dal10, on 20 November 2013 - 07:05 PM, said:
you almost had to send 2 rescue missions.
Are you kidding? 2/3 of my missions tend to be rescues of earlier botched missions.
Tolkien, on 21 November 2013 - 05:10 AM, said:
I think we've all done something similar... my most disappointing mistake was planning a multi launch mission to Eeloo that would require multiple pieces of equipment to dock in orbit, fly to eeloo together, do the mission then have a return stage sent ahead for docking and bringing the crew pod back to kerbin.
-Sent the fuel+engines probe to eeloo
-Sent the buggy carrier out to eeloo
-Sent the fuel and drive section up to orbit of kerbin
-Sent the crew module up to kerbin and then noticed I couldn't get it to dock....
Turns out I had installed all of my docking ports backwards and the vehicles were all useless... had to do the designs over and repeat allllll the launches.
I also have a poor kerbin from one of my first launches when I hadn't figured out how to 'hit' a stable orbit yet stranded orbiting the sun. I really should rescue him one of these days.
Wow. I don't feel so bad now. My first lander I sent to Duna, I didn't have a good grasp of delta-V budget, and put way too big of a rocket engine on it, and way too much fuel. So instead of a nice squat lander (like my Mark 2), I sent in a 3 story rocket that lands on it's rear with 3 dinky landing legs. I had to have 3 ladders to reach the ground.
I also did an orbital assembly where I stacked the top lander can onto the rest of the lander and attached command module, but realized when I landed, I attached it 180 degrees the wrong way. The top ladder connected to nothing, as the rest of the ladders were on the other side.
I actually sent this and it's sister ship (connected) to Duna & Ike. First landing attempt was at Ike. After landing on a slightly inclined surface, and worrying this top heavy monstrosity would topple over, I finally hopped out of the landing can to do some EVA. Since the ladder didn't reach the ground, I just used the jetpack to get up to the landing can (3 stories up). My kerbal barely tapped the lander, and I watched in horror as the whole thing started to tip over in slow motion (Ike's gravity is pretty low), and land on it's side. Attempts to launch sideways didn't fair well.
So in summary, I made a horribly top heavy lander, assembled it backwards, and knocked it over after getting it millions of km to Ike.