How can I un-stow an engine?

[Sharpy]

My crew is stuck in orbit because after separating the transfer stage and dropping the fairing, one of its two engines refuses to start: "Cannot activate while stowed".

Can I edit the save file or do something at all to enable it? All of the fairing pieces separated cleanly and the other engine (symmetrically) started just fine...

Edited July 8, 2015 by Sharpy

[nigelvn]

can you post a screenshot?

[Sharpy]

Don't know how that helps...

[RyanRising]

It's a bug that comes from a "feature" that causes many players much grief. The engine still thinks it's in a fairing. I don't know how to fix it.

Edited July 4, 2015 by RyanRising
removed offending apostrophe

[worir4]

This thread might help:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/118776-Master-Thread-Cannot-Activate-While-Stowed%21/page1

[nigelvn]

So I (and others) can check the situation out myself (could be me, but I like to be able to see the situation )

on your problem, I don't see problems and don't know how to fix this. Have you launched it another time and if yes did it happen again?

[oriramikad]

Can anything make a fix so the game will let you activate engines in fairings?

[Sharpy]

I gave up and restarted the flight. Still... I'd prefer not to see "cannot activate parachute while it's being stowed" on reentry.

[Reactordrone]

Try opening the service bay, that's usually the culprit when you get a "cannot x while stowed message".

[selfish_meme]

My crew is stuck in orbit because after separating the transfer stage and dropping the fairing, one of its two engines refuses to start: "Cannot activate while stowed".

Can I edit the save file or do something at all to enable it? All of the fairing pieces separated cleanly and the other engine (symmetrically) started just fine...

I saw it happen when I had the fairing and the engine in the same stage, the fairing deployed but the engine never came unstowed, they need to be in separate stages.

[GoSlash27]

I had that happen to me once. I just clicked on "activate engine" and it ran fine.

Best,

-Slashy

[windows_x_seven]

It's an annoyance, just right-click the part and click on the desired action (in this case, Activate Engine. Be careful to do it while your throttle is at 0, or else your ship might spin.)

[BasKing]

I saw it happen when I had the fairing and the engine in the same stage, the fairing deployed but the engine never came unstowed, they need to be in separate stages.

Or... I never tested it, but maybe: the commands in a stage are top-to-bottom? So if you say, in one stage: 'fire engine' followed by 'deploy fairing', it would not work, but the other way around.. would?

[Claw]

Also, if the message is due to a fairing that has since been jettisoned, you can quicksave/quickload to reset it.

If the message is due to being to close to a service bay, then you'll have to open the bay (quickload won't work).

Cheers,

~Claw