KSP "Facepalm" Moments

[KerbMav]

I had landed with level 3 time compression! No wonder the movements seemed jerky!

In both cases, the Kerbals beat the odds (and my poor skills) to survive!

Pictures of this wonder-plane and the schematics (craft file ...) would be most interesting!

[KOCOUR]

Is flying over half of kerbin (it took one frreaking realtime hour) to recover a landed pod, and realizing upon arrival that you forgot to attach connector to that winch on the belly of your Airship facepalm enough?

Or flying kethane miner/conventer by cargo plane with fuel for oneway trip, just to realize upon landing at final destination, that you forgot to put connector to your plane so you have no mean to refuel that plane from that miner?

I have loads of "forgot to attach" stories.

Edited September 6, 2013 by KOCOUR

[hebdomad]

I put some NERVA engines on a tri-coupler as my final stage of a rocket... Instead of separating nicely it blew the whole mission up sending the capsule on a rather sub-orbital flight.

[Zorrm]

Parachutes are apparently pretty important when landing on Eve. Who would've thought?!

[Geschosskopf]

So I send up a stack consisting of 2 Hitchhikers and a lander with 8 Kerbals aboard. Each module had RCS, docking ports on both ends, and probe core. Once they were up, I wanted to change the order within the stack, only to discover I'd forgotten to put RTGs on the Hitchhikers. So there was nothing for it but to send up another stack (with RTGs) and EVA the Kerbals into it .

[Hallofo]

Pictures of this wonder-plane and the schematics (craft file ...) would be most interesting!

There's nothing super special about it, it's just my version of a DerpN3rd SSTO bird. This is the best pic I have of it:

The things that look like diagonal stabs are not, those are solar panels.

Edited September 7, 2013 by Hallofo

[Sylon00]

I tried sending a rescue mission to pick up my stranded Kerbals on the Mün and misjudged the speed of time warp, slamming the rescue ship into the side of Mün so hard that debris shot back out into space. Lesson learned, don't rush things in this game.

[KerbMav]

There's nothing super special about it, it's just my version of a DerpN3rd SSTO bird. This is the best pic I have of it:

I just thought it had to be a pretty stable plane if you could safely land it at 3x phys.acc.?

[Codey737]

*starts reentry*

"Wonder what it looks on the inside with the entry effects!"

*accidentally clicks EVA instead of IVA*

Well Bill was a great Kerbal,and he made a good fireball aswell.

[sscamc]

*Forgets to check staging before leaving VAB* *Spacebar* WHY ARE HALF THE SRB'S IN STAGE 4?!?!

[Designer225]

Back in 0.18, I decided to do some Kethane-ing, so I launched a probe into space and use it to detect Kethane. After reaching orbit...

MC: Looks good. We are starting the Kethane miner --- ahem... Kethane Detector --- now.

Jeb: Gene, don't you think we should open the solar panels?

Gene: Ehhh, it'll live.

*An orbit later...*

MC: Okay, we are opening the solar panels now.

*right-click solar panels*

*repeat*

*repeat*

Jeb: Ummm Gene? The probe is out of power.

Gene: Crap! How do we retrieve it then? *facepalm*

Bill: Well, maybe you could send Jeb to retrieve the probe.

Jeb: *swearing*

*A while later...*

Jeb: Okay Mission Control, I'm opening the solar panels now.

MC: WHAT?

Jeb: *opens the solar panel*

*the probe returned to operation*

Jeb: Who says Kerbals know only how to pilot?

MC: ...

*Return: Jeb returned intact, but MC had to send a rescue mission...*

Most FACEPALM moment ever.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Designer225

[TheBladeRoden]

Anytime I start the first stage of my suspended rocket without throttling up first. *drop**crash**explode*

[Rage097]

I landed on the Mun swimmingly then EVA'd over to a canyon. It was at this point I realized I had NO EVA FUEL left. Ready for a 10km jog Jeb?

[djnattyd]

Assembled a modular ship in LKO in anticipation of a first trip to Eeloo. Stuck a lander on one side and a small probe on the other. Fired up the twin LV-N drive and forgot to disable the motor on the lander, cue spinning wildly. Undocked the crew module in a vain attempt to save everybody and watched in horror as the rear of the ship collided with the undocked section.

[sal_vager]

Landed Jeb on the Mun, like I have done a thousand times before, went to throttle up to go home and pressed space without thinking.

Ka-chunk, the pod comes off and lands on the Munar dust, whoops

[ChrisWill]

So I go to launch a new satellite I use my standard launcher everything is going fine and then.

A full scale investigation is going into this, most people suspect the Kraken however.

[Bilfr3d]

Flying up, about to dock into your space station and you detatch the transfer stage

*spacebar*

Launch sequence is stuffed up, the engines go full throttle

s*it!!!!!

*spacebar* *spacebar* *SPACEBAR* *spacebar buttons breaks and comes off keyboard*

So much for abandon sequence; you smash into the space station, and everything falls into kerbin.

[CrazedGunman502]

Was on a mission to rescue a craft that ran out of fuel orbitting Duna. I usually use Rendezvous Autopilot (Mechjeb)

I also literally dock at my space station daily, so naturally my habit was to autopilot there.

So I target my space station, let the autopilot do its thing, and went to get something to eat.

By the time I got back I saw the space station already in pieces.

I died a little inside.

[KatzOhki]

I made a really complex ship with a bunch of deployable probes. Accidentally hit space on rendezvous with the station and dumped a bunch of probes into the station. Ooops!

[Starwhip]

I didn't program my stages to drop spent asparagus stages first, so when I ejected a stage, the two tanks that were supposed to eject last ejected first, and they went up and shredded my middle stage.

KerbaMedia still claims that the Fourth of Kuly had come early.

[Starglider]

I've got 3:

1) A probe-deploying mothership is putting probes into geosync; it has an elliptical orbit, detaching one probe per orbit, which engages its own ion drive to circularize on its own. Probe detaches fine, I use its RCS to thrust away to a safe distance, switch to the map screen, plot my burn, switch back, accelerate time to get to the burn point, and engage. The probe then encounters and scrapes by the mothership, destroying solar paneling on both objects...

2) Kerbilnaut gets out of his rover after stopped. Later, Kerbilnaut tries to get back into the rover, but manages to push it instead. Rover rolls away without anybody in it. Kerbilnaut tries to chase it down to no avail. Yes I now know you can engage parking brakes by clicking on the button in the HUD, but I thought the 'b' key did that already...

3) Airplane built and ready to fly...send to airfield for takeoff...everything looks great...physics kicks in...and the airplane tilts to one side because bilateral symmetry wasn't on when I added the wing...

[nine_iron]

On one of my recent space stations I sent up a spaceplane to dock. It was my first try at this so I sent it up attached to a rocket stage a la shuttle.

I did not realise until I had docked that the cockpit and nosewheel were on the opposite side to the wing wheels. So even if I de-orbited it I could not land it. That happened due to me tweaking a tiny design flaw in the SPH, unknowingly creating another by flipping the half I detached relative to the cockpit!

I facepalmed picard style after the docking!

In the end I sent up a proper space plane, tugged the old one to deorb into the ocean and landed my 2nd spaceplane successfully.

They were actually my first orbital spaceplane missions too and I ended up adding an extra Kerbal to my spacestation unplanned!

Edited October 4, 2013 by nine_iron

[magnemoe]

Then you launch this rover towards Mun and its full Mun.

Top tank is used to let rover act as upper stage as the 48-7S still gives decent TWR.

All the four solar panels are on top of the rover and points away from the sun during moon transfer, I was on impact trajectory and warped fast to get halfway and do an 0.1 m/s correction burn.

[LtHeckard]

I landed on the Mun, I thought I had sufficient fuel to return to Kerbin, so I tried to burn back into orbit, and it drains.... and it drains.... and suddenly, "oh crap, I'm out of fuel!!"

and then, I crash back into the Mun, killing Bob Kerman, Bill Kerman, and Jebediah Kerman.

[sharpspoonful]

After getting my space station in orbit for a test run, I accidentally left the last module's service engine attached. Mistakenly hit shift and watched the whole thing enter a unfixable deorbit.