Dumb and frustrating - the mistakes I make

[HorusKol]

Frustrating fails (is there already a thread for these kinds of fails? can only find the launch fail thread)...

So, multiple parts launched for a space station for a fine-print contract, got it all together out at 200 km using a tug and getting to grips with RCS, and then realised I made two mistakes:

1. I let Bill take joy-ride and now he's up there with no return vehicle

2. I forgot to put an antenna on any of the parts, so cannot yet complete the contract

[Nedal]

Playing hard mode, kirby Kerman had quite an adveture. So I set out with a goal of landing on tylo laythe and Val in a mission, after completing bop Pol contracts already. Designed a single aerospike lander that I felt up to the task. Complete with interplanetary nerva refueling lab thing.

First stop tylo, as the lander has a unreusable drop tank to help on tylo descent. Messed it up, vertical velocity too high, had to drop the tank way early for twr so at least not to smash into the surface. But he lands successfully. Just without enough fuel to reach orbit again.

Gah, send out a probe lander with Kas fuel pipes to land next to it and refuel. End up crashing the thing about 500 meters away. But the probe and most of the fuel is intact, so I'll just use what's left in kirbys lander to hover over and fuel up. Eh, get next to it, but fall over on landing. About 5 minutes of rocking rolling and extending\retracting landing legs I get the thing upright and fuel it up and make it back to the mothership.

One down, two to go. Laythe is next.

So I want to land on land, for the flag planting contract. Get over a nice island, deploy shutes, land right on a steep ass hill, fall over and all but the pod explode.. arggg.

So I send out a replacement lander, for vall, as well as a probe airbreathing lander to rescue kirby. Get the thing landed, about 2.5km away, cause the hill he was on was so huge. Start running kirby up the hill to his rescue pod. Bump up the physical time warp so it doesn't take FOREVER.....

.....

he poofs into the side of the mountain..

public service announcement, don't phys time warp running up steep hills on highish gravity planets..

Ok kirby had a good run but I want the science from the pod, and a surface sample. Reorbit the rescue airbreathing pod, grab a guy out of the lab, take him back to the crash site, grab the science.

Oh.. his head won't fit between the tanks climbing up the ladder..

Was finally able to knock the lander over, get in the command seat, and get upright.

Tom rod went on to land on vall, Pol, bop again for flag plantings, and even hit dres on the way home.

But man.. to lose kirby by running up a hill.. arg.

Edited November 5, 2014 by Nedal

[InterCity]

Ok, we are docking. Time for R... C.... S... DAMNIT!

[prophet_01]

Number one: hard mode career mission to gather science from space just outside of kerbins soi (kerbol orbit). I thought I might as well gather some science from the mun on my way and use it's gravity for apush. I aimed for a munar flyby at roughly 8 km to shorten the journy (more speed from slingshot).

Long storry short, I timewarped (x100) past the muns soi and was just enjoying the view, when I realized that the mun was closer than I expected... as it turned out the timewarp-past-soi thing changed my periapsis. Jeb pancaked into the munar highlands.

[federicoaa]

After a perfect insertion burn to Jool, I entered in the wrong way and circularized, now need 6 km/s to go to Laythe -.-

Seriously, I never know how to enter in the right way XD

[DrD]

After my first landing ever (Minimus) I was ready to takeoff and back go home and instead of throttling up I hit the space bar and watched my capsule fall off my booster.

Now I use alt-L. Always.

[Deadpangod3]

After a perfect insertion burn to Jool, I entered in the wrong way and circularized, now need 6 km/s to go to Laythe -.-

Seriously, I never know how to enter in the right way XD

you could come in retro to laythe going east to laythe and orbit through some SERIOUS aerobraking, then youd be orbiting the right way on laythe, unless you have DR installed...

[SatanX]

Spend half hour building an Ike probe (with every experiment with a few from mods) , launch in a 'no revert' career game.

Get about 5 km up and decide to try one of the newly acquired science experiments. Press "Transmit".

......No coms device on vessel. Kill engines, shake fist.....

[magnemoe]

Frustrating fails (is there already a thread for these kinds of fails? can only find the launch fail thread)...

So, multiple parts launched for a space station for a fine-print contract, got it all together out at 200 km using a tug and getting to grips with RCS, and then realised I made two mistakes:

1. I let Bill take joy-ride and now he's up there with no return vehicle

2. I forgot to put an antenna on any of the parts, so cannot yet complete the contract

Send up an rocket, empty pod and an adapter docking port-some spacer-docking port, put an antena on the spacer who is anything light, an 45 liter fuel tank you empty before docing is an example. I always put extra small docking ports on large ship for docking extensions.

[magnemoe]

I captured an class e asteroid and managed to get it into 250 km orbit pretty much equator plane too. Took me a day play.

Next I added stuff from extrateristial launchpads, has converter to convert rock to ore, found that I forgot both the launchpad itself and the smelter to convert ore to metal.

Luckily you can dock all sort of stuff to an asteroid with a claw.

[Norpo]

Well, I had a mun lander base (lander is important, remember this). First, it blew up the launch pad, but I managed to get it off the pad. Okay, then after I get my apoapsis up, I start my orbit burn, only to find that I spin out of control whenever I burn (center of mass troubles) I keep trying to fix it, but alas, I cannot. I eventually decouple it from the orbital stage and only with the skycrane, and as I descend into the atmosphere.... (Not planned, at all, aside from the parachutes I put on in case this happened)

Remember how I said it was a lander? Yeah, it's going to end up in that water, that small pond.

The only water within around 5 kilometers. (Slightly enhanced image with GIMP as it was night time)

This lander was not meant to go in water, and the skycrane is extremely hard to pilot.

Halnie Kerman survived, but the folks in the hitchhiker module didn't. (Splashdown! At 9 m/s!)

This was my second attempt to get a base on the mun, for my third run I just gave up on the skycrane thing and just made a really tall lander, and it worked. Bill is now the proud sole kerbal on the mun, near a place I dubbed Orange Ridge.

(See how Halnie Kerman is smiling? I think he's the next Jeb. Especially considering he was the sole survivor.)

And all for want of a balanced center of mass.

[sedativechunk]

After a perfect insertion burn to Jool, I entered in the wrong way and circularized, now need 6 km/s to go to Laythe -.-

Seriously, I never know how to enter in the right way XD

It's elementary physics. You have to enter orbit around Jool so that, you are going the same direction as the Moons. That way you "gently" approach them and can circularize your orbit easy around each moon. What you are doing is traveling the same velocity as the moon (or close to it) but then you shed some of that velocity while within their orbit. If you are flying towards them, you could be at a similar velocity but your orbit will kind of be on a "collision course" with theirs. If you are traveling against them the you are going to have a bad time trying to get in orbit.

This is quiet easy to fix. Just aerobrake on Jool, burn normal or anti-normal so you enter in a path that will put you in orbit traveling the same direction as the moons. Aerobraking on initial encounter should be done at around 125k meters. Usually you have to hit the left side of Jool coming in.

[Giggleplex777]

Spend half hour building an Ike probe (with every experiment with a few from mods) , launch in a 'no revert' career game.

Get about 5 km up and decide to try one of the newly acquired science experiments. Press "Transmit".

......No coms device on vessel. Kill engines, shake fist.....

You're lucky you discovered this early in the mission; imagine this happening when you're on Ike. Did you land the rocket afterwards?

[Kamuchi]

Updated to 0.25 without a backup while 24.* was running fine in 64bit

[SatanX]

You're lucky you discovered this early in the mission; imagine this happening when you're on Ike. Did you land the rocket afterwards?

No, it was just going to orbit Ike, no chutes, no landing gear, no nothing. *Boom*

[rodion]

more of a meta-failure outside the kerbal universe, but due to some shoddy modding i finally broke my gamedata (it was bound to happen) and had to tediously rebuild it one piece at a time until it was stable again. spent about 2 and a half hours.

my other idiot moment is that whilst designing my mun base i tried to account for many things, but failed to remember that a kerbolar day on the mun is something like 20 hours, which TACLS takes exception to. even though my laboratory module has giant battery banks and currently supports only one kerbal, it can only barely scrape through a munar night without suffering a power failure. fortunately the next module with supplementary KAS boxes full of RTGs and fuel cells will be on its way shortly. power management, it's no joke.

[mckamx]

...I forgot to put an antenna on any of the parts, so cannot yet complete the contract

I usually remember the antenna, it's the science payload I forget on unkerbaled missions. No crew report from the surface if there is no crew.

[James_Eh]

Number one: hard mode career mission to gather science from space just outside of kerbins soi (kerbol orbit). I thought I might as well gather some science from the mun on my way and use it's gravity for apush. I aimed for a munar flyby at roughly 8 km to shorten the journy (more speed from slingshot).

... Aw, dammit. Once again I am reminded to do science stuff IN BETWEEN PLANETS !!!

[James_Eh]

After a perfect insertion burn to Jool, I entered in the wrong way and circularized, now need 6 km/s to go to Laythe -.-

Seriously, I never know how to enter in the right way XD

Better that than a late night session, then checking in the next day to discover that the perfect Eve aerobrake/circularization that you remembered from the night before was, in fact, at Jool. (Darn brown pops!)