How To Get a Rescued Kerbal to Board?

[mscottveach]

So, I'm new to the game. Picked up a "Rescue a Kerbal in Orbit Around the Moon" contract. Flew to where he was, got close, switched to the Kerbal to be rescued, EVA'd him to my ship where I have an empty 4-kerbal passenger module. I was able to get the to-be-rescued Kerbal to grab onto my ship but I can't for the life of me figure out how to get him to board it.

I never get the "B to board" message. (Nor, does pressing it work.) I can only grab onto the ship and let go. I've transferred my pilot out of the command capsule and into the passenger module in the hopes that the needs-to-be-rescued-Kerbal could board the capsule but that doesn't work either.

Anyone have any idea what I'm doing wrong? And/or how to get this guy in the ship?

Just to be clear: there are a lot of questions in the forum about how to take control of the Kerbal where the answer is use: use the the bracket hotkeys. Just wanted to be clear that this is not my issue. i can take control of him just fine using the brackets. I still can't get him to do anything but grab hold of the ship.

Edited June 13, 2017 by mscottveach

[tomf]

That seems odd. Just to be clear what should be happening is when you are in front of the hatch you should be being prompted to press f to grab the ladder. You can then move up and down if necessary using the arrow keys. When you are holding on in front of the hatch you should then be prompted to hit b to board.

If you EVA the existing pilot can he get straight back in before he lets go of his hatch?

[Peder]

Try this
The 4x empty capsul cannot be entered from the outside.. You need to put your kerbal in your 2-3 person capsul and then move/transfer him  into the 4x empty capsul.
Right lick the capsul and transfer crew to 4x empty capsul.

Edited June 13, 2017 by Peder

[bewing]

Welcome to the forums.

You've done 99% of the work. The last part is pretty easy.

You can only board a ship if you are right in front of a hatch. All command capsules have hatches, but very few other parts do. When you are grabbed onto the ship, there may be a ladder that leads all the way to the command capsule -- so you may just be able to use W or S to climb along the ladder all the way to the hatch. But the first thing to do is just to look over the command capsule and visually find the hatch. If you wave your mouse in front of it, a tooltip will appear that says "Crew Hatch". Once you spot it, let go again, turn on RCS again, gently fly up to the crew hatch, and then grab on again. You should suddenly be presented with the "B to Board" message.

If you still can't find the hatch, put the pilot back into the command capsule, and tell him to go EVA. He will suddenly appear hanging onto the ladder on the front of the hatch. So then you will know where it is. (And then you can Board both of them).

 

 

Edited June 13, 2017 by bewing

[Kryxal]

The 2.5m 4-crew part IS able to be boarded directly, actually ... is that the part you're using?  A screenshot of the craft might be handy.

[bewing]

You're right. It is. My memory of it was wrong.

[Weywot8]

Parts can stop working sometimes. Try the debug menu (Alt-F12), search for the "control locks - clear all" button. Maybe that will help. 

• Also works when all KSC buildings disappear/can't be accessed
• and a few other weird edge cases

Going back to KSC and using the tracking station to get back to your flight sometimes works to.