What was your mission that insists on going wrong

[annallia]

Started with a simple mission. To start a base on the Mun. I sent Jeb, Bob, and Rocas out in a lander to scout out a nice area. The mission however had different ideas.

First launch the rocket suddenly decided to explode at 30,000 feet. Fortunately the command capsule, in fact the entire final stage managed to survive the explosion and splashed down harmlessly.

Second launch went better and they got into Munar orbit. However here things went wrong again. First they were off their planned landing site, only 2km though so no big deal right? Except there was a hill there which they landed on, lander tipped over detaching the capsule and started sliding down the hill.

So now a rescue operation had to be mounted. Named Operation Come Home (yeah, were not creative over here) A remotely piloted lander with enough fuel to return to Kerbin and designed specifically to land on an incline safely was made. A new rocket was made to launch the massive thing. Everything seemed to go perfectly fine. Then however I realized the lander had no chutes, even with the extra structural mass jettisoned (on takeoff from Mun) the Nuclear Engines didn't have enough thrust to land it safely on Kerbal.They also forgot to put the radial decouplers needed to jettison said structural parts. Command decided to use it as the beginning of the station, even if it was landed on a hill. It got to the Mun, it landed shut everything but the lights down (it was dark) and switch to the command capsule from the old mission to start walking my kerbals over and suddenly the rescue ship decides to flip over.

So now we have two broken ships, and three stranded kerbals.

It was here that Command had the brilliant idea of repurposing an older rocket design that had been used to send support modules (lander with hitchhiker can + solar array, comunications ect..) to other planets. They figured with the Mun being so close it had enough fuel to land, and take back off and bring the kerbalnautes home.

With the new, new, rescue lander in orbit over Mun, Rocas went on EVA to plant a flag on a nice flat plain for it to land on. The lander set down almost dead on the flag, finally everything is going right! All my little kerbals did their eva (about 1km) to the lander, climbed in the can and prepared for takeoff.

It took off, established an orbit, and went to map view to plot my course back to Kerbal. As I was setting up the next maneuver I heard something of an explosion. Switched back to staging view to see the rocket that had brought the lander to the Mun was floating away, along with 2 of my 3 engines! By sheer dumb luck I managed to be in the path of my rocket.

I had enough fuel to stabilize my orbit and move out of the path of the floating fuel tank of doom. After this was done Command sent up yet another rocket (we send these modules everywhere, Duna, Laythe, Eve so we have a few laying around) to come get the kerbals. Ship went up without a hitch, got in orbit around Mun, started to plan its rendezvous with the previous pod. Got to within 150m and Rocas went Eva to transfer to the ship (no docking ports on these). Rocas moved over, had a little trouble getting around to the side with the hatch but managed.

Now the ships are 500m apart. I tapped on the thrusters to close the gap slightly. When got within 100m Bill went Eva, swung over to the other ship and boarded. Problem here is my ship had passed the rescue ship while Bill was floating over and is now again 800m away. By the time Jeb was out of the ship and headed in the right direction he was 2.1km away from the rescue ship. Jeb being Jeb, did this in style. Not only did he manage to close the gap in less time than it took Rocas to get in, he had targeted the hatch so perfectly that he didn't have to grab the ladder just hopped in the new ship! (I swear I could repeat that 1,000,000 times and not be able to do it again)

Finally things started to go right. All the Kerbals inside they managed to return to Kerbal splashing down just outside of KSC and the mission from hell was finally over.

[Technical Ben]

Moho. Definitely Moho...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/30970-Colossus-Interplanetary-Ship?highlight=collosus

[SRV Ron]

Landing a probe on Duna. Opps! forgot the parachutes. Came in on a plateau and couldn't bleed off the speed fast enough with the thruster pack. The Kersputnik broke off on impact, bounced back up, and traveled another thousand meters before hitting the ground a second time.

[Kerolyov]

My second space station component launch took me 2 days, with I don't know how many redesigns and relaunches....... had a lot of odd breakages and in the end had to strut the whole thing till it looked like it had flown thro a spiders web

After that like Ben I'd have to say Moho has been a bit of cursed destination for me, only barely successful mission is a probe stuck in highly elliptical orbit with no fuel. In my 0.19 game both missions I attempted there would have been truly Kerbal in that I showed a lot of bravery but a lot of stupidity.... had quite a bit of debris out there on that save......

Since those days I've learnt a lot so tend to be more successful and to always over-engineer

[Crusher8000]

My first mission to the mun in 0.21. I send 3 rockets, a hitchhiker rocket, a rocket with the crew and a rocket with a rover. The hitchhiker rocket's take off stage exploded while taking off for a good minute but I managed to get back in control and continue with my other stages and the rocket carrying the rover was actually just designed badly to land on the mun so I had to disconnect the rover while landing and let the crane crash.

Then the next day I send another rocket, a drone with 3 empty seats to send my kerbals back home but on their way back the rocket exploded sending 2 of them on a crash course to kerbin and the other one in an orbit so I had to quickly launch a couple more rockets and pick them up before they fell to their death. They all survived and I'm proud I overcame all the problems.

[Skorpychan]

Landing my 'big mun lander' project on the Mun.

First try, with a crew. Rover had to be dumped so the crew could survive.

Second try, no crew to save weight. Landed heavily, broke.

Third try, too fast, exploded on impact.

Fourth try, landed heavily, broke the wheels and axles off.

Fifth try. Landed well-ish, but broke the wheels. Skycrane didn't have enough thrust to get away, presumably crashed back down on it.

Sixth and seventh tries ended in unexplained yawing and booms.

Eighth try, I fixed the design flaw that caused problems, and landed the thing carefully. Skycrane GTFOed properly, into a nice high suborbital trajectory.