Mission to Duna destroying the universe?!

[Christoph Lipka]

A while ago I've sent two unmanned missions to Duna. While all seems well from afar, one of the missions seems to suffer from some mysterious bit rot (maybe I shouldn't have used nuclear engines?), and switching from Tracking to that mission will scramble reality: As a first indication that something's wrong, there will be no sign of the spacecraft, the flight indicators will fail to display properly (e.g. altitude and thrust displays will be blank), the map view will show nothing at all, and when I switch back to the space center... even that is gone! Where once was the KSC, now there's only the vast emptiness of space! Leaving me with no other option than to exit the game (entirely! going back to the main menu will not suffice), restart, and revert to my last savegame.

Vogons? Darth Vader's Death Star? What on Kerbin is going on?

And most important of all: How can I salvage my Duna mission?

[Kerbalstar]

I would need screenshots to be sure but I think it's the"Hell Kraken" as they put it.

[Christoph Lipka]

It does look similar to the "Hell Kraken" indeed, but instead of identical numbers in the altitude indicator there's just a row of blanks. Also, the craft in question is unmanned (or is that "unkerballed"?), so no Kerbal on EVA involved, and no celestial body anywhere near that anything could smash into.

Also, the Debug Log (didn't know it existed until now) shows "Look rotation viewing vector is zero" (emphasis added) followed by error "Invalid parameter because it was infinity or nan.", rather than just "Look viewing vector is zero".

I'd attach a screenshot, but I'm not allowed to.

[Zhetaan]

What you describe is definitely the 1.0.x variant of the Hell Kraken.  I don't know whether it has its own name or is actually connected to the original Hell Kraken other than in its appearance, but that's not important.  Let me ask you this:  did you let your probes get to Duna and only get back to them after they'd arrived?  More specifically, did you let your probe cross a sphere-of-influence boundary while unfocused--meaning, did you let your probe either leave Kerbin or approach Duna while you were watching in the Tracking Station, busy at the Space Center, flying something else, or doing anything anywhere else such that you were not in Flight Mode for the ship crossing the SOI boundary while it was crossing?

An unobserved SOI crossing is the most reliable way I know of to get this Kraken to strike.  The trick to avoid it is to warp to the boundary, then focus on your craft during the crossing.  In any case, you need to revert to an earlier save.  If you don't have an earlier save, then you might be able to get results with some creative persistence editing, but I'm not certain--I've long been in the habit of quicksaving before I go anywhere near an SOI boundary.  If you don't have an early-enough save, you may have to scrap and restart the mission.  If it really doesn't work out for you, you may have to scrap the whole save.

Needless to say, I hope it works out for you.

[Christoph Lipka]

IIRC the craft may indeed have left the SOI of Kerbin unattended; they haven't yet reached the Duna SOI though.

Interestingly enough, now that some time has elapsed and the probes are making progress, the symptom seems to have shifted from one of the Duna missions to the other. Maybe there's a "Kraken zone" somewhere on the way from Kerbin to Duna?

Equally interesting, it seems that switching from Tracking to the good Duna mission first, and then switching over to the troubled Duna mission in map view, will get me there without this glitch happening.

[Zhetaan]

In that case, don't poke it and call it a win.

And maybe make a new quicksave anyway, in case it hasn't really gone away.

[Christoph Lipka]

Don't worry -- I've been quicksaving like hell recently

[gustks]

I have the same problem! Take a look at he pictures below.

picture of my problem picture of my problem 2

output log rar

I have launched many probe missions to orbit the sun, Duna, Eve. I`ve put them in flight to theirs targets, used Kerbal Alarm Clock to alert me when maneuver is approaching. While they were in transfer to theirs respective targets, I continued to play, doing short duration missions, building space stations, etc. Many weeks or months (game time) later i loaded one craft, and the problem appeared. All of them are in Sun SOI. Seems very similar to Zhetaan description. 

I have CKAN with many mods, running KSP 1.1.3 64 bits. Everything is up to date.