KSP "Facepalm" Moments

[Giggleplex777]

Forgetting to deploy solar panels after areobraking. The end of another Duna mission.

Also:

Are we on Duna yet?

Edited August 24, 2013 by Giggleplex777

[Arran]

Having only RCS trusters on CoM, and then trying to dock the ship to a station, and wondering why it only spinning around on its axis

Worst of all, made this mistake several times </facepalm>

[SuperWeegee4000]

Having only RCS trusters on CoM, and then trying to dock the ship to a station, and wondering why it only spinning around on its axis

Worst of all, made this mistake several times </facepalm>

That's how I design my ships. Is there a control difference?

[SteevyT]

I put an RCS tank (or several) on most of my rockets. Less than half of my rockets end up actually having RCS thrusters on them due to oversights.

[TheHockeyPlayer]

Every time I test a design for a ship, there's a facepalm moment.

Me: "Alright, launch in 3, 2, 1... Wait, what happened?!

The ship doesn't have any electric charge

After adding some RTGs: "Ready! Aaaand launch!"

The ship starts flipping out of control

After re-aligning all the parts: "Finally, this should do it. Launch!"

After getting into space, the ship doesn't have enough fuel to travel

Me:

[Arran]

That's how I design my ships. Is there a control difference?

With only thrusters on CoM you cant control sideward movement with a ship, so it rotates mostly around it axis..

You can get away with it on some designs of small ships, but heavy ships, just keep spinning around..

You want them to be able too move sideways/upwards/downwards while staying aligned straight towards the docking port..

With only CoM thrusters, you'r Docking manouvres will become alot harder..

So i put often Normal 4way thrusters on CoM, and put one directional thrusters on the top and bottom of the ships, so they can slide in any direction and rotate..

Makes docking manouvres alot easier..

You then control rotation with W A S D, and sliding movement with I J K L, forward backwards with H N keys..

It really makes docking manouvres that way alot easier to preform.

Edited August 24, 2013 by Arran

[Geschosskopf]

1. When I discovered that the better an airplane flies on Duna, the harder it is to get off the ground on Kerbin. This is especially the case if you do the Duna flight testing by getting it there via HyerEdit with just enough rocket attached to de-orbit it, without actually having launched it first.

2. When I discovered that while Kerbal Engineer Redux swore on a Bible that my 2 big nuke engines and the fuel aboard gave me both a TWR > 1 and enough dV to land and take off from Tylo, it didn't tell me that I needed to start my descent from an orbit much higher than 20km specified on the Wiki's dV map, to give the engines enough time to slow me down. Subsequent post-mortem analysis showed that I needed at least 80km starting altitude to make this lander work.

3. When I discovered that regardless of the part description saying all the box girder struts have fuel cross-flow, they really don't and that you still need fuel lines to connect outrigger engines to central tanks.

[rottielover]

^ #3 for sure!!! Read part desc, builds ship, launches to orbit, gets to mun, goes to land and pooffftt.

[alacrity]

Recently completed the Spy Satelite Challenge... and had what i will call my standard face palm moment.

scenario:

Completed that challenge and was prepping for my orbital decel and landing... fired up the final engine, applied a little thrust, and ....... wait for it... *SPACEBAR*. No reason, wasn't panicked, or in trouble. Didn't need to do any special maneuvering... just burn engine till over desired landing, then parachute and drop the tank. But no... Bill painted the damn space bar red... and Jeb couldn't stop himself.

With the small ammount of thrust still on for that engine it and the tank were pressed against the capsule, so with a bit of carefull rolling I was able to keep it there and still use it to decel into a somewhat usable landing pattern, then shake it off, but by then the panick had set in... and insult with injury is nothing so for a cherry on top... the kas cables i now had no chance to control whipped in crazy orbits and eventually landed a grappling hook on my heat shield and ripped it away.

The crazy starts about 13:45

Alacrity

[Joe Shmoe]

One of my rockets had a launch pad explosion and when I pressed "Abort" to fire up the escape tower only two of two of the four engines started and the command pod did a flip and smacked into the side of the crumbling launcher...

...Three Kerbonauts were killed in the incident.

[Eric S]

So i put often Normal 4way thrusters on CoM, and put one directional thrusters on the top and bottom of the ships, so they can slide in any direction and rotate..

I'm not getting how you're mounting the quad thrusters from your description, and it's definitely not the way I do it. 4 quad thrusters placed with symmetry around the CoM works fine, as long as the CoM hasn't moved much before you need to use them. That rotates on all three axis, and translates in any direction.

[buggy]

I've had only a few fails in my KSP career, but boy were they epic.

My KSP career is odd in that I've never landed(sucessfully) on anything other than Kerban, or even gotten a paticularly circular orbit, but not because it is too difficult, but too easy. I took a look at circular orbits, the Mun, Minimus, and the near-Kerbin planets (Duna, Eve, and so on), and though "bah, too easy. I promised myself the first planet I would land on would be amoung the hardest, and that I wouldn't cheat my way there, via (potentally unfair)mods or otherwise.

I've been fairly successfull in achieving this via determination, and the eternal mottos of "needs more struts" and "MOAR (BOOSTERS)". My first attempt was Moho, at least I think thats the name, the Mercury-equivelent. Nothing too special, I got a simple, small ion propelled probe into such a eliptical orbit that it intercepted nearly perpandicular to Moho's orbit and waited a few hundred orbits(over 2～) rl days for a near-intercept, then adjusted to directly intercept Moho. As I approached Moho at 14 km/s, I realized something. I knew Moho was a Mercury-equivelent, but I failed to realize(or remember) that Mercury lacked a atmosphere. And I certainly didn't see the haze of one on Moho. Seeing as I was planning to aerobrake and then parachute to land, this was a bit of a issue. And I realized this all about 5 seconds from landing.

My next attempt was more substantial, and I switched targets to the slower Eeloo, aka Pluto equivelent. This time, I built a monstrous craft(400～ parts), dubbed Plutos, that was still unmanned and still used ion engines. This time though, it had eight of them. And carried 150k units of xenon gas, as well as a small detatchble ion-propelled probe. Needless to say, its Delta-V was more than sufficient. After nearly a week of constant thrusting, I successfully reached and orbited Eeloo. -reached a letter limit, sorry, will continue in another post-

[GraviTykillz]

getting to minmus for the first time!

and Realizing i put the landing legs on backwards.

[buggy]

Continuing on my last post, I reached and orbited Eeloo sucessfully. At that distance from the sun, the detachable probe could maintain thrust at about 1/4 max, and it was intended to land with its ion engine. I correctly assumed that the gravity of Eeloo is tiny compared to Kerban. I failed to realize it was not so weak that a ion engine with half a ton of fuel and probe above it could have a twr greater than 1 at quarter-thrust. By the time I realized this, I was no longer able to deaccellerate at max sustainable thrust and it was too late to recircularize my orbit, and my last quicksave was about 2 days of thrusting behind. Thus another failed mission.

My next attempt was also to Eeloo, with a better designed Plutos V.2. Same basic design, but 4 Crewmen, built in automated control systems incase of a lack of crewmen aboard, 300～k units of fuel, and a lander-rover with three seats and a unique curiosity-esque landing system. However the total number of parts were in the 700s, and combined with the over-doubled mass but same 8 ion engines, and greatly increased lag due to said 700+ parts, any actual attempts at a mission would take far too long. Not to mention the initial launch failed to reach Kerban escape velocity, and the lack of room for the (internal) crew modules greatly complicated rescue attempts. Thus Plutos design was deemed to be flawed by its very nature.

My latest design, a incomplete and unlaunched nuclear-propelled monstrosity called Nuclos, is currently massing in at 800～ tons with a soon to be reduced part count of 500. The original design had 36 nuclear engines and over 1600 tons, and a part count of nearly 1000. The current design has a mere 20 nuclear engines. It carries a few dozen crew members and has 2 3-seater rovers that use a (soon to be reusable) skycrane system to land, like Plutos V.2's rover. It also has several orbit-only ion-propelled probes, but the primary lander is a stationary, 4 seat heavy duty lander. -letter limit-

[Deadpangod3]

Kerbin rejected my Sputnik probe

How it happened:

1: design tiny probe to launch just barely over 70 km to get money in mission controller to pay for construction of a space station

2: launch

3: realize I forgot parachutes on the srbs and go back to vab

4: relaunch

5: float over kafrica above 105 km

6: imagine kerbal news team at ksc In control room being excited over this (since its the first flight in a new save)

7 retract solar panels before rendering the atmosphere

8: engage parachutes before they can even open

9: watch re-entry

10: "MAH PARACHUTES ARE ON FIRE!!!!!"

11: float to the ground slowly

12: get bored

13: physics warp

14: physics warp to parachutes opening

15: *KABOOM*

16: get rejected by kerbin

17: get the rest of the ship destroyed and the probe core launched through the atmosphere getting super sonic effects

18: start falling again

19: "AAAAAAAHHHHHH MADAY!!!!!!!"

20: *poof*

R.I.P. Space station Space program

*realize he quicksaved in space*

Then I ended up rolling down a hill for about 15 minutes and then down a cliff for another 15 minutes, until I realized I couldve completed the mission already

Yet this tends to happen a lot, especially "MAH PARACHUTES ARE ON FIRE!!!!!!"

Yesterday it was "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!"

Edited August 24, 2013 by Deadpangod3
Added how often it happens

[AlamoVampire]

I was landing back on Kerbin from an orbital run at the Mun. Had 3 kerbals on board, I cannot remember who they were, but wasnt Bill, Bob or Jeb. The mission went swimmingly. I was on a direct ballistic intercept with Kerbin, so, I dump my cruise stage and just have the 3 man capsule left. Well, thats when it got bad. I was coming in like there was no tomorrow and for those poor slobs on that thing, there was no tomorrow. See, I kinda came in way way too fast and failed to notice a HUGE mountain coming up at me. I tend to wait until I am about 2km off the ground before I deploy chutes. Well, that mountain was high, I was fast, the chutes too slow. Suffice it to say, they hit HARD.

[buggy]

-continued-

I also finally relented a little and decided to use a couple mods. I figured I might as well do someething once I got there, so I installed Kethane and ISP Mapsat, but I'm not going to actually use any of them untill I land on Eeloo. My heavy lander has a onboard large refinery, two heavy scanners, a 32 ton (when full) Kethane tank, and 2 large drills. Since I have to be on the ground to use the drills, I by definition can't use them untill I land. I also installed both ISP and small Kethane sensors on the probes, as well as several large sensors and ISP sensors on the primary ship. Also on the primary ship is over 100 tons of Kethane storage, as well as 8 large refineries and numerous power generators.

Actually getting all that into orbit is not gonna be easy, getting it to escape velocity even less so. I'm guessing somewhere on the order of 60-100 mainsails with jumbomaxes, aspargus style. Noooot gonna be pretty, but at least I don't really need to worry about part count or lag during takeoff so long as the game still works. The ship already can't hold itself up under its own weight.

[Tex]

Well, my biggest facepalm moment came earlier today, as a matter of fact. I was moving in for a rendezvous between my Mk-I capsule (with none other than Jeb Kerman at the helm) and a docking probe I launched previously, and everybody knows how tricky unmodded dockings can be sometimes! I drifted too far past the docking port so I overcompensated a bit and decided I would completely fly around and try again, but as I was passing I saw that one of my control surfaces was going to nick the probe... so I pressed the completely wrong RCS thrust button and... slammed into the probe, sending it spinning out of control.

But wait, there's more!

In a panicked attempt to kill my capsule's rotation, I freaked out and tried pressing frenzied combinations of thrusters, which culminated with me accidentally PRESSING THE SPACEBAR.

So... Jeb Kerman was stuck in orbit with nothing but two radial parachutes, a Clamp-o-Tron Jr., and a decoupler to keep him company with absolutely no abort/retrofire capabilities whatsoever.

[Revert to Launch]

[CheftonUTD]

*Using parachutes for descent into planets with no atmosphere

*Built a large ship that would rely completely on the Kethane engine when it was separated to it's final stage, with the intention of being a fuel efficient long range tanker. Spent heaps of time designing it, launching and flying it, got it out to Minmus and filled it with Kethane, separated it's liquid-fuel systems... Turns out 'non-oxygenated atmosphere' is not the same thing as 'no atmosphere'... oops.

*Carefully working out how much fuel I need to get somewhere, completely overlooking fuel needed to get it back.

[Dr.Goodbytes]

I spent a few hours building and testing a fuel truck with a robotic fuel probe on the front and a Kethane mining and coverting equipment on the back. I then slapped it on top of a rocket so I could refuel a stranded aircraft in the middle of the desert. The mission went great and I hardly had any problems. The landing was spot on... Spot on the top of the aircraft I was trying to refuel...

[Stargate525]

I'm running the mission controller packs, and I found myself in a bit of debt. Launched a rocket with eight satellites piled on top, make a more efficient use of my lifter stage...

It's only when I start decoupling them to fly em out to their homes that I realize... I never gave each one a probe body... >.<

[badpandabear]

Every single time I design a new lander for the Mun, just as I'm descending to land...WTH? Why am I out of fuel? *facepalm* I forgot the fuel lines. Time to fire up the ascent engine...

[SuperWeegee4000]

With only thrusters on CoM you cant control sideward movement with a ship, so it rotates mostly around it axis..

You can get away with it on some designs of small ships, but heavy ships, just keep spinning around..

You want them to be able too move sideways/upwards/downwards while staying aligned straight towards the docking port..

With only CoM thrusters, you'r Docking manouvres will become alot harder..

So i put often Normal 4way thrusters on CoM, and put one directional thrusters on the top and bottom of the ships, so they can slide in any direction and rotate..

Makes docking manouvres alot easier..

You then control rotation with W A S D, and sliding movement with I J K L, forward backwards with H N keys..

It really makes docking maneuvers that way alot easier to preform.

That's what I did, just with four thrusters on the CoM. I don't really think there's much difference if you don't use Docking Mode.

[zpox357]

Has anyone ever been using part clipping, and attached the lower connection node of a decoupler to the engine above it, rather than the upper connection node? If you have ever done this before, you will know what I mean, but I have had so many missions where stages fail to detach due to this. Once or twice, I even used the transfer stage to land on the Mun rather than the Landing engines. Both tipped over due to lack of landing legs on the transfer stage... unsurprising really.

[tiberius_solus]

Suddenly realizing that the probes you just detached from your multi-part behemoth have no fuel because you forgot to shut off fuel-flow while burning for your destination *facepalm*