Speaking of Mars.
#1: Shot a perfect re-entry into Martian atmosphere about 40km clear of Olympus base in a DGIV (yeah, it was a basic AOA / RTLS abort I was flying just for posterity, so my relative inclination was off). While patting myself on the back,
#2: Forgot about complete lack of flyable atmosphere while ruminating on a radical course change to yaw the ship over to starboard to make the hover pads.
#3: Forgot about precipitous sink rate.
#4: Forgot about hover thrusters.
#5: Forgot about the fact Olympus Base has no runway; only landing pads.
#6: Still forgot about hover thrusters.
#7: Forgot about the fact the DGIV's 320kN main thrusters at full blast had insufficient power to counteract a +/- 10,000 fps descent rate in rarified atmosphere with only about 10,000 feet of altitude to go. :facepalm:
#8. Forgot about engaging the turbopumps for the main thrusters.
#9. Forgot about ejecting the crew (not that parachutes would have made that much of a difference).
Clearly, I'm not going to Mars anytime soon. Not unless I'm given a spaceship where I'm sitting in a padded room the whole time.
(Actually, that was my most recent 'disaster'. Would've taken minutes for the news to reach home. My biggest MEDIA disaster: )
I somehow undercooked my HAC turn to final, flying STS-1. Ended up scrubbing too much speed through the turn mere miles from the Edwards lakebed. I KNEW I should have just dove straight for the deck, traded altitude for airspeed, and settled for a sketchy flare to touchdown a mile from the strip . . . but NO way . . . I was Robert F. Crippen, and this landing was being made in front of a slew of cameras, RV's, and a pair of T-38's. Besides, The Force was with me.
I ended up stalling the airframe entirely a thousand feet above the lakebed's edge, and I put the shuttle into a ballistic trajectory that I had no time to recover from. At that point, I decided not to bother.