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

[MinerEdgar]

The very first time I played Ksp was in version .13.2. I didn'y know the controls and tried to maneuver by CLICKING AND DRAGGING THE INDICATORS.

[viktorserecros]

I built a launcher that could launch vertically to Jool. Why no gravity turn? It was so poorly balanced that gravity turns were fireballs. Had I properly strutted the dang thing and fixed the symmetry issues, it might have very well have made Eeloo a breeze. I lost it when my save file got corrupted.

[loknar]

And of course the usual list of needing MOAR struts, having parachutes rip assorted bits off the spacecraft (i'm now completely paranoid about this and don't hit 500m going more than 30m/s if i can help it), not knowing about gravity turns, building rovers that actually worked better upside down etc. etc.

Yeah.. Parachutes should not be breaking your metal ship components.. that's just wrong. The strings should have some elasticity or break off before your ship components give way. Now, I have to put struts around SAS modules because that's apparently a weak point. IMO that's not your mistake!

[Katve]

I started thinking like this:

If I go straight up till 30km and then start turning I would go to some direction and if I got enough speed I will stay in space because I will slower than planet is circling. This is actually basic mechanic of orbiting and I realized that after I have been "orbiting" without map view for couple of months. Also timewarped for 4 real hours to check if I will stay in space.

[Dooz]

Attempting to land on the mun with a parachute

[Starwhip]

No struts on a 1000 ton rocket. Asparagus staging. You get the idea.

[TicTacToe!]

Attempting to land on the mun with a parachute

I tried to forget that as soon as I did it. Still haunts me to this day.

[astroranger189]

hello, i have and error that involve cant access tracking station, vab and sph hangars, cant return to space center and cant exit to main menu in any save games. does it have any incompatibilities with one of the major used mods? i dont have opm or kopernicus when i first tried it, but when installed the error instantly appear. any suggestions?

[pandaman]

The usual...

Trying to go straight up rather than sideways to reach orbit.

Trying to land on the Mun for the first time - in the dark.

Getting my staging all mixed up.

 --

Just noticed this is a very old thread.

 

[Red Iron Crown]

57 minutes ago, astroranger189 said:

hello, i have and error that involve cant access tracking station, vab and sph hangars, cant return to space center and cant exit to main menu in any save games. does it have any incompatibilities with one of the major used mods? i dont have opm or kopernicus when i first tried it, but when installed the error instantly appear. any suggestions?

You'd be much better off starting a thread about it in Technical Support rather than bumping an old thread like this. Be sure to read this to help others help you.  

[Guest]

I used to loathe building craft, so I used the Kerbal X and launched straight up.

To Kerbin escape.

I also really wanted to go to Jool, and I had just found out about the debug menu.

To Kerbol escape.

Jeb, Bill, and Bob spent four months in space before I destroyed their craft and they happily returned to service the next day.

Edited August 21, 2016 by Guest
God, this is an old thread. I call foul play, mods.

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

Back in Oct 2014, while I was first working on interplanetary trajectories, and I WROTE A TUTORIAL that was COMPLETELY WRONG.

 

 b/c I was looking at still pictures of orbits and not animations, I was thinking that a minimum dV burn was going to be along the straitest part of the ellipse. (about 90 degrees after Pe) which is 90 degrees too late. my first test worked, but  after missions to Moho and Eve took TWICE the dV they were suppose to did I realize my mistake, and then I wrote the CORRECT tutorial in my sig.

[Ultimate Steve]

Also, this thread is from 2013.

I used the gigantor solar panels... for a rover.

I played on a very old and slow computer at first... re-entry effects just turned the entire craft hot pink.

[magnemoe]

Remember going to Minmus after going to Mun, mun mission was pretty sucessfull except I only had one small solar panel on probe and left some science insttruments on who drained all my power. 
Now going to Minmus I did that burning prograde increased my speed and retrograde reduced it, I don't think I knew about making nodes but knew that burning prograde at Ap circulated. 

Now for some implausible reason I ended on collision trajectory with Minmus and I was pretty close then I found out this. I might have burned in random directions trying to get an closer intercept but forgot about this then I was on impact trajectory, I just thought that burning retrograde would give me more time before crash, I was pretty surprised then found that my attitude increased, I then circulated and get into Minmus orbit. 

[Choctofliatrio2.0]

I was under the idea that more powerful engines = more gooder, and that flying straight up would eventually lead to orbit. I also didn't realize what stages were for a while, so most rockets activated their parachute and spun off into the ground.

[Guest]

Oh boy old thread. Oh well, no one seems to care.

Originally I tried going straight up in attempts to reach orbit... I did know rockets need horizontal velocity, but I thought it was only a little and not in fact where most of the effort is spent.

Also held the notion that Isp was everything in vacuum, and never used engines smaller than the LV-909. Building small craft that actually look like probes and avoiding always stacking the biggest tanks took until my current science save. This is why KER should be stock, at least to the extent of VAB readouts.

Edited August 22, 2016 by Guest

[Sputnik 1]

The old parachute and booster in one stage double whammy 

[LN400]

47 minutes ago, Sputnik 1 said:

The old parachute and booster in one stage double whammy 

I hope this is some initiation rite. Where can I pick up my membership card?

Biggest mistake though: I got the demo and though "ok, this is neat". A buddy said I should sign up on Steam and he would gift me the full version. I did.... Big mistake. Where did the time go?

[shadragon]

Set up a two-stage rocket last night with crew pod & science bay. Hit space to start the main engine, when the fuel ran out I hit space again expecting the lower stage to jettison, but the crew pod separated instead. I had the decouplers reversed in the staging order. Doh.

I just started last night so expect bigger and better errors to come.

Edited August 23, 2016 by shadragon

[Sharpy]

I deferred the docking tutorial for later. I didn't know about Target mode, or about launch windows. Jeb spent 7 years in space before he managed to get a Kerbin encounter and return from his Duna flyby.

[Magzimum]

Screwing up the save-games: Quicksaving a bad situation, thereby losing the good situation a few minutes ago that was on the same quicksave. This ruined my 1st career.

All other mistakes (forgetting ladders, blocking EVA hatches, forgetting solar panels/batteries, too few reaction wheels, separating SRBs before they were empty, screwing up staging, making landers top-heavy, running out of fuel, forgetting science instruments, etc.) are insignificant if you have a good saved game to go back to.

So, now I have a few codes for quicksaves that I routinely use and overwrite - to keep the total number of saves limited. And specifically cool/memorable situations get a named save-game, to be kept forever.

 

[KOCOUR]

Long time ago, it was some kind of KSP Demo, or outdated version, there were not much parts, also all the parts looked lot different than they look now.  Didnt know excrements about orbital mechanics. Tried to go straight up, and then was liquided off that my rocket falls back down. Added more power, burned longer and then had been liquided of that my ship goes away from the planet. Turned rocked backwards burned again, crashed, ragequitted, and didnt come back until 2014 or 15. Or smthing lke that, iam really bad at keeping track of time.

Edited August 29, 2016 by KOCOUR

[WillThe84th]

On 9/29/2013 at 9:23 PM, loknar said:

After a satisfying aerobraking, saving the game and then realise you're in a 270º orbit (instead of 90º). FAIL

I did that in my Jool 5 mission around Laythe, then when it came to do the escape burn, I was 18 m/s off and I had to use KAS to separate the bridge and push my way back home.

[Space20]

I sabotaged my 2-hours of work rocket by crashing it into the ground.

How?

 

Activated the parachutes FIRST before deploying the engines.

[DunaRocketeer]

Replying to a thread created in 2013 seems appropriate for me because I started playing ksp in early 2013 - there's a lot of things I would do differently if I had known what I know now.

The thing that springs to mind more than anything else is getting the thrust to weight ratio correct on my early launchers - they were either limping into orbit or falling back to Kerbin. Can't for the life of me work out why it was such a big problem.

I ended up overcompensating when I bought the full game. Case in point:

^ An engine arrangement ugly in both design and aesthetics (not to mention the ridiculous payload...), but over the years KSP has taught me much.

Edited September 2, 2016 by DunaRocketeer
Clarity