What Tough Situation Were You In

[Bonanza123d]

Hello Everyone, I created this thread just to understand from the experienced to the newbie that has been in a real tough spot and got out of it or has failed.

My contribution.

Fail:

I doing my first sling from Earth>Venus>Mars>Saturn with IMFD. I forgot to do a correction burn to Mars and missed the planet. I never had enough fuel so i pulled up scenario editor and kept adding fuel till i was able to do a return to Earth. I was doing a good aerobrake when the did not like that i cheated and my spacecraft flipped 180 degrees and burned up a Mach 35.

Another Fail:

I was going from mars. I wasted a lot of fuel on a burn. I left the throttle on a little to long. With low oxygen and trying hard to figure out how to get to earth, I made one final correction burn. When i got to earth i had only 10.4% of fuel in the XR2. I then executed my first aerobrake. I had success. I then burned the last of the fuel to do a re-entry. I quickly screwed that one up when i used to much of a burn and was too steep.

 

[Mojave]

I did a trip from mars to mercury with IMFD. I forgot to make sure my PeR higher than -100.000km, and I crashed into Mercury.

This didn't go too well with the DGIV, as it breaks when it hits things hard :lol:

 

[Fabri91]

Not so much a tough situation, but a spectacular fail was when I was assembling most of MIR2 with an XR5. Everything went perfect. A little too perfect, in fact. Turns out I forgot to circularise my orbit, so with already some parts assembled, a fiery reentry ensued.

Similar situation after the first use of LTMFD: turns out a PeA of 200 isn't the same as 200k.

 

[Spacethingy]

This was scary for little-newbie-me:

But luckily, there were some very clever nice Orbiter people who told me that I was gonna die and that it was too late to do anything... :lol:

But seriously, they gave good advice about burning and now I know! :tiphat:

I feel the need for a

Similar situation after the first use of LTMFD: turns out a PeA of 200 isn't the same as 200k.

Oh yes! Oh yes!

 

[The Lord of Error]

Fail:

New to Orbiter and already:

Coming in to Earth from Luna (Delta-Glider) and failed to make a correct burn to enter orbit and ended up slingshotting myself towards empty space.

And:

On the second try (with Shuttle-A) failed to make the correction burn at all and drove straight into the planet.

:facepalm:

 

[macson_g]

Than was a real space thriller.

I underestimated the influence of Jovian gravity, and what was supposed to be very eccentric orbit around Europa, suddenly turned into an escape.

I've burned all the fuel in my DGIV to slow down the departure from the moon, and launched a rescue mission. Arrow - which was landed on Europa - had to lift off and try to rescue the crew lost in space.

The resolution of Orbit MFD was to small against the huge scale of Jovian orbit to be a useful nav aid. The long range antenna of DGIV somehow helped, but the relative distance was in order of tens thousands kilometres - too far to use XPDR transmitters.

I ended up EVA'ing a crew member from Arrow and using the omniscient instruments in UMMU to asses relative velocity and position to the lost DGIV. The I had to set the orientation of Arrow using stars, and estimate the burn time. I took me several EVAs and burns to eventually set the course that get me in the range of DGIV's XPDR.

The entire adventure left me with just enough fuel to return to Earth. I had to abandon the base on Europa semi-completed. Luckily, I didn't left anyone behind.

 

[TMac3000]

Just the other day:
Reached Jupiter after a lengthy drive through the dark.

Started my transfer to Europa.

Realized too late that my transfer was a little too accurate, and started burning like mad to fix it:OMG:

Made a new crater on Europa:facepalm:

 

[Richy]

I once made a XR5 transfer from LEO to the moon, but hadn't checked my total dV. Lunar orbit insertion went fine, but after I realised, I hadn't enough fuel to land (and for a return to earth even less).
There was also no other ship on the moon to help out, and the Descartes was planned to arrive some days later. But there wasn't enough oxygen onboard to wait for them.

My dV lacked just about 200 m/s for a landing, so I tried "ditching". First, searched a flat marea on the moon near a base, where I could try a belly landing (was quite intense, because I couldn change my orbit, so I had to choose the first best opportunity).
I managed to go low near Armstrong Base and reduced my potential energy to a minimum before reducing my kinetic energy. I hit the ground quite hard (used my gear as crush zone) and the ship slid some kilometers on the lunar soil. The Vanguards heatshield was severely damaged, but main ships structure sustained the impact and the crew survived. The ship came to a stop about 10-20km outside the base.

After, the crew was rescued and brought back to the base. And as soon as a capable ship arrived at the base (in this case a ShuttleA), recovery of the XR5 begun. With the XR5 completely empty, it wasn't too hard to hinge it up (via TetherMFD).
This was also quite a challange, bringing the crippled XR5 back to the base, on a 1km long rope and place it correctly on a pad (to sad, TetherMFD doesn't work anymore ).

 

[Kveldulf]

I mentioned it in another thread, but here's the full story.

I was taking an XR2 and the Arrow out to Mercury. Trip went fine, made it to Mercury ok, sent my pilot over to the XR2, and left the rest in the Arrow to handle the landing. Managed to land the XR2 fine, placed the landing beacon, and started bringing the Arrow down. I forget exactly what happened, but I screwed up the landing, and the Arrow slammed into the surface at... something like -200 m/s or so, and killed everyone onboard. The only surviving member of the mission was my XR2 pilot, and I decided I wanted to bring her home safely.

Problem is, my XR2 settings are mostly designed for short trips. I think I had a few months worth of air thanks to spares I had brought down to the surface in UCGO containers, but fuel was still a problem. I couldn't make it back to Earth with what I had, and I couldnt wait for another Arrow to fly out. I decided to have the two ships meet at Venus instead. Sent the XR2 on the way, but quickly realised that I didn't have the fuel to make it. I decided to cancel the burn, and use most of my remaining fuel to circularize my orbit around the Sun, and intercept the XR2 that way. One very stressful trip later, I met up with the XR2 in solar orbit, and docked the ship with about a week's worth of air left. The rest of the trip was uneventful, although it was interesting trying to track down such a small ship orbiting the Sun.

 

[Mattyv]

This one was not from me, but my little brother who's first (and last:lol expirience with orbiter was with the Arrow Freighter, when he tried to launch it to Jupiter (not the best first thing to do for a newbie).

He has no understanding of physics or astrodynamics, or how a spacecraft works; he, at the time, thought the ship needed to continuously fire the engine towards Jupiter to travel to it.

He then did an EVA with some poor ummu....

...WHILE THE ENGINE WAS FIRING!:facepalm:

That was my most hilarious moment in orbiter ever to see that poor dude watch as his spaceship flew away at hundreds of mph. Even more funny was that he did at least five more times, finally turning around and asking me, "what's happening!?" :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

On the plus side for those ummu's, they hold the distinction of being the first people who's bodies left the solar system

 

[PeriapsisPrograde]

A poor UMMU at Brighton was diagnosed with "quasihyperhyro syndrome," or QHHS. All that "just add water" space food didn't agree with him. I made a UCGO QHHS vaccine cargo and sent it to the moon. I pushed LTMFD to its limit, making the fastest transfer possible. Three hours later, I ran out of fuel with the LOI burn. Brilliant.

All crew of the delivery vessel and the infected UMMU were lost.

 

[Keatah]

A psychiatric rescue.

 

[Napalm42]

I have two stories of merit to share:

My near miss:

Once, i was doing a casual excursion with the Arrow to Mars to do some sciencey colony stuff. I used IMFD to calculate the flight, and I was wooshing off. I simulated the flight casually, no big issues there, a few correction burns. as it turns out, I was way too accurate, when Mars approached, I noticed my Orbit MFD was showing some funny lines, when I turned the HUD back on, I saw my prograde marker was pointing inside of Mars. I quickly panicked, oriented the vessel hard left and burned frantically. When I did capture, my PeA was about 150 or so. THAT was one of my closest calls.

One of my greatest failures that I can recall from memory was when I was a relative newbie, and I decided to do a de-orbit burn to land on any generic spot on the moon with the XR5 fully loaded. I didn't understand how to land with Hover rockets at the time, and de-orbited so hard, that I basically exceeded the XR5's ability to slow the ship.

Unfortunately, I realized this at about 2k above the lunar surface, and slammed into it at about -500 m/s. I doubt any wreckage managed to survive:lol:

 

[Ark]

Not exactly a tough situation that I suddenly found myself in, but today I tried an interesting challenge. I left one of Burch's BSP4s parked on a runway by itself, and took off with only it's carrier plane. I made a wide circle and lined up a pass over the runway at 300 m/s and around 3km high. I trimmed up the carrier plane to fly more-or-less level and switched to the BSP4.

I took off and chased down the carrier. With the carrier in a very slight climb, I trimmed back my throttle until I was approaching at around 10 m/s and tucked up underneath it. Switching back to the carrier, I activated the attachment point and grabbed the BSP.

It's pretty damn hard to perform a maneuver like that, under power, in atmosphere. Even when your target is passively flying straight and level. Out of all Burch's spaceplanes, that's the only one I was really able to do that trick with, the SwiftSS and SP2.0 both run out of fuel before they can catch up to a carrier.

I'm thinking of setting up a scenario where you deorbit a BSP, land at a "hostile" field and pick up cargo and fuel, then escape by mating with a carrier and cruising in atmo back to home turf. Could be fun. Really crazy would be to attempt to deorbit and mate with a flying carrier without touching ground...

 

[mjanicki]

The first time I tried out the DG-IV I undocked from the ISS without having closed the airlock doors. That was a long time ago, and I thought I'd learned my lesson. Months later, however, the first time I tried out the XR2 I also undocked from the ISS without having closed the airlock doors. So much for having learned my lesson.

 

[Moach]

returning from the moon with the DG once, i kinda misjudged the size of my fuel reserves - and ended up missing a couple hundred m/s of delta-V....


but that wasn't the end of it - i did manage to get an atmospheric intercept, so i could still aerobrake... if only

the angle was so off i could not hold the nose up, even at full deflection, so off i went back into space....


but i was still not done - i could still spare another orbit.... and another after that....

by the third approach, i was rather tired - i really wanted to go to bed, but i pressed on....

i found that if i banked the glider to an ungodly angle, i got a spiral trajectory on the aerobrake MFD - so i went with that....

after 10 mins of white-knuckle fireballing joystick mayhem (i was flying manual all the way), i was over KSC, where i circled and went in for a centerline landing


i could hardly believe it when the wheels stopped.... if i'd been flying the XR1 instead of the stock DG, i'd be dead in so many ways by then... - thank the almighty probe for unobtainium heatshields! :lol:

 

[fsci123]

Well i have had several tough situations on orbiter:
1. The time when my XR2 spun out of control at hypersonic speeds at 38km... Luckily i remembered that movie stealth so i fired the right engine only and stabilised my spin.
2. One time i made a shot towards the moon and i had only a few minutes to circurlairze an orbit... The catch was that the closest point to the moon was 13km from the surface and their was several large mountains in my way.
3. I had the time when i aborted my CTV launch and had to land in germany.
4. Then there was the time when i was trying to aerobrake on an exoplanet with a mass 6 times that of earth.

 

[statisticsnerd]

I forgot to let the astronauts on a spacewalk back into the ship before reentering.

They turned into barbeque.

 

[MartyMan]

I'm still trying to learn how to perfect my orbits, but basically the other day I was going from Canaveral to ISS in the DG, rocketed up to 300kms, and started to align my orbit. I forgot to execute my orbital insertion.... so you can imagine my confusion when I began to burn up.

 

[plainsight]

I set my Alt in baseApproach to 200 instead of 200k, after long play to get from moon to earth. :facepalm: