Post the errors you have made when you started playing at KSP!

[Tw1]

"You get into space by going straight up, right?"

My first Mun mission....

Cool looking solar panels! Each stage capable of lifting of on Kerbin! So much SAS! Moar struts and boosters!

(I still get this monster out from time to time- it's like a ceremonial vintage car to my kerbals)

Also:

If it lifts the stage above, it's working, right?

I now do regular Mun rescue pick up trips with a very similar upper stage, using about a third of the orange tanks.

Edited September 30, 2013 by Tw1

[mangekyou-sama]

I was trying to send my first probe into space that time. I knew what an orbit was but I had no idea had to do it. So all my probes showed up as "sub orbital trajectory" in the Tracking Center. I was like "so that's how satellites work? They go on a curved trajectory and splash down at the end of their lifetime?" Pretty dumb when I think about it now XD Also, when I was first trying to land on the Mun, I never realized I had to kill horizontal velocity before touching down. Result: bodies of Kerbonauts strewn on alien soil.

[Mystic]

I made the all-too-common mistake of trying to fly straight up for too long, and by the time I bent my rocket's path into the horizontal I had invariably turned it into a manned ICBM. Oops.

I struggled even longer trying to achieve equatorial orbits until I realized that the navigation ball does actually have little degree directional indicators on it if you look closely enough. Until then I kept asking myself "how am I supposed to know which direction EAST is?" Then it took me a few additional flights of squinting at the navigation ball before I noticed that the northerly direction actually has a red line to make it easier to see. Quite a relief, that last discovery was.

[Mr. Scruffy]

I made the all-too-common mistake of trying to fly straight up for too long, and by the time I bent my rocket's path into the horizontal I had invariably turned it into a manned ICBM. Oops.

I struggled even longer trying to achieve equatorial orbits until I realized that the navigation ball does actually have little degree directional indicators on it if you look closely enough. Until then I kept asking myself "how am I supposed to know which direction EAST is?" Then it took me a few additional flights of squinting at the navigation ball before I noticed that the northerly direction actually has a red line to make it easier to see. Quite a relief, that last discovery was.

You can alter the size of the navball in the settings.

[AmpsterMan]

"You get into space by going straight up, right?"

This was my most common mistake until I read about orbital mechanics on Wikipedia.

[astropapi1]

Going straight up until Ap reached 100 km, and then burn like hell at Ap to circularize. That's why I never made it to the Mun legitimately in 0.13.

[Superfluous J]

Trying to bring 2 pods into Kerbin atmo at the same time. Got the parachute open for one of them, hit ] to switch craft, and was told that wasn't allowed. Jeb watched in horror (it looked like joy but I'm sure it was horror) as Bill's pod continued falling until it smacked into the ground at a couple hundred meters per second.

[trvtannenberg]

I placed SAS just under engine, that was in times when there was not even map view.

Also, too high rockets without struts and thrust that was tearing engines from tanks (but, that's because of that cheaty excelsior engines (who remember)).

Edited September 30, 2013 by trvtannenberg

[thescientist]

errrrrr

I placed radially without the simmetry tool

I staged everything in the worst way possible

I destroyed everything (KSP style!)

I forgot chutes! Sorry Bob!

[Dkmdlb]

Put RCS blocks on top of linear RCS ports because I thought the port supplied the blocks with fuel. No wonder I was going through so much monopropellant!

[FastMINI42]

I tend to just start playing without reading directions unless I get stuck ... last night I found out I spent the last couple months launching rockets the wrong direction (gravity turn going to 270 degrees). *facepalm* I tried turning to 0 last night and things are practically floating into space. Looks like I'll be redesigning a lot of launch vehicles to remove dv so that the final stages properly lithobreak into Kerbin. Dodging all the existing debris going the opposite direction is going to be ... interesting.

[Kerbart]

I tend to just start playing without reading directions unless I get stuck ... last night I found out I spent the last couple months launching rockets the wrong direction (gravity turn going to 270 degrees). *facepalm* I tried turning to 0 last night and things are practically floating into space. Looks like I'll be redesigning a lot of launch vehicles to remove dv so that the final stages properly lithobreak into Kerbin. Dodging all the existing debris going the opposite direction is going to be ... interesting.

Hahaha! That one made me laugh. Laughing with you, not at youâ€â€not for the mistake itself, we all make them, but just imagining the moment of discovery: “what do you mean, COUNTER clockswise?â€Â

Debris shouldn't be too much of an issue. I can assure from experience that 100m/s is already enough to totally annihilate a space station, you don't need retrograde orbits for that

[Kerbart]

I have to say I avoided most mistakes, because I watched a whole bunch of tutorials.

Now, before you call me cocky. The reason I watched those tutorials was because my rockets didn't take off. I'd hit the space bar, hear this hissing "KPTCHUNK!" and that was about it. I was about to "well this game sucks" unload the demo when i figured that somebody must have put a video or two on youtube.

That way I learned you have to set throttle with shift...

[stallion x1]

My first mistake was thinking ( Warning Extreme Levels Of Incompetence Follow) I didnt realized you could use wasd to change the direction of your craft........ So i deciede to put engines on the craft sideways so i could get into orbit. Nuff said many lives were lost in the resulting pinwheel of death........

Now i wish i never told you that..............

[DaRocketCat]

First tried out the game in .13.3. I put liquid fuel tanks over srb's...

[astropapi1]

First tried out the game in .13.3. I put liquid fuel tanks over srb's...

What about stacking SRBs and firing them all at once?

[Mystic]

You can alter the size of the navball in the settings.

I didn't know that! Thanks much for the tip. I'm obviously still learning my way around KSP, and will undoubtedly have more mishaps to post to this thread before I am through (hehe).

[FastMINI42]

Hahaha! That one made me laugh. Laughing with you, not at youâ€â€not for the mistake itself, we all make them, but just imagining the moment of discovery: “what do you mean, COUNTER clockswise?â€Â

Debris shouldn't be too much of an issue. I can assure from experience that 100m/s is already enough to totally annihilate a space station, you don't need retrograde orbits for that

lol ... yeah. I got frustrated and banished everyone at KSC to a remote sector of my hard drive and started a new game. Then got to missing everything I accomplished in the first save with flags planted at Duna and the Mun and several flights in progress, so I brought them back. I did find that, with enough patience and fuel, a retrograde burn eventually becomes a prograde burn and clockwise becomes counterclockwise. Oh, altitude. Need enough altitude too. So I think I'll be turning a few ships around tonight

[Thiagobs]

Being fairly new to KSP, I'm still making quite a lot of mistakes...

here are some of my past ones:

the all too common mistake of "go up until space then go sideways until orbit"...

building things without symmetry then wondering why it keeps turning by itself..

and my latest one was realizing during landing that the legs didn't clear the engine... I was quite surprised when I managed to land -- without breaking anything -- on top of my engine...

one of my biggest mistakes, that made me completely rethink how I build rockets, was my over-engineering... I kept thinking "if it doesn't lift, add more tanks and engines". It wasn't until I started using Kerbal Engineer that I realized that I could take away most of my tanks and engines and still have my delta v go up! a few simple rockets went from 50 parts to about 6 or 7

[Exposure]

I managed to place an engine upside down.

This resulted in problems since I was using Deadly Reentry when I made that mistake.

[dazhat]

While circularising around Duna I realised I had put the landing legs on upside down.

[shoveycat]

Had a capsule ready to dock with the return craft in Low Dres Orbit. ran out of RCS.

[FlamedSteak]

Losing control of my unmanned craft and thinking it was a comms issue, when I had really just run out of electricity.

Took me a week to figure that out.

[FlamedSteak]

Also; mounting my large docking ports on backwards and then attempting to dock them about 15 times before I figured out what I had done wrong.

Oh and putting an ion engine on backwards.......though in my defense it still worked perfectly.....in reverse.

Also re-entering Kerbin head on at over 2500 m/s..... the parachutes....they did nothing.

Edited October 1, 2013 by FlamedSteak

[Awass]

This deserves some big font: putting Clampotron Sr. Docking Ports on backwards Ruined my first space station. I had to relaunch it. Be very careful, as from the side, it is hard to tell at a glance whether or not it is oriented correctly.