biggie.

What was not okay was the dead engine. My build philosophy tends to be test a craft and err on the side of removing things when they fail or are struggling. So I tested this ship and its staging extensively, then not long before launching to Duna I removed a fuel tank from a lower stage without making any other changes to staging - so I didn't test that change beyond to look and make sure the engine was in the right place in the staging list. Well...apparently I also removed that fuel tank's decoupler and didn't notice it missing from the stage list. So an intended late stage engine is sitting there on top of a fuel tank, with no decoupler.

Because the engine was still in its own stage in the right place relative to everything else, it did not fire (and overheat the fuel tank below, so there's that) when I fired the lower engine. I finally ran out of fuel with the lower engine and realized I couldn't decouple it, and that this next engine wasn't firing because was also also out of fuel -- this was the moment I discovered that Engines have fuel crossfeed to parts below. So not only was I carrying the dead weight of that engine the whole time when I never even ended up using it, but I was carrying the lower engine and its fuel tanks after I should have been able to progress to the next stage. I might not have had to use so much of my lander's fuel on orbit and landing if I'd not carried so much dead weight the whole trip. I have enough fuel to enter Duna orbit easily, but not enough to return home. This knowledge disappoints me, despite the fact I was okay with possibly stranding those Kerbals. Fail.

[Shania_L]

Testing a new design of extendable landing gear on a heavy lander.

The ship survived, but the only part to come off was the damn probe core it was right in the middle! how did that happen?

Just hanging around on the Mun...

An old pic, but still one of my favourites, somehow Jeb managed to put his foot through the solar panel as he fell off the ship, leaving himself stranded alone on the Mun hanging off the outside of his ship.

This is my best ever VTOL landing, best in that only the wing came off and compaired with the previous attempts thats very good

This last one is proof of why looking at the centre of gravity button is always a good idea.

When parachutes are below the centre of gravity, it will hang the ship upside down... and apparently communication dishes make excellent landing gear.

[Arctodus]

I finally knew. None of this was really happening. Bob died weeks ago, on that very first failed landing attempt. This, all that had happened, was some fragment of Bob; searching repeatedly, desperately, futilely for some way home which was never meant to come. This was torture, and it was time for it to end.

With one final, retrograde burst of his rocket pack, I ended Bob's orbit and bid him sleep well.

http://i.imgur.com/VdinN3A.jpg

-------------

He didn't bring home any science to KSC, but I learned more from Bob's disaster of a mission than from anything else I've done.

That's absolutely heartbreaking :|

Farewell, Bob.

[magnemoe]

Cool landing, I had my weirdest "sucessfull" landing today.

SSTO rocket with the three man pod and three rapier engines, tested that I reached orbit and had spare fuel, however I forgot solar panels so I just reverted added panels and sent three kerbal up to an ship who would leave for Jool soon. Landing would be unmanned anyway.

Docked and delivered kerbals, for return I just set mechjeb to return me to launchpad. I had enough fuel to do an powered landing in rocket mode but was unsure if engine would switch to atmospheric for braking and if this worked well.

As an escape system I had two radial parachutes and a decopler on the pod. Now mechjeb releases the parachutes automatically around 1000 meter

As 500 meters they opened and the pod separated from the bottom part because of the shock.

However mechjeb managed to land the bottom successfully. After a year the game still surprises me.

[Luiaard]

Not per se a fail...but quite annoying:

I wanted to expand my Mun Base. Science lab was already set up, so I build a complicated "Three-in-one" Landerstage, wich was basicly three landerprobes stacked on top of each other. One with Goo Container, one with the Science Jr. Mat. Bay, and on top Bob in his capsule comanding the whole monster. The goal was to carefully touch done the lowermost (goo) stage, decouple it, fly a couple of meters left or right, touch done again, decouple science Jr., fly a couple of meter and land Bob....

It worked out quite great...except the probes with the Science Jr./Goo did not have probe cores...and the thor landing legs on bobs lander didn't work and he tipped over -.-

Soooo, I perfectly landed two pieces of space debris and a tipped lander at my Mun Base...You wont do any science today...

[Overfloater]

I conducted a Landing-In-The-Wilderness test for my Astroliner IV Comet spaceplane.

(That's just the 1st prototype, it has improved very much by now and still looks cool)

Daaaaaang...

I also wanted to pay a visit to Duna with my Astroliner I-B:

That oughta teach me not to make landing gear too narrow. Maybe next time I'll even pack me some chutes, too!

Anyway I then travelled back in time with [F-9] and returned to earth.

[Xacktar]

Getting the Kerbapult to Minmus is going to be just as difficult as I expected it to be.

[MagnesiumDew]

I did get to the moon. Didn't get back though...

[thunderstar]

Not fail but almost, or it really changed the mission, my biggest lifter second stage engine exploded after staging, so i had to use third stage instead, made it to space but i doubt i made it to my original destination

[Ranger]

I am trying to get my science up, so I decided to get in a multiple-biome trip to Minmus.

I sent up my main ship,which had the Lab on it, and since I did not need all of the fuel in my lifter to get it to orbit, I kept the last stage, sent up a re-fuealer, and used that for my main transfer out. I would still have some left over when I got there, and I could use that to re0fuel my lander, which I sent after the fueling was complete.

Got everything set up, and out to Minmus. Send Jeb down for the first set of samples. Bring him back up, and I used the MechJeb to get back to the main ship. First try comes in at about 6 km. So I click "Get Closer" and then "Match Velocities", letting Mech Jeb do the timing. This time the estimated distance was 20m. A little bit close, but still doable, particularly since I have found that that distance is usually a bit closer then what you actually get.

Wouldn't you know it, but my braking burn takes me right through that final booster.

Lost the engine to my lander, as well as the SAS module that I was using to mount the instruments, and I have a bunch of debris in Minmus orbit now, but other then that, nothing much was lost. Managed to re-dock, decouple the remainder of the booster, and while I know that I could probably have landed on Minmus on RCS, I decided to come back another time.

Edit:

This is interesting. I managed to get back to Kerbal, and landed in the Desert. I have not been there before, so I send Bob out to do a last bit of science. I was not expecting to have to come down, so I had not really set things up on the capsule and the lab to line up. So I jumped.

He hit the ground, and then the screen went black, and the numbers on the altimeter started showing random numbers, but all the same, all 4's, then 6's, etc. I tried switching views, nothing. Went to the Spaceport, still black. Exited to the loading screen, came back, still would not load visuals. Quite the game completely. THIS time it loaded. Went to the Tracking station.

My ship is now on an escape trajectory. from Kerbel.

OK...

Loaded the ship to see if I could being it back down.

It is now in many many pieces. It loads on the lab, and I can not bring the crew capsule up at all. Not sure what to do, since I have the main three on that capsule. Quite the game and came here, hoping that someone would have a suggestion beyond SOL.

Edited February 2, 2014 by Ranger

[Starwhip]

Well, one of my recent Kerbollo Mun missions was a partial success: I got to the Mun, separated the lander, landed and returned to orbit. And that's where it all went wrong...

So the lander, while coming in to dock to the CSM, was going too fast. So it hit the main engine of the CSM, and I was like ()_() that's the first time I've ever messed up a docking! Then I said, "Well, it's not so bad: the lander has an engine. I'll just dock this thing and..." I noticed that the thing that hit the engine was the DOCKING PORT of the lander. So I've got a thing with no engine and a docking port, and a thing with no docking port with an engine... I just transferred everyone back into the CSM and launched a remote rescue vessel.

[tstehler1]

Tested an unmanned version of the Andromeda II, a long-distance vessel. Explosions were had. Regret not taking screenshots, probably greatest derp of my KSP century. Long story short, during a rendezvous in low munar orbit, I realized that I was moving at a speed (in relation to my target) of roughly 600 m/s. I made this realization about one second before impact.

Edited February 6, 2014 by tstehler1

[NASI Director]

I wish I had some pictures to post, but this probably tops them all.

I don't use the quicksave/load. I don't. Mainly because I don't think about it until after the incident. Anyway, I had finally decided to make a Mun base. I have never done this before, and to be honest I was nervous. I constructed an unmanned lander that would land, and have supplies for me to start linking up the pieces (I had KAS as a plugin). That went smoothly, and I landed in the southern part of the northern crater (mind=blown). Now I send up my manned lander, and it goes fine. The inclination change, blah blah. I initially landed within 1.1km of the first lander, and with plenty of fuel left, I started heading towards the other lander at a pace of about 0.4km per hop. Eventually, I had gotten within 50m of the unmanned lander and then disaster struck. I accidentally killed my vertical velocity without doing the horizontal first and went legs in about 200m/s hitting the ground. Luckily, it survived but I was spinning to rapidly to change my attitude so I finally met my demise across the side of a mountain.

This is where I slapped myself.

I had wrongly assumed that the game auto-saves when you go into a new SOI, so I had quickloaded. Unfortunately, the quicksave I had loaded was bout 3 days back, before I had even landed on the Mun ever.

That is where I called quits and left the game because I messed up.

>:c

[CatastrophicFailure]

My ship is now on an escape trajectory. from Kerbel.

OK...

Loaded the ship to see if I could being it back down.

It is now in many many pieces. It loads on the lab, and I can not bring the crew capsule up at all. Not sure what to do, since I have the main three on that capsule. Quite the game and came here, hoping that someone would have a suggestion beyond SOL.

Afraid you are indeed SOL unless you quick saved prior to your universe going all 19 on you. That's a known and annoying bug, Kerbin, apparently, is made of porcelain and is easily broken (along with the rest of your save) if you hit it just so. You're actually lucky to have surviveed with just a dismembered space ship, and not a completely borked save file. You could try sending a rescue mission, but if they're already on a solar escape course, you're going to need one L of a rescue ship.

[Dirty Bob]

So I made a lander/rover that could collect science at 8 out of the 9 biomes on Minmus. I successfully hopped through the 8 biomes, left it on map view and went to make dinner. When I come back I quicksave before starting off on my rendezvous with my orbiter. Then I suddenly notice I have no electric charge which shouldn't happen and no fuel stats.

Apparently I set my remote on the throttle key when I left to eat. 32 science reports stored. I zoomed in to see this:

Bad time to quicksave.

Edited February 7, 2014 by Dirty Bob

[Whackjob]

[Ned Nedley]

After hours of building of a whackjobian-esque 1000 ton rocket, finally got it into orbit, separate orbital stage, approaching space station...closer...closer...closer...activate RCS...uhm...RCS? Symmetry why you put one RCS when I want four? CRASH.

If in doubt blame the game. I know failing is half the fun of Kerbal but its the lesser half.

http://i.imgur.com/HvW8utr.jpg

Edited February 7, 2014 by Ned Nedley
added link

[Truesilver]

I love it how Whackjob can post a picture, and without any explanation, the context and chains of events leading up to it are all perfectly crystalline in their clarity.