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

[tetryds]

The Kraken, live!

[EladDv]

The Kraken, live!

http://i.imgur.com/3EzKlAz.png

LOL wow that 's truly kerbal! post it on #KerbalKountdown

[CrazyJebGuy]

Tried to land on Duna for the first time.......

.........started at the wrong time...... ........encounter in 400 days...

........aerobraked to hard (9k altitude)....

.........unexpected landing....... .....on night side......... .............had to flip to retrograde...........

..............too slow........

......panicky burns....... ...........ship upsidedown 50meters above the ground going at 22m/s......

............something explodes.......... .....a few more things explodify......

......Mk 1-2 command pod rolls around from SAS...... ...........most of lander OK.....

.......except cut in three, command pod, RCS tank and the rocket........

Poor Matdos, Lubrett and Meleny Kerman. I will have to send a rescue mission.

The end result looked basically like this but in the dark.

[Varsi]

Tried to land on Duna for the first time.......

.........started at the wrong time...... ........encounter in 400 days...

........aerobraked to hard (9k altitude)....

.........unexpected landing....... .....on night side......... .............had to flip to retrograde...........

..............too slow........

......panicky burns....... ...........ship upsidedown 50meters above the ground going at 22m/s......

............something explodes.......... .....a few more things explodify......

......Mk 1-2 command pod rolls around from SAS...... ...........most of lander OK.....

.......except cut in three, command pod, RCS tank and the rocket........

Poor Matdos, Lubrett and Meleny Kerman. I will have to send a rescue mission.

The end result looked basically like this but in the dark.

I wonder if you could have built a ship out of those parts using Kerbal Inventory System. Unfortunately you'd have to ship a screwdriver there now.

[Bobnova]

Jeb currently has more or less the same issue.

Landed a little, cheap, low part count, lander on Luna,

It tipped over.

Attempts to get it right side up failed.

Did get it to a cliff face, nose pointing over cliff.

Pulled nose up a bit, lit engine. Goal is to get over cliff, hit full throttle and aim skyward.

Didn't see lip on edge of cliff.

Lip catches fuel tank.

Fuel tank explodes.

Panic.

Attempt to land pod as gently as possible.

Land pod safely.

Bored Jeb is now Very Bored. No fuel. No engine. Minimal power. No board games.

Rescue time!

I installed KIS. May ship him a screwdriver and a bag of parts and say "Have fun!"

[magnemoe]

I hate destructive wibble-wobble (technical term)

That's what building tall thin rockets rather than pancakes gets ya.

Nothing wrong with the rocket length. Problem is the thin part before the fairing. Either struts or 2.5 meter parts all the way.

Second rocket is taller and works well to orbit.

This raises an question, how will the new fairings work with struts? can they pass or do they get cut? Can we use the fairings as interstage fairing? over engines?

Typical example is 2.5 meter stack then an LV-N or perhaps two, then 2.5 meter parts. This only works with struts and looks ugly, now if I could wrap an faring around the LV-N and struts it would look nice.

- - - Updated - - -

Trying for something quite spectacular when something quite spectacular happened. I guess I got what I wanted even though the result wasn't entirely expected.....

http://i.imgur.com/OcS4o9ph.png

SM

Lol, if you are really unlucky you get shot down by one of the boosters

In real life an pilot managed to shoot himself down with the gun on his fighter jet he was doing an exercise and managed to press the trigger then climbing after engaging one target, he then flew level and was hit by some of the bullets coming down again. Yes its almost require skills.

[CrazyJebGuy]

Had a massive "Doh" Moment in my career game. I was launching a moon rocket (Just a fly-by) put it on the pad and pressed space.

A reasonably large rocket fights a losing battle with gravity. The pad explodes. The lower part of the rocket explodes. The top flies away upside down. Then falls onto the blown up pad. The pod dies. Everything else dies.

After an exhaustive and costly inquiry, it is discovered that someone (that idiot) forgot to turn the throttle up before lift-off.

I then quickloaded. (Makes up for that time timewarp killed my airplane)

Problem Solved.

- - - Updated - - -

Another fail: My rocket WOULD have worked if the main lifting engines weren't in the TRANSFER stage.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

I shot down a transport:

And I got this:

[MajorThomas]

Tried to land on Duna for the first time.......

.........started at the wrong time...... ........encounter in 400 days...

........aerobraked to hard (9k altitude)....

.........unexpected landing....... .....on night side......... .............had to flip to retrograde...........

..............too slow........

......panicky burns....... ...........ship upsidedown 50meters above the ground going at 22m/s......

............something explodes.......... .....a few more things explodify......

......Mk 1-2 command pod rolls around from SAS...... ...........most of lander OK.....

.......except cut in three, command pod, RCS tank and the rocket........

Poor Matdos, Lubrett and Meleny Kerman. I will have to send a rescue mission.

The end result looked basically like this but in the dark.

That looks A LOT like my Duna ships, up to 1.0. But would such a ship survive Duna re-entry in 1.0??

[r4pt0r]

The Kraken, live!

http://i.imgur.com/3EzKlAz.png

thats really beautiful

[Yakky]

Bad Jeb... no biscuit!

[BurningLegion]

I actually did make it to space today! I had my 3-Kerbal ship (Which is also my third attempt to get to the Mun, and the first one to make it past LKO) take off beautifully, shed booster stages, make orbit, and plot an intercept with the Mun! ...Then I looked at some numbers. And some facts.

Things I had forgotten: Landing struts and RCS thrusters.

Other trivial facts: I underestimated the amount of Delta V I needed to land on the Mun and return.

Result: There wasn't enough fuel to land on the Mun, but I managed some low orbits and racked up what will be several hundred science. Unfortunately, there isn't enough fuel to return to Kerbin, and I'm so crap at orbital intercepts that I'm not going to even bother launching a rescue mission. So I'm having Bob & Linisa (Rescued engineer) get out and fire their EVA to push the ship retrograde. After all the fuel is gone, our periapsis is still 1,149 km.

I have no idea how much Delta V a suit's EVAPropellant can offer to an 11 ton lander, but we're averaging -15km Pe per excursion. This is going to take a while.

[macdjord]

I have no idea how much Delta V a suit's EVAPropellant can offer to an 11 ton lander, but we're averaging -15km Pe per excursion. This is going to take a while.

You could always just turn on the Infinite EVA Fuel cheat.

[Holyvision]

The Kraken, live!

http://i.imgur.com/3EzKlAz.png

This is awesome

[oversoul]

Logged in to discover that my Kerbal rescue pod that has been used successfully four times no longer works, doesn't even attain orbit.

[Xacktar]

[BurningLegion]

You could always just turn on the Infinite EVA Fuel cheat.

I think I will. I have learned some important design lessons for future ships, though:

1) - All ships will be designed with one more stage than I think is necessary.

2) - All ships will have at least one RCS port positioned to fire along the primary thrust axis. This port will be disabled unless it is necessary to get home, in which case all other ports will be disabled and it will be used to assist in returning to LKO.

2B - All ships will use RCS thrusters, and carry a minimum of one Monopropellant tank of some description.

3) - Mun Lander Prototype 4 will stick the Probodobyne core, batteries, and science bits in a service bay to minimize ascension drag.

4) - All ships will be equipped with A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.S. to maximize atmospheric drag.

5) - Anything intended to land more than once will be equipped with landing legs.

5B - Anything intended to land more than once will be equipped with landing legs.

Maybe I'll remember this on the next iteration Time to bring my kerbals home! No one left behind!

[Agate]

2B - All ships will use RCS thrusters, and carry a minimum of one Monopropellant tank of some description.

I used to do this too, but eventually decided that since the specific impulse (fuel efficiency) of RCS is low, if I find myself relying on RCS to get home, I'd be better off carrying a small fuel tank instead. RCS is still handy for shedding sideways velocity on approach to landing, though...

[icedown]

The SRB decided it was to scared to fall back to Kerbin, so it hitched a ride to Boomland.

[BurningLegion]

I used to do this too, but eventually decided that since the specific impulse (fuel efficiency) of RCS is low, if I find myself relying on RCS to get home, I'd be better off carrying a small fuel tank instead. RCS is still handy for shedding sideways velocity on approach to landing, though...

So that's what specific impulse means! I'll factor that into my future construction plans. Yeah, that's a good idea, sounds like it'd be essential for a proper Munar landing and useful for avoiding re-entry burn on Kerbin.

My reasoning is that since I've had this game for about a week at this point, it's better for me to assume piloting, management, overall planning, and engineering failures at every possible point and so overengineer as much as possible no matter the spacecraft's mission statement. I don't expect to need RCS to get home, but if I engineer every spacecraft with the ability to do so, I'll never have a ship with 400 units of Monopropellant and no way to use that to try and get home. It'll give me some more room to experiment within, if nothing else.

On the plus side, after 70 real-time minutes of pushing, Munar Lander Prototype 3 has a Pe of 41km. Air drag will ensure the expedition is recaptured. On the downside, I have four contracts to rescue Kerbals stranded in orbit. The rescue ship accidentally deorbited itself while trying to get at one of them because I'm not such a great pilot. It survived re-entry and splashed down entirely intact, but now I need to build and launch a new rescue ship knowing full well that no engineering change I could have made would have compensated for that piloting failure xP

[ajburges]

I used to do this too, but eventually decided that since the specific impulse (fuel efficiency) of RCS is low, if I find myself relying on RCS to get home, I'd be better off carrying a small fuel tank instead. RCS is still handy for shedding sideways velocity on approach to landing, though...

This.

RCS if for two things. Translation for docking and fine orbital adjustment (2 or less m/s). If fuel becomes a concern, the first step is to dump the RCS fuel away from my target to maximise the dV of more efficient engines.

[Hotaru]

Needed more struts.

[CatastrophicFailure]

I build a nuclear powered asteroid tug, happy to notice nukes finally no longer need oxidizer. Get to space, turn on Vernor thrusters, realize I have no oxidizer.

And then this happened:

[Dr SMooth]

Oops

[macdjord]

I build a nuclear powered asteroid tug, happy to notice nukes finally no longer need oxidizer. Get to space, turn on Vernor thrusters, realize I have no oxidizer.

And then this happened:

http://i.imgur.com/Dj3II9i.png

See, if you had remembered your oxidizer, you wouldn't have crashed an asteroid into the planet, and you wouldn't be looking at a tsunami now~