You know you're a noob in KSP when...

[waterlubber]

When you come screaming in the Jool system on a Laythe test mission. On your Jool circularization burn, you get a Laythe encounter. You approach Laythe, and burn your entire heat shield in <3 seconds because of reentry...retrograde.

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

Why is the media so nooby when it comes to KSP? They treat it like a "kids game that teaches you about space", and they have pictures of really nooby spacecraft that only noobs think are cool.

[panzer1b]

You send a armored vehicle to the mun on a SSTO capital ship only to have the rover explode the entire hangar it was in the instant the docking port is released causing the ship itself to erupt into flames...

Despite the vehicle getting jammed and creating a spinning kraken, i managed to barely save the crew by blasting the VTOL engines at the correct times.  So yeah, my amazingly beautiful ship needs its crew saved and i need to figure out why the damn mako spontaneously exploded and wedged its remains into what was left of the hangar after it stopped exploding like crazy...

[Sharpy]

On 6/2/2014 at 2:27 PM, Rainbowtrout said:

You know that you're a noob in KSP when you use the Kerbodyne engine clusters as RCS.

Oh, good. I was only using Aerospikes as RCS. 4 thruster blocks of 5 aerospikes each.

Why, you don't put RCS on asteroids?

[FinalFan]

When you make your first recoverable stage, including a probe but not batteries or solar panels.  

When you think it will deorbit all by itself because the periapsis is in the atmosphere.  

When you are making your first "orbiter+lander" Mun mission but you don't have the Clampy Jr., and you're so proud of yourself for the idea to use a regular Clampy and put a Spark on the nose ... and then you detach and wonder why everything is backwards.  

When you spend so much time planning your Duna mission, putting together the (very im)perfect ship and waiting for the transfer window ... And then you notice that you're leaving an Eve transfer window and slap together some huge abomination and rush it out the door.  It doesn't have the delta V to circularize but we can solve that problem when we get there, right?  

[Vexillar]

... when your side-mounted boosters don't jettison far enough and take out your core stage.

[Bej Kerman]

On 6/2/2014 at 6:34 PM, Clockwork_werewolf said:

Turning north when you want to get into orbit (I still have that satellite up there it's own unique orbit).

Taring your craft apart with parachutes all opening at once and hitting 30G.

No power generators for your craft.

Stranding craft in orbit because you ran out of fuel AND forgot/didn't know about docking ports. (The grabber changes things now but I have some craft up there for before it's time)

To my knowledge Noob means someone who doesn't learn from their mistakes i.e someone who plays like a new player despite clocking up lots of hours. Newbie is just a new player.

North and West are my preferred directions to go when reusing boosters - no precise barge and deadly water landings needed, just plain, slightly bumpy, land.

[Bej Kerman]

You know when you're a noob when you land your first Mun base (a lander with some drills), release the tug and... forget that the liquid fuel RCS engines are powered by liquid fuel, not monoprop. Having fallen for the sheer power of the Verner engine, you're screaming towards the surface of the Mun. My remedy for this majestic and monumental screw-up? Spin up the craft using the RCS on the tug, release it way later than you should have and hope the landing legs don't give in to the lander hitting the surface at 15m/s then rolling across the Mun at some speed. Boom, upright. The 2nd base that I put effort into and auto-symmetry gave up on: https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalSpaceProgram/comments/9lv8hx/finally_encapsulated_my_single_launch_mun_base/

Sorry for this being really long, just the concept of landing a base by letting it roll like a ragdoll down a mountain seemed funny to me.

When making a plane and it doesn't take off until it hits a bump or runs off the runway.

Let Mechjeb do a manoeuvre, take a dump, come back only to realize that the stage you're using ran out of fuel halfway through the manoeuvre and that MJ doesn't auto-stage when doing manoeuvres.

Bad solar panel placement (Have loads but 99% of them are blocked by other panels).

Timewarp with big craft.

Slap something together in 3 seconds.

Have so much debris and mods it takes 15 seconds for the game to load anything you make.

Accidentally press Z instead of X or Ctrl when landing.

Kill Jeb and can't figure out why he's respawning.

Have to hack gravity because that ore tank shipment rover was too low.

RTG and Reaction Wheel spam.

Use Vectors for anything even mildly large you shoot up into the cosmos.

Have an attention span of 1 femtosecond.

Use Verner RCS thrusters because you can't be bothered shoehorning RCS tanks into that 15 stage monstrosity you made because KSP loves reverting stages.

Always use autostrut.

Try to see if you can save a lander stage but destroy your parachute instead so you have to bail all your kerbonauts and manage all of them at once making sure they don't glide out of physics range and that you don't leave one parachuting for too long leading to them slamming into the ground.

Forget to add sepratrons to large boosters.

Don't know how to do advanced planetary transfers.

Your first Mun lander uses super large engines and onion staging to the max.

That reusable booster using New Glenn like wings turns into a glider because you can't get enough drag on the top of the booster.

No mission planning I.E. you still have a big, heavy hard-to-turn booster with you to orbital insertion.

Always use the Wolfhound engine when other alternatives are too weak for that heavy payload you want to land on Tylo.

Kill kerbals when bored.

Too big of a payload so your craft decides it wants to make the day for the VAB workers a lot hotter.

Accidentally leave a kerbal on another planet.

Have to send a rescue mission to that kerbal which had to do 50% of liftoff on a jetpack.

Play the game for years but make next to zero progress.

Your cars are either unstable boxes or Kraken machines.

[Pit_2]

You know you're a noob when try as you might, you can't even pull off an Apollo-style transposition and docking.

[Hydrothermalventclam]

When you press F9 instead of F5 and revert to an ancient quicksave

[Vexillar]

On 6/3/2014 at 11:35 AM, MoeMelek said:

When doing manned landings without making sure your kerbals can get back into the capsule. Forgetting ladders or placing them in the wrong places. Must be the most frustrating thing I've encountered as a noob, and just imagine if it happened IRL

Somewhat late catching up on this thread... it would have changed Neil Armstrong's words just a little:

That's one small step coming down, One giant leap to get back up!

[Kernel Kraken]

After just over 250 hours of my life wasted, I finally got a Min landing. I didn't get enough fuel to bring home. I tried aerobraking with Valentina, but she exploded.

[Chel]

You continuously try to land on Jool, thinking that you won't explode the next time you try it

[Kernel Kraken]

On 10/8/2018 at 6:43 PM, Hummingbird Aerospace said:

Why is the media so nooby when it comes to KSP? They treat it like a "kids game that teaches you about space", and they have pictures of really nooby spacecraft that only noobs think are cool.

Example? I haven't seen anything about KSP. The only things I've seen on the news about videogames are stories that either Video Games Cause School Shootings or Video Games Cause Sexism.

[Bej Kerman]

When you know how to do a basic Hohmann transfer but don't know the phasing angles you should use to get to another planet.

[Hummingbird Aerospace]

 

http://www.brightpips.com/kerbal-space-program-teaches-kids-spaceflight-science/

@Kernel Kraken

[FinalFan]

4 hours ago, Hummingbird Aerospace said:

 

http://www.brightpips.com/kerbal-space-program-teaches-kids-spaceflight-science/

@Kernel Kraken

Using Mk1 command pods as booster nosecones is next level noob.  

[l0kki]

When you build a mun rocket that has 10k deltaV in 5 stages and still end up stranded on the mun

Edited November 3, 2018 by l0kki

[Gordon Fecyk]

On ‎11‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 1:40 PM, FinalFan said:

Using Mk1 command pods as booster nosecones is next level noob.

Hold my beer, eh... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJs5V7p00N4

Bonus noob points: Not knowing what 'max Q' really meant at the time.

Edited November 3, 2018 by Gordon Fecyk
Bonus noob points

[AdamFra]

You know you're a noob when you can't transform a Mallard by adding 2 MK3 Passenger things.

[Vanguard319]

You know you're a noob when you make it to Duna for the first time using an SSTO spaceplane, and you can't land on account of adding no drogue chutes or air brakes to your design.

Edited November 11, 2018 by Vanguard319

[Chel]

13 minutes ago, Vanguard319 said:

You know you're a noob when you make it to Duna for the first time using an SSTO spaceplane, and you can't land on account of adding no drogue chutes or air brakes to your design.

That would've been harsh

[Vanguard319]

4 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

That would've been harsh

Maybe, but based on a true story.

[Chel]

Just now, Vanguard319 said:

Maybe, but based on a true story.

So is my futile attempts to explore the Mohole with a tiny VTOL. It looked good on paper, functioned perfectly in field tests, but then just glitched out inside the Mohole

[Gargamel]

21 minutes ago, The_Cat_In_Space said:

but then just glitched out inside the Mohole

The mohole's exist in a parallel universe to our own, the holes are actually the gateway.  Hence why physics stop working correctly and things glitch out going down the holes.