Fails Turning Into Success

[boxman]

My best failure was when i ran out of fuel before getting a dune encounter.. All i had was some ion engines that was not even aligned properly compared to the pod, so had to finish the burn without knowing where to align the ship. Once I had the encounter there was no way i could slow myself down, so i decided to just try to go about 12k into the atmosphere back when I had no idea about aerobraking on duna. Thanks to this failure I learned how to land huge modules or ships without using any engines at all.

[PetWolverine]

My favorite successful failures have been the result of having FAR, but having no understanding of aerodynamics, and trying to do a gravity turn with a high-TWR vehicle the same way you would in the stock game.

Go straight up to 10 km, okay, got it. Now lean over heavily to the east and start turning. Then keep turning, and turning, wait no, stop, the nose shouldn't be below the horizon! Okay, kill the engines. It's still turning. Here it comes, give it a nudge and it'll come upright again. Open the throttle, good, we're accelerating, turn to orbital prograde... stop turning... I said stop turning! Here we go again...

I think I've done up to three flips and still ended up in orbit. I found some good advice on gravity turns over in the FAR thread and my last few launches have gone better, but there is fun to be had in close calls like that.

[Khrissetti]

I crashed on the Mun but had the crew survive, so I sent up a rescue craft -- and forgot to include any batteries or solar panels, which meant that the rescue craft was stranded in orbit of the Mun. I had to send another ship up to dock with the rescue ship and supply it with power.

Thanks to a wonky landing I learned to make pinpoint lunar landings, as well as performing my first Munar rendezvous.

[Javster]

Fails are common in KSP, with all the explosions and accidental staging, but sometimes you can succeed in a different way. Have your fails ever allow you to succeed?

For me, it would have to be when I was trying to get a satellite into orbit around Kerbin. My orbiting skills aren't exactly fine tuned, so the apoapsis ended up exceeding 1 million. At first I was afraid I would crash into the Mun, but suddenly the map showed that I had plotted an escaped of Kerbin's gravity. This put the satellite in orbit around the Sun! By failing in orbiting Kerbin, I now have a extra-planetary satellite.

So, how have you won?

The Soviets did that with a lunar probe which missed the Moon.

[Johnno]

The Soviets did that with a lunar probe which missed the Moon.

Please do not resurrect old threads unless you have something really worthwhile to say.

Locked because of necromancy.