Ever have one of those days?

[TerLoki]

This thread is dedicated to the little things. The little bugs, miscalculations, and forgotten parts that can screw up a whole mission.

Things like the cat stepping on the keyboard and staging your crew capsule, and you can't recover because you hadn't quicksaved yet. Or building the perfect lander with just the right amount of delta-V, and then realizing you forgot to put science equipment on it. Or how about sending a kethane miner all the way to Minmus orbit, landing it perfectly, and then noticing that you forgot fuel lines to the converter.

There may not be any explosions here, and you may be able to get to space today, but getting back or completing the mission is another things entirely. So here we have a thread for all the little problems. If you've ever put a part on backwards or staged in the wrong order then don't worry, you're in good company here.

[Clockwork13]

I often times forget solar panels which pretty much screw up the mission if I am not planning a return.

Or I forget to put struts on all my engines, turning my ship into a nuclear weapon.

[Madrias]

Forgetting your transmission antenna in Career mode. Gets me every bloody time. Click the capsule, Crew Report, Transmit. "No comms devices on this vessel" Silently curse myself because I've lobbed a capsule into Jool Orbit without comms. Now I've got a mandatory comms check on the launchpad. Well, actually, runway. I rarely use the launchpad.

Forgetting to account for changes in center of mass against your center of lift. A note to the wise: ensure that your spaceplane's atmospheric fuel is centered on the center of lift, and that if you use a split fuel arrangement for your rocket propellant, you expend all of it, or at least equalize it around the center of lift. Otherwise your landing will be very painful.

Forgetting RTG's on a rover. Yeah, solar panels are 'great' until you land... And end up on the dark side of the planet or moon. With no power. A single RTG keeps your probe core alive so you can survive landing. Solar panels are also great... until you experience aggressive aerobraking on low battery power. Which leads, usually, to aggressive lithobraking.

Another good one I've done before is to put enough solar cells on my light atmo glider to power the probe core and the 6 Ion engines. I had to readjust the wing, where the panels were located, then immediately launched. With all the panels upside down.

[Liowen]

I thought I hit the quicksave but in fact I reverted the game back nearly 4 missions. Yeah I need to learn to quicksave more often I believe

[Kryxal]

I have a lander designed for Tylo, I happened to get a launch window to Duna first that gave a fairly good window to Jool, so I decided to send it there first (towed along with a Kethane miner).

On Ike, I discovered that it couldn't mine Kethane to convert due to a lack of tanks, and this was mission-critical for getting off the ground again on Tylo!

I proceeded to force a window back to Kerbin (you know how it is, months of waiting then everything gets done at the destination in a few days game-time, so it was close enough)

Then there's my little goof in powering my mapping probe for Tylo that just arrived, I'm not sure 8 panels will be enough for the survey unit, and it takes me a full orbit to recharge for a minute burn on ion engines...

Edited March 11, 2014 by Kryxal

[Oggula]

Just failed on my 10th attempt at Eve return, and now the launcher won't work. Its actually so routine I've come to expect it tbh

[CalculusWarrior]

I had a Tylo lander which I spent many (in-game) years waiting for a refueling tanker to arrive, get into position, and finally transfer crew to it. When I finally was ready to land, I discovered that one of the engines wouldn't work! Those poor kerbals, to get so close to the surface, but so far away...

[Dizzle]

I built a lander meant to collect science from Ike and return to Kerbin.

1. While circularizing its orbit around Kerbin, the Kraken struck and blew it up.

2. Hyper-edited the injection stage into orbit and went to Ike. On my way down I realized I forgot to put a decoupler between the injection stage and lander.

3. Tried to edit out the parts that made up the injection stage, which didn't work.

4. Returned to Kerbin just to get the crew back, game crashed when I entered its SOI.

5. Restarted and hyper-edited back into Kerbin orbit, again the game crashed when the chutes opened.

6. Gave up and removed the flight from the save file, then gave myself some science for the wasted time.

[Thomas988]

For huge things that need to get into orbit, I use a huge seven-mainsail-and-jumbo-fuel-tank design. It operates like a huge asparagus design rocket. But there are several common mistakes I make with this launcher that make me want to scream.

1. Seven mainsails? You're darn right I need struts. But, for some reason, many a time I have forgotten to put any sort of struts on. Hello, explosions.

2. At first I think it's smooth sailing and that I'll have plenty of Dv to get into orbit. Suddenly I realize there are fuel lines to redirect the fuel! Back to the VAB...

3. When ejecting one of the radial tanks, it doesn't fly far from the spacecraft. So here's a pro tip: never tilt a rocket while a radially-ejected payload is descending along the side of your craft. Before you know it...BAM! Asymmetrical thrust for you.

I love this launcher to death, but dang, it's a beast!

[possum]

Fairings that like to just hang out and not drift off.

[Highlad]

When I am landing (either on duna or kerbin) and I'm physics timewarping to the 500m mark where my parachutes deploy. I don't come out of timewarp fast enough and my parachutes rip off leaving the crew to fall to their doom. This is even more annoying when landing on kerbin after a successful long and complex mission.

[Liowen]

When I am landing (either on duna or kerbin) and I'm physics timewarping to the 500m mark where my parachutes deploy. I don't come out of timewarp fast enough and my parachutes rip off leaving the crew to fall to their doom. This is even more annoying when landing on kerbin after a successful long and complex mission.

Time warping at that point is kind of a bad thing, I fear time warping when I have something vitally import going to happen....mostly because i never remember to quicksave

[pauix]

A stupid thing I've done too many times is placing the antenna on top of the door, meaning the Kerbal can't get out of the pod and collect samples.

[Bobnova]

Fairings that like to just hang out and not drift off.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn206/thedrunkpossum/screenshot56.png

That looks familiar! I built a Mun lander with three mini probes on the roof, covered by fairings. Landed fine, ejected fairings, and both hung up on probes. After shaking the lander a bit my solution was for the Kerbal in the lander to get out and crash into the fairings with his jetpack. Not the safest plan, but it worked.

I just installed RSS and most of the required / recommended mods. There have been a number of mistakes related to that one. Probes flipping in reentry and burning the parachute package off is a common one.

[Kilmeister]

I almost had one of my common ones last night, but I caught it just before doing my transfer burn. I am doing an Apollo style mission to Duna and I had forgotten to put RCS thrusters on my lander. I had done this in the past and just gone on EVA for the last 100 M or so. Or once I used time warp to cheat the rotation, and I was able to perform a successful high speed ramming/docking maneuver.

[NecroBones]

I've had many "mistakes of omission" in my launches. As you'd probably expect, I was meticulous early on, but now that launching has become routine, it's easy to forget a detail. I've forgotten or brainlessly messed up things like:

* No antenna for a my science lab space station. It had to use the lander's antenna instead.

* A skycrane that only had a stack decoupler instead of docking port, while the rover it dropped had the docking port. No picking up and moving that rover.

* No RCS on a lander that needed to re-dock. Thankfully the orbiter could do it, just less easily.

* No probe controller on a lander that I wanted to de-orbit after getting the crew off (but MechJeb worked in its place, I discovered at that moment, as it was the first craft I added it to)

* A ton more I'm forgetting.

Thankfully, most of my hair-brained mistakes have been recoverable in some fashion. Of course, this doesn't count the countless launch failures as I fine-tune the struts.

[possum]

While building a long term Duna ship in orbit, I realized I placed only 1 RCS thruster block. It wasn't until I was trying to dock and wondering why my RCS was not working right saw my mistake.

[Project Pluto]

Fairings that like to just hang out and not drift off.

At least you're not alone here!

Edited March 11, 2014 by Project Pluto

[Whovian]

Send a VASIMR-powered spacecraft to Eeloo's moon I have modded in. Only had 3 of those Gigantor solar arrays. Big mistake. The burns lasted 2.5 hours even with 4x physical time warp.

[Raven.]

Launch two rockets, one with an orbiter and the other with a booster. Show off to your girlfriend by docking the two in LKO, and then going to the Mun. Land on the Mun, then explain to your girlfriend that the reason why you're stuck on the Mun is because you've ran out of fuel.

[Red Iron Crown]

If I had a nickel for every time I pressed the spacebar to start the engine of a lander when all I needed to do is throttle up, I'd be a wealthy man.

[JimmyAgent007]

Forgetting to separate the decouplers to separate stages in an asparagus launch and watch them all go flying away/into my craft