Engine "cannot activate while stowed"

[Raptor98k]

My poor Jeb is stuck on the Mun now because of this. Good thing I decided to check the "allow quicksave" button when starting a hard career mode. I cannot figure out any way to get his engine started on the return stage. Even when the stage is completely separated from the lander, the engine cannot be activated through staging or right-click menu. The engine was an LV-909 with FL-T200 feeding it. I used a standard decoupler below, with a service bay full of science gear below the decoupler.

As others have stated, I've had this issue with a radial parachute as well, but luckily it only affected one of them, and the other was enough to get me down.

[Superluminaut]

Still not fixed.

:/

[GusTurbo]

Still not fixed.

:/

Welp. I guess we gave to live with this for 2+ months now.

[ShadowZone]

They will fix it eventually

but for now, neither 1.0.1 nor 1.0.2 include a fix for this.

[Claw]

I tried this on smaller sized engines and it seems to be working now. Do you guys have a downloadable .craft that still does it?

Cheers,

~Claw

[Superluminaut]

I tried this on smaller sized engines and it seems to be working now. Do you guys have a downloadable .craft that still does it?

Cheers,

~Claw

build this

MK1 pod

FL-T100

spark

TR-2v

Ae-FF1

close the fairing to the tank

staging can be in any order, it all fails

launch

it seems to work the first time, if you revert to vab and launch again it breaks

Edited May 2, 2015 by Superluminaut

[ShadowZone]

I tried this on smaller sized engines and it seems to be working now. Do you guys have a downloadable .craft that still does it?

Cheers,

~Claw

I built a test rig for that purpose:

http://www./download/4e30ks1b4e2u0mq/tmp.craft

as you can see in the album (you have to open the pics to read the error message in the top left corner) every decoupled element is "stowed", even after I deploy the fairing of the parent unit.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Veskenapper]

I just built a spaceplane with a bunch of little drones inside the cargo bay, and am having a similar problem - but their engines, oddly, work! It's the solar panels that refuse to deploy because they're supposedly stowed.

Things I tried:

- Placing drones on docking nodes attached to a beam inside the bay (original plan). Decoupled the nodes, solar panels wouldn't deploy. Ion thrusters still worked, though.

- Placing drones on decouplers attached to structural plates on a beam inside the bay - same result as above

- Placing drones on decouplers as above, then attaching the beam to an Infernal Robotics rotatron. This way I can violently eject the drones from the bay without having to spin the mothership to get some distance - but their solar panels still think they're stowed.

Edit: I missed the fact that there was a master thread for this bug, for posterity's sake: Trying to reproduce this to make a .craft-file to submit somehow... fixed the issue, even with the older craft already in orbit.

Edited May 4, 2015 by Veskenapper

[funk]

I've same issues with parts already mentioned and a stucked upper stage in LKO. Is there a workaround for this? Especially With nuFAR interstage fairings are necessary.

[drewcassidy]

Perhaps reloading the craft fixed the issue? have you tried going to the space center and back after releasing the probes?

[John FX]

Perhaps reloading the craft fixed the issue? have you tried going to the space center and back after releasing the probes?

I found that F5->F9 seems to reset the engine. Whilst not ideal, it is a sort of workaround.

I would really like to just remove the check for whether items are stowed myself. If that comes out as a minimod I'll be downloading it with gusto.

[GusTurbo]

I found that F5->F9 seems to reset the engine. Whilst not ideal, it is a sort of workaround.

I would really like to just remove the check for whether items are stowed myself. If that comes out as a minimod I'll be downloading it with gusto.

I can't think of any instance where this "feature" makes sense. They should just remove the code that checks if engines are stowed.

[Guest]

I've had this issue with planes that don't have any fairing.

[Azimech]

I feel it's very irritating. Squad, please give us control back over these things.

This is with nuFAR, the voxel thingy decided the engines are behind a fairing.

[RSwordsman]

Putting in a bump for this. Is there any solution beyond the f5-f9 workaround? It has completely put me off KSP for at least a week. >.<

[Superfluous J]

You didn't play KSP for a week because a 5-second workaround to a minor bug is your only option?

How have you stomached the game up until now?

[RSwordsman]

You didn't play KSP for a week because a 5-second workaround to a minor bug is your only option?

How have you stomached the game up until now?

Because more than once I didn't remember quicksave was a thing before the bug struck (I usually just use reverts or accept problems as they come if it's not available, never had this problem until recently) and occasionally even using the f9 tactic didn't fix it. I didn't feel like mucking with the same tired mission I'd been trying to do for a week so let it sit for awhile.

Technical difficulties are welcomed because that's an engineering challenge. "Your engines don't work because screw you" doesn't endear me the same way.

[HafCoJoe]

I've gotten this as a problem when building fairings around an engine for aesthetics. Is there a way to edit the config file to fix this?

[Angorek]

Here is the fix ! https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/999/Stock%20Fairings%20BugFIX%20

[John FX]

Here is the fix ! https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/999/Stock%20Fairings%20BugFIX%20

Any chance you could put it on CKAN?

still downloading now of course...

[Superfluous J]

Here is the fix ! https://kerbalstuff.com/mod/999/Stock%20Fairings%20BugFIX%20

Any chance you could put it on CKAN?

I'm no expert but I thought everything on KerbalStuff ended up on CKAN automatically.

[SmallFatFetus]

I'm no expert but I thought everything on KerbalStuff ended up on CKAN automatically.

Only if the owner sets it to. For example, (shameless advetising ) if you click the kerbalstuff link on my mod a little CKAN icon shows up right by the big button.

[Angorek]

I`m not putting it into CKAN. It looks like I deleted one bug, but created another. Well engines work, but fairings do not reduce drag..

[tossha]

I've found a solution that seems to work for me. I had this problem with cargo bay from this mod, not with fairings, but it should still work with them as well.

1. Find your part in GameData, open its *.cfg file.
   
2. Find the MODULE wich has "name = ModuleCargoBay" (probably the first line). It should be there.
   
3. Change its "lookupRadius" to 0.
   
4. Save the file and restart the game if it's running.
   

Basically KSP has this radius to look for "stowed" parts, and we're just setting it to 0.

Note that this will affect all of your vehicles (wich have this part) in all of your save files in current installation of KSP.

This solution does not seem to affect aerodynamics, but I'm not sure about that. Let me know if yor tests show otherwise.

[NoSyMe]

I had this problem while using the Procedural Fairings Mod.

In my case the problem was that the tip of a fuselage fairing from a lower stage was too high and poked through the decoupler, fairing base and engine of a higher stage.

I fixed it by lowering the tip of the lower fairing so that it didn't intersect with the engine anymore (Duh!).

Hope this helps