Kerbals = "Unknown Mystery Parts"??

[MaxwellsDemon]

I'm dealing with an unexpected situation...  I had two rovers, each with two Kerbals in EAS-1 seats, on an extended EVA west of KSC.  I saved, and now when I try to resume with either one of them, the rover loads in time to see both Kerbals slowly sinking through their seats and through the Rovemax core below, and then they fall on the ground.  Weirder still, if I right-click on them, I get a right-click menu that calls them "Unknown Mystery Part", as opposed to Viranna or Enbus Kerman...  And then if I return to the space center screen, I get a message saying that the rover had an unknown part that was not loaded, so the rover itself has failed to load.    

Has anyone seen anything like this?

[Benoit Hage]

It seems like a corrupted save file. Does this still happens if you revert back to a previous save game? Try to load the same craft on Kerbin with the same situation, then check your save file to spot any difference. It might work.

[MaxwellsDemon]

I gave that a try.   No joy.   

I'm wondering if having put the Kerbals outside via the "Walkabout" mod rather than EVA had anything to do with it.  Planning to test that this weekend.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Nope, it's not Walkabout; I uninstalled that and it happened again.   Now, I'm wondering if it happens when you leave a Kerbal in an EAS-1 Command Seat too long.

[MaxwellsDemon]

Happened again... now, I'm wondering if this could be the cause:

 

1.  Deploy rover on KSC landing runway.

2.  Move rover off runway.

3.  Deploy simple capsule on runway to dispatch rover crew.

4.  Load rover crew into rover and send them off on their merry way.

 

At this point, if I cleared the runway, perhaps that's what's 'orphaning' the Kerbonauts... perhaps the link to the capsule they're actually EVA from has been broken?   Testing this by running an extended rover EVA without clearing the runway...

[MaxwellsDemon]

Update:  I had a couple of Kerbals on an extended rover mission without recovering their capsule without them.  Everything appeared to go smoothly, which supports (though still doesn't conclusively prove) the hypothesis that the loss of their "parent" capsule was the issue.