Facepalm moments

[Wishbone]

Most of the entries are from interplanetary transfers, MCCs etc. I stalled and crashed a few XR2s and XR5s, which unfortunately don't have ejection seats.

 

[n122vu]

First time I ever successfully reentered the DGIV and used AeroBrake MFD to actually get close enough to KSC to land, I hit 'G' and assumed I had lowered the landing gear, forgetting that I had disabled gear hydraulics shortly after takeoff to the ISS. :facepalm:

 

[Robsoie]

My facepalm moment was in Orbiter 2006, i was in orbit in the stock Deltaglider and was approaching ISS position to dock.
Whatever i did was throwing me away of ISS, i couldn't understand, it was far from the first time i catched ISS and docked, but this time it seemed impossible.

On the 3d virtual cockpit i seemed to have the MFD correctly configured, but nothing was making any sense when i tried to fight against my relative speed in comparison to ISS position, i was always going away .. away .. away without a care to how i should logically move and i even had to fire my main reactor to try to get back instead of just the RCS.

After half an hour of "dancing" around ISS and being very annoyed without a clue of what was going on, at some point i went into external view and noticed a slight little light ... around the hoover reactor.

Damn, i must have pressed the hoover key with my big fingers without even noticing it.
No wonder nothing was making any sense in this ISS approach ... facepalm

 

[HAL9001]

landing DGIV without gear.
:facepalm:

 

[Urwumpe]

Mistaking expansion ratio for pressure ratio in the early rocket engine design iterations, resulting in a small scale error, which has painful implications when bringing the parts together:

 

[Tycho6]

Had some unpleasantness with LandMFD at the end of my first voyage to Mars. It flatly refused to admit Olympus Base exists, so I brought the DG in manually. Moments away from the pad, I popped outside for a snapshot, and returned to a horrible silence as the engines stopped, followed by screams and crashing.
I ran out of fuel just seconds from landing, after travelling tens of millions of kilometers. :facepalm:

Of course disaster was going to strike anyway, as I'd forgotten to lower the gear, something I also did once at Brighton Beach. It seems I need a "GearMFD" that does nothing but watch my altimeter and make sure the gear drops before I do.

 

[Blacklight]

My ultimate facepalm moment was when I set up an interplanetary jump from Earth Orbit to Jupiter. I made sure that I had my numbers all correct and waited till I was a good distance away from the Earth. I then cranked up the time compression for the journey. Almost immediately, I slammed into the moon.
:facepalm:

 

[Izack]

My ultimate facepalm moment was when I set up an interplanetary jump from Earth Orbit to Jupiter. I made sure that I had my numbers all correct and waited till I was a good distance away from the Earth. I then cranked up the time compression for the journey. Almost immediately, I slammed into the moon.
:facepalm:

That seems to happen a lot to everyone who uses the default date in Orbiter. I guess 2001 isn't a good time to go to Jupiter. :lol:

 

[jedidia]

I ran out of fuel just seconds from landing, after travelling tens of millions of kilometers.

Hey, that happend to me too, once. ran out of fuel at an altitude of 30 meters above Olympus. Maybe there would have been survivors, who knows...

 

[n72.75]

Giving your my self a pat on the back for not needing any mid-coarse-corrections on a trip to mars. Then slamming into mars.

 

[Brycesv1]

forgot that i was coming back from the moon with a fully loaded XR5 when i left earth empty. it actually took me about 10 minutes to figure out why i wasnt losing very much speed as i turned into a nice plasma ball over the pacific ocean.

 

[IgnoreThisBarrel]

This just happened a few minutes ago. I was heading to Mercury, and I forgot to drop out of time acceleration. The rest is self-explanatory.

Fortunately I managed to go back in time to a while before orbital insertion and save my DGIV's day.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

Failed at IMFD (And still do) I set up a course to Mars, set it all up (seemly) perfect for a direct reentry, a few minutes later I look outside and saw Saturn zooming past. :facepalm:
(And I still haven't made it to Mars :lol: )

Darren

 

[Polaris]

Crashed a Battlestar from the Rag Tag Fleet into Ceres- there's a new crater there now...

 

[IgnoreThisBarrel]

I guess the nature of the white spot is now known.

(That was kind of funny if you have more-or-less memorized Ceres' Wikipedia article)

 

[Izack]

Just to note, there is already a thread about disasters in Orbiter:
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=8225

I think this is more about "Argh!!" moments, with a possible extension of "I can't believe I just did that!! :facepalm:"

 

[Talon1]

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.

Actually... That's nothing! I strapped 20 SRBs to an XR2 and XR2!!! :lol: I even made a scenario addon of it! :lol:

 

[JonnyBGoode]

Not exactly a facepalm moment... but today I thought I'd just fly a nice leisurly flight in the XR2 from Rochambeau to Wideawake. I climbed to 40,000 feet and set my speed at Mach 3, and set the autopilots on. About a 3rd of the way there I realized I didn't have enough fuel to make the trip, even if I dumped the scramjet fuel into the main tank. Obviously this craft wasn't meant for much atmospheric flight!

However I bet if I set my altitude to maybe 5 or 6 times that, I probably could make the trip...

 

[adamb193]

When I made my first lunar landing in an XR-5, I had everything perfect I was going to land at Brighton Beach. I had a vertical acceleration of -.25 m/s, I see Brighton pass by in about a second, that's when I realized I was going a kilometer a second. Touchdown gears snap ship flips nose to tail crew dead. Totally forgot that there was no atmosphere to slow me down.

 

[DanM]

When I made my first lunar landing in an XR-5, I had everything perfect I was going to land at Brighton Beach. I had a vertical acceleration of -.25 m/s, I see Brighton pass by in about a second, that's when I realized I was going a kilometer a second. Touchdown gears snap ship flips nose to tail crew dead. Totally forgot that there was no atmosphere to slow me down.

I've made that mistake. More than once. :facepalm: