Top 10 Reasons Your Craft Crashed Into the Planet / Is Drifting into Deep Space

[RocketBlam]

Ladies and Gentlemen, the top 10 reasons your space craft either crashed into the planet or missed its orbital burn and is flying off into deep space.

I'll give you three, you come up with the rest.

1. Forgot to deploy solar array - batteries dead.

2. Forgot to include parachutes.

3. Forgot monopropellant.

[KvickFlygarn87]

KAC being a doof.

Kraken attack on physics load.

[StrandedonEarth]

Increased warp when I meant to decrease

Not enough propellant

[TicTacToe!]

Not to joke, I have actually sneezed in the middle of the landing procedure, about 10m off the ground. It didn't end particularly happy.

[Superfluous J]

Held down shift instead of alt to transfer fuel after docking with my space station.

Thinking "I don't need sepratrons, those SRBs will fall straight down" in the VAB.

[Rassa Farlander]

Hitting space bar by accident Whoops there it goes

[KvickFlygarn87]

Not to joke, I have actually sneezed in the middle of the landing procedure, about 10m off the ground. It didn't end particularly happy.

Bless ya.

Better late than never!

[davieholgate]

now, top 100 reasons...

ill begin:

Didn't manage to get to the Orbiter, so the landing module crew are now splattered across the Mun.

Sudden 20G parachute opening makes it snap off the pod.

Sudden overheat when lifting off has left your very expensive lifter literally in pieces.

Didn't bring solar panels in the first place.

didn't even plan the return.

came to kerbin from eeloo for a 9,000 m/s re entry and makes parachutes useless.

took parachutes to mun.

"moar boosters"

rapid unplanned disassembly.

and that will be me.

[FITorion]

Ship has solar panels... but its battery is dead because the ship is oriented in such a way so that the panels will never be exposed to the sun.

Remembered Monoprop. Forgot RCS ports.

Not enough struts.

[Mr_Brain]

The engineers thought a part has fuel crossfeed enable even though that's not the case, which means that a whole stage doesn't work.

[RocketBlam]

Hitting space bar by accident Whoops there it goes

I should have put this as #1. Meant to cut engines, separated them instead.

Especially fun when they're at full throttle.

[Ascension Islander]

Modded Edition!

Forgot to open/target antenna (remote tech 2)

Deviated too far from prograde during launch (FAR)

Set fairings to separate at SRB separation at ~5000 meters (FAR/KW)

Had satellite payload stage itself while inside space shuttle cargo bay during launch (B9)

Forgot a heatshield on my munar return stage (DRE)

Reentry stage was aerodynamically unstable (DRE/FAR)

Edited February 17, 2014 by Ascension Islander
Cleared up some ambiguity

[razark]

It was a test flight. We did put in the press release that this is only a test flight, right? The real flight wouldn't do staging in that order.

[AmpsterMan]

1: Not enough Propelant

2: Not enough Propelant

3: Not enough Propelant

4: Not enough Propelant

5: Spontaneous unplanned disasembly

6: Not enough Propelant

7: Too much thrust

8: Not enough Propelant

9: Solid Rocket Boosters

10: Not enough Propelant

[goldenpeach]

Forgetting to put a power source on a craft(happen a lot).

Physic warp when the chutes fully deployed, each time it happen I do a face-palm disbelieving the fact that I made that mistake.

I once made a ship with two set of SRB: the first one was supposed to ignite at launch and the second one would ignite when the first one ran out of fuel.

During staging I accidentally put a booster from the second set to be ignited at launch. Needless to say that the rocket crashed immediately: staging error happen even to the most experienced players!

On a funny side, I didn't noticed the error at first and put the crash on a lack on control ability(which is kind of true when you think of it).

EDIT: if you don't understand what I mean(or if you just want to crash something) I can send you the craft file(it's possible that I deleted it so don't take it as guaranteed, but I think I should be able to find it somewhere).

Edited February 17, 2014 by goldenpeach

[Deathsoul097]

1. Timewarp too much (Alot. F5/F9 away!)
   
2. No solar panels, or they are angled the wrong way
   
3. No parachute
   
4. Lack of fuel
   
5. Part Clipping
   
6. Not enough torque
   
7. Kraken attacks
   
8. Decoupler not decoupling
   
9. Forgetting about that ******* spent booster
   
10. Fuel and no engines
    

[Brotoro]

Top ten reasons for crash or deep space drift:

10. Time-warped beyond capture burn point

9. Didn't bring enough propellant to stop at Moho

8. Time-warping during chute deployment

7. Mis-timed the suicide bur...

6. Forgot to open solar panels

5. Forgot to even INCLUDE solar panels or RTGs

4. Forgot a probe core on that part of the ship

3. Didn't flare in time

2. Accidentally hit EVA instead of IVA during landing

1. Distracted taking screen shots

Edited February 17, 2014 by Brotoro

[Merinsan]

1. Trying to land on the side of a hill

2. Trying to change focus in the map screen, and using shift+tab to go backwards.

3. Too little thrust

4. Too little fuel

5. Too little torque (see 1)

Can't think of anything else.

[LordQ]

My most common reason for failure is rockets deciding they're most aerodynamically stable flying backwards.

[boomerdog2000]

Forgot that NERVAs overheat when tightly packed and on high throttle.

[Goldham]

Had the velocity indicator on orbital instead of target.

[kBob]

I suffer from a lot of ∆v leaks...some might call it pilot error others might call it designer error I insist the ∆v thieves are out in force. Other than the occasionally hitting '.' instead of ',' this seems to account for all my top 10 reasons.

[Guest]

-Forgot to add MOAR boosters (classic kerbals...)

-Forgot engines (seriously, this happened to me!)

-Staging fail (early decoupling FTW)

[Lightning22]

Improper staging (Lander capsule detaches from landing legs and control surfaces)

Suicide burn while watching altimeter, above a mountain.

Did not course correct after entering the sphere of influence of a body that is not your target.

Not having enough power to run your ion engine.

[regex]

Went for a screenshot while landing and accidentally triggered Action Group 1 which retracted your landing gear.