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

[-ELF-]

Forgot decouplers for lifter stage. Orbiter was not powerful enough to carry the lifter leftover even to stable LKO.

[Captain Sierra]

Ran out of fuel (even on an ion probe, lol)

Terrain being higher than expected

Not enough thrust

Overzealous aerocapture

lithobraking with a craft not rated for 20m/s lithobraking.

[Jank]

Didn't realize how low my lander was and how strong Munar gravity was - burned furiously... but not enough to prevent unintended retrointegration upon contact.

[AletzN1]

No fuel lines

Engines separate under the weight of the craft

Broke off a wing on the R&D complex

Too litte fuel on the Lunar ascent stage

Too much Kn, too little ISP

No RCS (resource or block)

No RGT

No Solar Panels

Solar Panels not extended

Kerbin Eclipse

Mun eclipse

Not enough battery

Unmaned rover wheel broke off

Unmaned rover too tall

Unmaned rover too fast

Unmaned rover too good at turning

Unmaned rover not good at turning

Cliff

Hill

Mountain

Valley

Water

Minmus' +5Km mountains

Eve's atmosphere

Planet SOI encounter glitch

Too much time warp

To much physics warp

Not enough launch clamps

Not enough crew

Gravity

Atmosphere

Karma

Kraken

BSoF Black Screen of Death

Clipping kerbals

Clipping craft gone wrong

Unintencional(?) infiniglider

Etcetera

Etcetera

Etcetera

[Lazro]

Not enough dakka thrust. Shocking, I know!

[Pockrtplanesairways]

not enough BACC boosters and mainsails on launch stage. jeb was very valaint.

[Madrias]

Staging error causing cockpit to separate instead of dropping spent stages during a rocket test.

Lack of struts allowing wings to fold and plane to crash.

Mainsail + Fuel tank sheared off during SOI transition burn, leaving the contents of a full orange tank to hurtle my ship into the Mun.

MINMUS! Low gravity is not my friend.

Aerobrake'd too low into Jool, got aerocaptured.

Forgot the sepratrons again.

Wait, did I just make orbit with this pile of junk and forget my parachute?

and last, but not least:

New VTOL SSTO design launch in three, two, one, explosion!

[RocketBlam]

This happened to me recently: First stage so slow that it can't clear the support towers before it drifts into them.

1.04 TWR is apparently too low.

[Madrias]

Just had another handful:

Insufficient lift-to-thrust-to-mass ratio. If the plane dips down at the end of the runway, you are not going to space today.

Keep CoM in front of CoL or you will flip out, crash, and die screaming.

A high-mounted spaceplane engine requires significant amounts of pitch until the Center of Thrust is pointing roughly toward the Center of Mass or you will take off, increase throttle, and fly right into the runway.

Low mounted engines require pointing the thrust end toward ground.

Don't forget SAS on your VTOL's or you will be SAD.

[mythbusters844]

Forgetting that docking ports have fuel crossfeed and realize that your SSTO/Shuttle's probe's fuel is completely drained after you deploy it.

[federicoaa]

One of the fuel lines got broken when placing a ladder and didn't realized = nasty results

[Boris_T_Roach]

Usual reasons.

Drunk while designing new ship

Drunk while launching ship

Falling asleep while doing gravity turn just after dumping 1st stage outer boosters

Attempting docking at 100 m/sec+ after waking up

But my number 1 and best reason a ship crashed and burned

Did'nt know the large docking rings were fuel feed capable.

So my Jool explorer ship dumped the empty nuclear drive section into Jool and went to raise it's PE from -100km to +125km for aerobraking and capture............

hmmm the fuel tanks are empty..... wondered why there was so much left in the drive unit

Boris

*&%^$&^ing *&(&&$" ^%$&^ing *&&*^& Game .... RQ to desktop and kick the cat

[Streetwind]

Hitting "return to space center" instead of "revert flight" after an impromptu, totally un-space-worthy boilerplate test launch in the career mode save. Which of course has multiple Kerbals on board.

[Concentric]

In no particular order, the first ten I can think of that have happened to me:

Aerobraked too low - moving far too fast for parachutes/thrusters to slow in time for impact.

Escaped satellite in wrong direction - now escaping planet too.

Wasn't paying attention to that ship, too busy docking or otherwise maneuvering something else.

Timewarped too long, not nearly enough thrust on the lander to slow before impact.

Not enough chutes.

Chutes on wrong component - ripped away that part of the ship, lander can plummets.

Physics warp ripped the wings off my plane.

Not enough torque on the plane and no landing gear on the wings leads to smashing the wings off on the runway.

Debris from the stage before intersects trajectory.

Emergency eject causes additional emergency outside of specific altitude region.

The escaping planet one worked out eventually, due to lots and lots of RCS and a long series of aerobrakes. But had I not brought that, Jeb would be drifting.

[nimbim]

1. "I don't have to check the landing site at all. I will just do a perfect landing, no matter how uneven the terrain is."

[Moar Boosters]

When you put an aeroplane on the top of your rocket, and it wants to go in a different direction to everything else.

[John Crichton]

Jeb often gets impatient when landing, so there's always a 50/50 chance he'll switch off time warp too late...which results in fireworks.

And yup, the no electricity thing happens to him too when testing new craft.

[Skorpychan]

There was no warning of the encounter before it happened, and mechjeb timewarped into Ike without me noticing.

[ArmchairGravy]

1-5: solar panels--not deployed or at wrong angle or torn off

6-8: suicide burn turns into actual suicide

9: bad staging

10: random disassembly

Solar panels are the bane of my KSP existence.

[ComradeGoat]

On leaving Eeloo:

Oh look, there's Jool. If I burn towards it, I bet I can get an intercept!

Followed by...

Oh crap, I'm exceeded solar escape velocity, missed Jool, and have no fuel left.

[Cyst]

I have only one: I ********** RAN OUT OF FUEL! AGAIN! Aside from that, I had 1-2 crashes because of the excessive use of time-warp but that's all.

[SpaceSphereOfDeath]

Missing the target body,and then crashing into another due to a lack of fuel

(This happened around Jool once in the most spectacular way, I got into a 1:4:1 laythe tylo resonance and I encountered laythe, the tylo, then laythe the thrid encounter kicked me up any out of the resonance into a bop crossing orbit, then it encounter Vall, this boosts my orbit into a roughly circular, then tylo AGAIN. Then I crash into, wait for it... Bop. '-')

[RocketBlam]

Twice now I have shown up at the planet and discovered that I was missing an RCS port on one side. When building it using the symmetry feature I had thought I had them on both sides. Landed once, aborted the second time.

[jmiki8]

I thought the atmoshphere started at lower altitude on Eve, so I deployed my first Eve station in a declining orbit, in 0.18. When I realized what I have done, it was too late, and I watched my ~50 ton station burning up in the air.

[Zatie12]

Some of my most common mistakes:

1. Accidentally pressing space bar at the wrong time

2. Structural failures during launch, typically with more ambitious rockets

3. Parachute deploying and promptly ripping a chunk out of my space craft followed shortly thereafter by high speed impact

4. Flying experimental aircraft resulting in stranded Kerbals at various locations around Kerbin followed by rescue missions that sometimes result in more stranded Kerbals

5. Releasing a payload and forgetting to activate comms first (Remote Tech 2)

6. Separating spent parts which cause damage to working parts

7. Lack of fuel of course

8. Remembering to install monopropellant tanks but forgetting to install RCS thrusters

9. Planning to de orbit over land but ending up floating in the middle of an ocean

10. Drill doesn't reach the ground (Kethane) - no fuel for me!