Facepalm moments

[DanM]

I decided to start a thread for everyone to post their facepalm moments. I had a pretty big one a few nights ago when I was trying to fly a free return earth moon trajectory in a Shuttle PB, with time warp up all the way, waiting for TLI. I made the mistake of trying to Kill Rotation, and found myself way out of the solar system.

 

[JonnyBGoode]

I did a translunar ejection on the DG the other day, then turned the time up to 10000. About halfway there, I started calculating for a correction burn and then figuring out when to make my orbital insertion... forgetting I was still at 10000. Suddenly the dark sky was replaced extremely rapidly by a fast-growing moon, and CRASH.

 

[Tommy]

I'd say my most common face-palm moment is forgetting to open the radiator on an XR vessel. Under 100x time accel, by the time the alarm goes off you've got to be very quick to get the time accel dropped to one and the radiator open before it blows.

And of course there's always forgetting to enable gear hydraulics before trying to land a DGIV.

Or hitting "t" instead of "r" and zooming past a burn point.

It seems the simple stuff is always what gets me.

 

[tblaxland]

It seems the simple stuff is always what gets me.

This is why these are among my favourite MFDs:
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=683"]Checklist MFD[/ame]
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4483"]WatchdogMFD[/ame]

I can even duck off and browse O-F and come back to find the sim paused waiting for me to prepare for a burn (or whatever) :thumbup:

 

[Tommy]

This is why these are among my favourite MFDs:
Checklist MFD
Checklist MFD

WatchdogMFD
WatchdogMFD


I can even duck off and browse O-F and come back to find the sim paused waiting for me to prepare for a burn (or whatever)

Somehow I always convince myself that "I'll get it right this time!"

 

[Izack]

This is why these are among my favourite MFDs:
Checklist MFD
WatchdogMFD

I can even duck off and browse O-F and come back to find the sim paused waiting for me to prepare for a burn (or whatever) :thumbup:

Neat! Two handy tools I've managed to overlook. Thanks for pointing them out. :tiphat:

 

[Wonderer]

Well my biggest facepalm moment was when I flown my 10 year mission to jupiter perfectly, and all I had to do was land the XR2 back at the Cape...I hit the ground at around 15 m/s :facepalm:

 

[JonnyBGoode]

Any landing you can walk away from...

 

[Pyromaniac605]

I was showing my dad AMSO and completed the TLI burn. Then after a bit of time warp I see an angel flying up and away from Earth. Stupid IMFD sent me straight into the Moon and I didn't notice until it was too late.

Darren

Edit: Then there was this time after I first got UCD I was fooling around with all sorts of stuff. One of my 'experiments' was an XR5 with an SRB attached to each wing and an XR2 on top. I lit up the SRBs set the throttle to full and the computer said "Rotate" so I was pressing 2 and it wasn't working, I started tapping two like mad then the gear broke and my experiment was ruined. I hate the APU system.

 

[PeterRoss]

I've lowered periapsis to 100 km to decrease my orbital period while chasing station on LEO. And, yes, enabled time acceleration. In a few seconds I've found my vessel uncontollably rotating on the decaying orbit. Of course my periapsis have drifted abit - to 80 km, and I've hit the atmosphere with all due consequenses.

 

[TMac3000]

Hitting the wrong thruster key when trying to dock...OH SH-- BAAANG:facepalm:

 

[River Crab]

This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this thread (hope you don't mind ):

Go ahead, try and make sense of this:

BEGIN_DESC
Slingshot gone horribly wrong.
END_DESC
 
BEGIN_ENVIRONMENT
System Deepstar/Sol
Date MJD 80995.1813459734
END_ENVIRONMENT
 
BEGIN_FOCUS
Ship Deepstar
END_FOCUS
 
BEGIN_CAMERA
TARGET Deepstar
MODE Cockpit
FOV 40.00
END_CAMERA
 
BEGIN_HUD
TYPE Orbit
REF AUTO
END_HUD
 
BEGIN_MFD Left
TYPE Orbit
PROJ Ship
FRAME Ecliptic
ALT
REF Saturn
END_MFD
 
BEGIN_MFD Right
TYPE Surface
SPDMODE 4
END_MFD
 
BEGIN_SHIPS
Deepstar:Deepstar/Deepstar
STATUS Orbiting Saturn
RPOS 65994388.16 218407.23 -20762650.84
RVEL -21638.355 -129.328 -25135.229
AROT -179.71 40.67 0.29
AFCMODE 7
PRPLEVEL 0:0.729396
THLEVEL 2:0.009000
DOCKINFO 1:0,Deepstar-Lander-1 2:0,Deepstar-Lander-2
IDS 0:522 100 1:524 100 2:526 100 3:528 100 4:530 100
NAVFREQ 0 0
XPDR 520
RCS 1
CTRL_SURFACE 1
CONFIGURATION 1
CURRENT_PAYLOAD 0
SEQ 0 -1 0.480565
SEQ 1 -1 0.172086
SEQ 2 -1 0.172086
SEQ 3 -2 0.000000
SEQ 4 -2 0.000000
SEQ 5 -2 0.000175
END
Deepstar-Lander-1:Deepstar/Deepstar-Lander-1
STATUS Orbiting Saturn
RPOS 65994388.19 218400.31 -20762650.83
RVEL -21638.355 -129.328 -25135.229
AROT -179.71 40.67 -179.71
RCSMODE 0
AFCMODE 7
PRPLEVEL 0:0.999000
DOCKINFO 0:1,Deepstar
IDS 0:542 100
NAVFREQ 0 0
XPDR 550
RCS 0
CTRL_SURFACE 1
CONFIGURATION 1
CURRENT_PAYLOAD 0
SEQ 0 -2 0.000000
END
Deepstar-Lander-2:Deepstar/Deepstar-Lander-2
STATUS Orbiting Saturn
RPOS 65994388.14 218414.15 -20762650.86
RVEL -21638.355 -129.328 -25135.229
AROT -179.71 40.67 0.29
RCSMODE 0
AFCMODE 7
PRPLEVEL 0:0.999000
DOCKINFO 0:2,Deepstar
IDS 0:562 100
NAVFREQ 0 0
XPDR 550
RCS 0
CTRL_SURFACE 1
CONFIGURATION 1
CURRENT_PAYLOAD 0
SEQ 0 -2 0.000000
END
END_SHIPS
 
BEGIN_ExtMFD
END

You retarded idiot.

XD

 

[Izack]

This was the first thing that came to mind when I saw this thread (hope you don't mind ):

XD

Ah yes. One of the problems with instruments using a two-body system in their measurements is that your real orbit can end up very different from the orbit Plan View shows you. If you don't watch carefully (or leave the computer on time acceleration to go get a drink ) you can end up making a premature landing on the wrong planet. :facepalm:

 

[Moach]

flying the DG to the moon, i overshot a bit as i fumbled with time warp, and ended up a few thousand miles past my perilune.... i did a quick correction burn to bring my orbit back around for another pass, but in doing so, i once again fumbled the timewarp controls which resulted:

...i got ran over by the moon :facepalm:

 

[statickid]

I launched from Phobos to land at the cool Hourglass base. I was going to land on the VTOL pad then thought, "Oh hey I never landed on a runway on mars before! I'll just do that..." so I changed my course a little and was coming in on a real nice smooth course. As I was turning to line up with the runway, I was just about to engage the flaps and....CTD!!!! :facepalm:

 

[Slice N Splice]

I had a stupid facepalm moment. I had my crew outside at KSC i had the captain on the DGIV, ok well i don't know where i have been so i took off, by the time i got into space i forgot i left all my crew except for captain at KSC. I did a real life facepalm...

 

[PeterRoss]

Two more things:

1) At the end of a routine translunar flight I've set IMFD (or was it TranslunarMFD? doesn't matter) to circularize orbit at the altitude of 300. After AP have done all the manoeuvres I've turned vessel retrograde and accelerated time to reach periapsis faster. The moon was growing and growing and growin and GROWING... I've set time to normal speed and rechecked my stats. Yes, I've set desired alt to 300 instead of 300k. I've made the deceleration burn just 300 m over the lunar surface.

2) I've made a wrong approach to Earth and missed the desired inclination badly. Yet I've managed to do a number of very efficient correction burns which consumed almost all of my fuel but have got me on the desired orbit. With just a few kilos of fuel left I was approaching a space station, it was just a few hundred meters between me and the docking port. And then I've had to set simulation on pause for some reason. And when I've decided to continue my flight here comes that Fly-By-Wire bug which sets your main engines on full thrust when turning pause off. Oh that was a sad moment.:facepalm:

 

[Fabri91]

Something similar happened to me: the first time I used LTMFD I set a periapsis of 200m above Earth...sadly there was an atmosphere in the way and I think no XR5 ever burned up faster.

 

[Stevodoran]

i had two computer's one was playing tex's video tutorial Delta Glider to Iss and the other one i was using orbiter i followed him exactly and i forgot his mistake.............................the nose cone so no reentry for me :facepalm:

 

[RisingFury]

Slinging around Jupiter to go to Saturn, did a course correction and then smacked right into the center of Saturn...