Let's hear your sad stories of defeat clenched from the jaws of victory

[Rocket Farmer]

I'll start. Today on hard mode Jeb was making his way back from his first mun landing. The entire mission went smooth and as he hit ther kerbal atmosphere loaded with samples I fired off the last of his rocket fuel to lighten the craft for a safe landing. He randomly managed to land in a little narrow valley with steep sides that destroyed the whole craft. 100m either way and he would have been safe.

Typically I aim for a super low periapsis when coming home and then review the location when I am 24 hours out (4 full rotations which gives you lots of time to adjust a landing zone by about 1000km with a little rocket burn) but I didn't have patched conics yet so I was landing blind.

I am reviewing my landing procedures.....

[bdito]

I was landing on eve, quicksaved while my parachutes were open about 400m up, landed nicely and thought all was well and then I decided to quickload to get more science while still in the air. That's when the parachute bug hit me and my craft crashed and burned. Every quickload was the same...no chutes, crash and burn. The entire mission was a write-off even after I already landed. Ughhh.

[AbacusWizard]

I was once trying to land a rather large outpost on the surface of Duna. During the descent it was empty; the crew was hanging out safely in an orbital refueling station just in case something went wrong with the landing.

The plan was to use an attached rocket stage to slow down and de-orbit the outpost; once it hit atmosphere, air resistance would slow it down most of the way. I'd use any remaining fuel for small maneuvers to adjust exact landing site, then detach the rocket stage and deploy parachutes to allow the outpost to float down and land gently on the surface.

Everything was working just fine during the de-orbiting process. It had slowed down to terminal velocity and the landing site looked pretty good, so I pressed the button to detach the rockets. Separation successful. I pressed the button to deploy parachutes... and nothing happened. I panicked and mashed the button a few more times... and then realized to my dismay that the only probe core in the whole thing had been in the rocket stage I'd just detached. No control whatsoever in the empty outpost. *BOOM*

[Captain Sierra]

I aerobraked inbound at Jool too low. I ended up burning a good bit of my delta V to save the mission, which I did for the most part. The kerbals were able to land on Vall, leave a small base module behind, and deliver a probe to Laythe. I ran out of fuel on the return burn and they were stranded in solar orbit for all eternity.

[SorryDave]

Sometime ago I drove my first off-Kerbin rover with Bill and Jeb straight onto a deep crater on the Mun. They went straight down about 100 meters but somehow survived, rover upright.

Then I did a slight turn at a slow speed at the relatively flat bottom and knocked them both off as the rover overturned. The were so stunned that they both became uncontrollable zombies. I started new game.

[Yakky]

I'll start. Today on hard mode Jeb was making his way back from his first mun landing. The entire mission went smooth and as he hit ther kerbal atmosphere loaded with samples I fired off the last of his rocket fuel to lighten the craft for a safe landing. He randomly managed to land in a little narrow valley with steep sides that destroyed the whole craft. 100m either way and he would have been safe.

Typically I aim for a super low periapsis when coming home and then review the location when I am 24 hours out (4 full rotations which gives you lots of time to adjust a landing zone by about 1000km with a little rocket burn) but I didn't have patched conics yet so I was landing blind.

I am reviewing my landing procedures.....

Hah... I lost my Jeb in exactly the same way! It was a picture-perfect science mission to the Mun, a nice amount of science from a fairly cheap, sub 18-ton, sub 30-part early-stage mission in Hard Mode (plus FAR/DRE). Going great. Jeb of course nailed the multiple Mun landings at different biome sites. Kerbin return and re-entry... No problem. Parachutes out, looking terrific. Then the spacecraft touches down on the side of a nearly vertical wall and tumbles to its destruction. Bye Jeb, bye lots of science, bye funds!

No patched conics available to optimize the return, so I had just rolled the dice...

Edited January 17, 2015 by Yakky

[Guest]

Easy. Back in 0.18.2, I sent a three Kerbal crew to Minmus. Ascent, stable Kerbin orbit, trans-Minmus burn all A-OK. But I forgot about the position of the Mun. They made a lovely new crater.

[Yakky]

I also lost fourteen Kerbals within five minutes to a pair of tragic stage separation mishaps. It was a mission to fulfill a 7-kerbal Munar base contract. Due to launchpad weight constraints, the craft had no Kerbin re-entry provisions like parachutes. The game plan had been to get the base on the Mun, sit for 10 seconds to get the contract points, then get back to Munar orbit or maybe all the way back to LKO if fuel allowed, and then come get the guys with a subsequent launch.

My very carefully designed craft lost its second stage when some separating 1st stage boosters collided into it and blew up its big orange fuel tank. The third stage, unfortunately, had neither the thrust to weight ratio to limp into orbit nor perform a powered landing back on Kerbin, and all seven little guys perished when their craft hit the ocean at high speed. And it's Hard Mode so they are really dead.

OK, let's try that again, this time with a couple Separatrons to ease the spent boosters away. Hire seven more crew. Launch. No collision at stage separation. Only this time, the Separatrons, whcih have their nozzles pointed right at the orange tank, cause enough heat damage to that same orange tank to blow it up again... (I am still learning how the DRE mod affects things.)

Fourteen dead Kerbals and if it were Real Space Program, I undoubtedly would have been fired.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Yakky

[Wjolcz]

I was landing on eve, quicksaved while my parachutes were open about 400m up, landed nicely and thought all was well and then I decided to quickload to get more science while still in the air. That's when the parachute bug hit me and my craft crashed and burned. Every quickload was the same...no chutes, crash and burn. The entire mission was a write-off even after I already landed. Ughhh.

Whaaaaaaa...? You can quicksave and quickload in atmo? Was that recently added?

EDIT: Oh, heres my story.

So one day I built a nice space station and decided I would take one of my fighters from the low 150km orbit station to the higher on. On the approach I started burning in such a way to align the tgt marker and retrograde marker, and zero out the velocity at the same time. Well, the first part of the plan went well, but the velocity was way too high. Its not the worst part, though. The worst thing is that after crashing into the starion I clicked the quicksave key instead of quickooad. My whole station and the fighter went *poof* in the cloud of debris. It was a brand new, just built station.

Edited January 17, 2015 by Veeltch

[Madrias]

Happened recently, but still a good one.

I play a custom scenario where I've made Career Mode super-easy. I've unlocked plane parts with my large amount of starting science, so I plan to fly around Kerbin and get science enough to unlock more technology. (House rules, after all. I can't go into Space without at least planting a flag on the two poles of Kerbin and at least discovering some Ice Cap, Desert, Water, Highlands, and Grasslands science. Because Kerbals shouldn't Space until they can Air.) I also try to fly in IVA as much as possible.

Jeb was my test pilot for my new science plane. Had a few basic science packages, some markers to leave behind (After all, I can't plant flags yet), and a nice propeller (Thank you, Firespitter!) to pull me through the air. Had lots of solar power to turn my electric propeller, so I throttled up, skipped into the air, and set out for the North Pole.

I've made this run a dozen times since 23.5, so I was confident in my ability to get there safely. I pulled the nose up, set my altitude at about 6000 meters (so I miss any mountain tops in my way) and throttle back enough to maintain my altitude. Meanwhile, I run my various small tests, grabbing some temperature science, a Crew Report, popping a Goo Can mid flight to get the whole "Goo shakes and wobbles as the craft flies" message. Dropped my altitude to a pleasant 500 meters (Radar Alt.) and throttled back to leave my first marker out in the Highlands. Pressed 6 to deploy the legs, then 5 to blow the chute and decouple. The marker lands and I take note to go back to it at some point and run the science on it. I climb to altitude again, throttle back, and cruise for a few minutes.

After a while, I'm content with flying, Jeb's having fun writing crew reports, and my propeller has let off a great burst of sparks and spooled down. Wait, what!? I check my resources and find I'm completely out of Electric Charge. I panic: My design isn't built to glide, at least not for very long. I also have no charge to turn reaction wheels, and my aircraft was lacking in the control surfaces department. I click a solar panel because the sky looks too bright to be a power problem, but even with the throttle all the way down, I don't have enough charge.

Status: Blocked by Mun.

I'm now in what can best be described as a free-fall. I've gained enough speed for the control surfaces to do their job, but I'm down to 2000 meters of altitude. I'm trying to find a place to land in the event that the eclipse lasts long enough to be more of a problem. I'm bleeding altitude faster than I expected, so I drop my landing gear and hope for the sun to peek out from behind the Mun. I'm down to about 200m according to my Radar Altimeter, and I'm starting to calm just a bit. I've got my gear down, my speed's about 70m/s, which is a bit faster than I'd like to land, but I've done far worse on far rougher ground.

The sun slowly lights up a few solar panels, the reaction wheels spool up, my propeller begins to turn, and so I whack the throttle open and pull up, hard, to regain altitude.

An explosion booms through my craft.

Panicked, I toggle to the outside camera to find the back half of my plane is missing. The off-balance craft flips upside down, then violently flips again. Any attempt to regain control leads to a violent flip. And then it happened. The plane slammed into the ground and exploded. The cockpit bounced off, and for a fleeting moment I thought Jeb might be safe. Then a hillside fell out from underneath the plane and the cockpit, with Jeb inside, began the long free-fall down into a minor valley. Boom.

A flag was planted at KSC after the Astronaut Complex was upgraded to Level 3 in Jeb's honor. The first pioneer to give his life in the air because of something that happened out in space.

[War Eagle 1]

Forgive the bit of role play but it makes the story much more sad. (yes this story happened though)

Project Genesis had just become a private company. 4 ships were out scouting around Pol. When out of no where, 4 probteck bayonet class destroyers (Spartwo's company and his ships) came out of nowhere and attacked. The ill prepared PG ships held their own but alas, victory would be out of reach. Captain Bob Kerman, and his ship PGS Redemption (a Salvation Class Gen 1 Destoryer) killed his second Bayonet, then made the tactical decision to land the ship on Pol. While this maneuver would have stopped man inexperienced Captians, the last drone controlled Bayonet fired a guided missile at the surface and sevieraly damaged the Redemption. The surviving crew then decided to not go out without a fight…thus they flew up to the Bayonet using their equipped RCS packs and de-orbited the ship manually, all dying in the process. The brave kerbals of the PGS Redemption received the highest of honors for their bravery and sacrifice.

[Skorpychan]

Munar Surface Outpost contract.

I built the base, a bit on the cheap as usual. Tweaked things, a slightly new design of booster, and up it went.

First attempt: Lost power before gravity turn. ...? Oh, night launch. No batteries. Whoops. Revert To VAB.

Second attempt: Went up, got into Munar orbit. Then... Nothing. Out of power. ...? Oh. Panels blocked by craft. They were all on a slanted adapter, pointing 'up' in relation to the engine. Craft had entered Mun orbit ass-first, coincidentally pointed AWAY from the sun. A few days of timewarp didn't fix that, so I reverted again.

Attempt three, with proper solar panels on it to track the sun. Got into orbit okay, picked out a landing site, and went for the landing.

Out of fuel. Boom.

Attempt four, quickloaded from orbit. Ran out of fuel a bit lower this time.

Attempt five. Quickloaded from suborbital. VERY careful fuel management. Will I/won't I make it indecision; one eye on KER, half an eye on the navball, half an eye on the approaching surface.

Fuel ran out just above the surface. Cue much swearing, and trying to wrangle it to a proper attitude with SAS. It crashed. Series of explosions. My hand went to quickload, but then the smoke cleared. The outpost was sat there. Engine had gone, two legs broken, but it was intact. Just... Sort of sideways. Too long to pop it upright with SAS, so I just got it rolled around to where it would sit still long enough to satisfy the 10 second rule.

And it's still usable.

At this point, I just decided 'meh, good enough', and went back to KSC to claim my funds. Not, perhaps, in the SPIRIT of the contract, but it's there.

[InterCity]

I've made an extremely heavy spaceplane out of the B9 S2 wide body parts. To my own surprise, it took off on the first attempt and was working just fine until mach 5 (under FAR). So I reverted to SPH, added payload and launched it to my space station with new crew.

So, the crews were changed, space station was refit, snacks were eaten and space kraken was far away, and it was time to go home. So i undocked and burned retrograde. Just a normal reentry.

But I was stupid and forgot about FAR. I burned retrograde for a bit longer that in should in an attempt to hit either ksc runway or island runway. Bad idea.

Turned out that due to the high reentry velocity, the plane could not slow down enough before slamming into ground. In a desperate attempt to save it, i tried pitching gently up. The only result of that was a spray of shrapnel as the wings gave way.

Surprisingly, the crew tank and the cockpit survived, but prolonged the suffering of my poor kerbals. Fortunately, i failed to hit the KSC.

You will be missed, Bob, Bill, Jeb and 12 others...

[StrandedonEarth]

I recently sent a stack of 2 probe landers + 2 probe satellites to the Eve system to fulfill the 'Explore Eve' and 'Explore Gilly' contracts. The Eve portion went perfectly, with the two probes on the ground (on its side, but whatever) and in orbit respectively. Buoyed by success, I moved on to the Gilly portion of the mission.

I set the stacked probes onto a flyby course with a Pe of about 7km (IIRC) which should be good enough for Gilly, I thought. The transfer stage burned out partway through the orbital insertion burn, no big deal, I separated it and continued the burn with the lander and made orbit. I then separated the probes and prepared for landing, noticing that VOID told me I was less than 500m above the surface. As I was burning for landing I swung the camera around just in time to see the satellite (no propulsion of any kind, just an Octo, some OX-STATS, batteries, SciJr and other science gear) crash into the surface. Ah well, I had already fulfilled the orbital part of the Gilly contract.

The landing on Gilly went fine, and I started transmitting out all the science I could, until the batteries died. ?!?!? Oh right, I forgot that while the sats just used OX-STATS, the landers needed to have the solar panels deployed! I had remembered to do that on Eve, but not on Gilly. *facepalm* But I prepare for these things; I had locked out the probe's battery before launch, for all the good that did me. As soon as I connected the battery the antenna sucked out the the 10 EC of juice before I could deploy a panel! I need to remember to lock out a bigger battery.

So while Eve was an almost total success, Gilly was a near total disaster. At least both contracts were completed, but I won't be getting any more science from the Gilly SOI.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

You will be missed, Bob, Bill, Jeb and 12 others...

And that's why you always add lots of airbrakes On a more serious note, if you try pancaking in the upper atmo, then pitching down before there's a risk of losing control, you can pull off some really aggressive reentries with FAR (not sure about whether it'd work with DRE though).

EDIT: Oh, and today's fail - launched two probes into LKO in preparation for some exploration contracts - launch and orbital insertions went swimmingly, as did plotting of the transfer burns. Popped some reminders into Kerbal Alarm Clock, returned to the space centre to accept another contract or three, and noticed the full text of the exploration contracts. Turns out surface science is a thing too. As a result, I have now got two really expensive probes sat in LKO which can't do half the job they were built for.

Edited January 17, 2015 by SufficientAnonymity

[SubzeroSpartan7]

I had an ion powered manned exploration craft that was attempting to land on every biome on Minmus. Unfortunately while landing at my second destination the stock auto-pilot freaked out just before landing and pointed my craft directly towards the ground breaking all but one solar panel. Luckily since it was Minmus I was able to right myself back onto my landing legs, but with one solar panel my exploration days were over. Me being the genius that I am didn't put any batteries on the craft. I was able to limp back into an elliptical orbit at 1/4 thrust. The craft had a docking port on it because at the end of the mission it was going to dock with my Minmus station after exploration and the pilot Jerfrid Kerman (an avid explorer) was going to take a CTV back home. Luckily I always have a nuclear tug lying around in Minmus orbit to dock modules onto the station or for situations like this. However things got much worse. The nuclear tug was approaching the craft and at 500 meters away and at 30 KM above the surface of Minmus a violent explosion rocked the lander. Every single piece of the lander except for the lander can (which was now magically on a suborbital trajectory) were launched at 20,000 m/s into interplanetary space. I guess the game hated me that day. So now the lander can doesn't have a docking port and is free falling towards the ground so I get Jerfrid out and using the nuclear tug push him into an orbit where he can rendezvous with the station. Unfortunately the station is full of kerbals and so is my Minmus base so the commander of the mission, Chadski Kerman, decided to give his life to save Jerfrid. He attempted to land at the Minmus base with his EVA pack so they could at least recover his body. Unfortunately he ran out of fuel just short of landing and hit the ground at 50 m/s. Than Jeb and Bill put up a flag near the base in remembrance of Chadski. Jerfrid is still waiting his flight home and will re-attempt the mission in a redesigned lander.

[ShadowZone]

I recently put two big interplanetary cruisers in orbit, both waiting for their transfer windows. Silly me didn't realize that their orbits intersected. The explosion was mindboggling.

[Stealthie]

I have this little "rule" where I only let Mechjeb loose on drone ships.

I figure that, in real life, a drone ship intended to, say, punt cargo around in orbit would have the AI required to do it's job so it's okay to let mechjeb do that work in KSP.

So, I built a ridiculously complex model of the ISS, all launched piece by piece, built a lot of the Station Science mod' into it and set about using it as a science factory.

I built a couple of small drone ships to go out and grab the experiment pods off a shuttle and hook them up to the ISS (they fit nicely into where the experiment pod is on the ISS Kibo lab') and I was quite proud of how magnificent it looked and how efficiently and gracefully the drones did their jobs.

Right up to the point where one of them lost the plot and reversed clean through the station solar array and, while I was busy wincing over all the bits of broken solar panel fluttering around, it collided with the SS Spectrometron, caused a huge explosion and my station was no more.

Many Kerbals lost their lives that day.

Oddly enough, the drone survived until I decided to torture it to death by de-orbiting it and then telling it to try and set up a rendezvous with the remains of the station while it plummeted to it's doom.

[ColourOfFire]

Built a nice space station, got Bob out to attach some struts to make the docking section a bit more solid. Bob does a great job, flies back to the ladder, I press F to grab it, Bob shoots of right through some solar panels causing a debris domino to tear off some more panels. Bob is launched away into infinity and the station is left powerless on the dark side of the planet. Life support fails, 2 escape with the still docked tug and make it to the surface, the rest dies. Good going Bob.

[moogoob]

I'll make it quick. My first trip to Jool was going flawlessly. I'd never done such a perfect transfer! Then I entered the system, did my capture burn, then notice I'm going around the planet retrograde. I try launching one of the three probes I brought (it was an ambitious mission) which made a lovely retrograde slingshot off of Tylo into Jool rather than a capture burn like I planned. Realizing I couldn't salvage the mission, I quickload, only as I was still new-ish to the game the last quicksave was two whole missions before. In addition to the Jool mission I lost a Minmus lab rover and two superweapons. At least the craft files survived!

Learned a lot! Nowadays the second thing I do when changing SOIs is make sure I'm not heading in retrograde. The first thing is to F5.

- - - Updated - - -

I have this little "rule" where I only let Mechjeb loose on drone ships.

I figure that, in real life, a drone ship intended to, say, punt cargo around in orbit would have the AI required to do it's job so it's okay to let mechjeb do that work in KSP.

SNIPSNIPSNIP...

Oddly enough, the drone survived until I decided to torture it to death by de-orbiting it and then telling it to try and set up a rendezvous with the remains of the station while it plummeted to it's doom.

I do this too sometimes! Not the punishment, though. I may have to. *glances at the several blatant landing f-ups Mechjeb's been involved with*

It would be cool to be able to program a whole mission for a probe, especially one that is too far away for real-time remote control. Maybe in a future MJ release?