!!Help Jebs stranded, and Maj Toms can't find him

[Boris Kerball]

Last night I tried for hours trying to reach Jeb stuck in some unfulfilled orbit out of fuel, just when I finally got Sep down to 3.7km he was no where to be seen, I had Target lock on to ship ( Apollo1) so today I tried but gave up thinking it must be a bud.  First mission I took when killing both Jeb and rescuer Tom off was a low orbit rescue 81000ft ap got within 1.7km,

and again no target after it was to late I noticed a sparkling object miles away,,..anyone seen this before.

regards Brian

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions.

[Aegolius13]

I'm not sure I follow the situation.  Can you see Jeb's ship from the traking center or map view?  If you go to the astronaut center, what does it say about your dudes (killed, active, MIA)?

What kind of orbit was Jeb in?  A stable orbit?  Was he so low he might have hit a mountain?

As I understand it, Jeb, being a primal force of nature, will respawn after a while, but later recruited kerbals won't.

If they're gone, you can try going back to an earlier save, or editing your save file (which is tricky).

[dire]

The ship won't show up as anything but a target reticule until you load physics at 2.3 KM. Try doing most of your meetup maneuvers from the map view, and if you are early in the campaign it is worth upgrading the Tracking Center to level 2 before you attempt anything like this -- in fact it's almost impossible if you don't.

In terms of hacking difficulty, returning a wayward  Kerbal to the Astronaut Complex is relatively really really easy but you would still be dealing with a technical file and if you aren't very good with spreadsheets and stuff it might be best to leave it alone.

If a small amount of dV will help get Jeb home (like say you're stuck in a 75x75 orbit over Kerbal) you can actually have Jeb EVA and push the rocket to slow it down; when he gets low on fuel just pop him back into the capsule and he'll refill. Be careful to leave about 1.5 units of your EVA fuel for reserve though, because sometimes EVA is a little glitchy and you might need it to get back into the pod. You will have to upgrade the Astronaut Center to level 2 to attempt this if you are in early campaign.

One thing that happens to me sometimes is if I'm closing with a docking maneuver, and I alt-tab or timewarp, when I tab back in I've flown past the target. In that case your target reticule will be somewhere to the side of or behind you; try rotating around 180 and see if you can spot it. That is sort of what it sounds like when you say you approached to 3.7km and he disappeared; he probably moved off to one side because you flew past him.

Edited September 9, 2016 by dire