Ron Devu

It happened again, and in very similar circumstances. The scenario: A ship is headed for a bad landing in the mountains with two kerbals aboard, a well qualified pilot and a 0-star scientist. The pilot exits the (one-man) capsule and the scientist transfers to the capsule from the Mark I crew cabin. The scientist EVAs and sure enough has no parachute so he re-boards and decides to ride it in. Meanwhile the pilot has a long parachute glide ahead of him. The pilot has several thousand meters of altitude against about 500 left for the ship. The ship lands well enough to allow a quick ship recovery. That sends you to the space center, where you discover the pilot is neither available, nor dead, nor assigned nor missing. He does not appear in the tracking station listing and he's not on the VAB crew list. He has completely vanished. He was last seen 5.3 km from his ship with about 3000m altitude in hand, on a course free of obstacles and moving at a nominal 30 m/s. After about 5 minutes, during which I was bringing down some debris from orbit, the pilot appeared on the KIA list. Maybe he will resurrect after 2 hours, the current game setting. We shall see... this time I'm going to leave the persistent file alone and see what happens. ..... Ok I took a ship out and warped ahead about 80 days..... Jeb is still KIA.

Well, I was hoping for "copy with permission" not "steal the code"! Anyhow one day an attachment and inventory system will have to be part of the core game. I can't see it as anything but inevitable. The idea is just too much fun to ignore. When that happens, it will be time for you to buy that island near Tahiti you've always wanted.

Yeah, me too. I really thought I had it cornered there. I'm surprised to find that VAB-sourced vessels do explode without warning. I saw Scott Manley lose a rover that way, but it was built entirely of physics-less parts and vibrated wildly for a good 30 seconds before she blew. Quite different. So it's not possible to simply copy the positioning strategy the main game uses? KIS/KAS is such a major mod, you'd think Squad would be willing to quietly share some advice and maybe even provide some code.

"This problem" refers to things on the ground spontaneously exploding. A VAB created vessel does not do this. For info on what a vessel is, i can only refer you to this page : https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/API:Vessel I assume the game keeps a list of active vessels at all times and does frequent collision checking on them. I suspect that parts taken from inventory and placed via KIS/KAS are not being entered on the vessel list mentioned in the link, and thus do not benefit from all utilities that ensure vessels do not do things like suddenly shoot up in the air and explode. If they are, in fact, being created as vessels, then surely it must be the case that KIS/KAS is not handling collision detection the same way the main KSP program does. Mind you these are all just suspicions and beliefs, not hard facts, and I am certainly not a programming expert.

Ok here's my solution. Kick it around. I believe that: 1,. No vessel created in the VAB has this problem. 2. No debris created by the crash of a VAB-created vessel has this problem. 3. Thus, every piece of debris from a VAB-created ship inherits vessel status from it's parent ship when the ship breaks up. 4. No part in KIS inventory has vessel status. 5. Having vessel status includes regular application of some kind of clipping correction algorithm. 6. Thus, when parts are attached to a ship they become part of a vessel and benefit from the anti-clipping algorithm. 7. The solution to the problem is to ensure that every part taken from inventory and placed using engineer tools is assigned vessel status, if it would not otherwise inherit vessel status. As a possibly irrelevant side note: 8. All Kerbals have vessel status.

I have a problem with parts on the ground. I often place a part on the ground only to have it detonate a few seconds later. This occurs whether or not the part is actually attached to the ground. Each time I leave an area and return to it half or more of the parts on the ground or attached to it are gone. Sometimes I hear the explosions as I arrive. This glitch has destroyed 100% of the grounded parts I have on Duna and everything attached to them. It does not occur when the parts are attached to a ship. Parts stored onboard ships are safe. Is this common? Is there a known fix? It's a real show stopper for me.

Really nicely argued, but there is problem with this approach. A pendulum can be a rigid object. A bar of steel suspended by a bearing in the upper end will oscillate just like a cable pendulum I like the centre-of-mass argument though. If the engine thrust is acting through the centre of mass, it will impart no rotation nor will it apply any restorative forces, so the rocket is indeed free to rotate around the centre of mass, and will if some force, say aerodynamic drag, is applied. Thanks for the reply, it did a lot to clarify my thinking..This approach also makes gravity turns easier to understand.

Today I sent a crew home from Duna. They have been exploring and sciencing the crap out of that poor planet. I brought the two exploration teams back to main base, shuffled crews so the low experience pair could level up, and sent them off carrying all the data I had collected for several days. Then back to Duna aboard an upgraded lander that has a largish parts container. I finally have winches, fuel transfer stations and pylons at Duna. While fiddling about with my new toys I put my one and only fuel transfer station on the ground. It sat there quietly for a couple of seconds then leapt into the air and detonated. Dang. That required another mission to send a tiny probe that parachuted in a replacement. The probe landed about 13 km out from base. I switched to base and.... BOOM. I had two pylons I had been using as storage points for parts. They were anchored to the ground and had numerous bits on them. My arrival in the area seems to have been the signal for them to leap in the air and detonate, destroying themselves and all the parts attached to them. The two CBs I was using for storage were found hovering ominously about three feet in the air, with attached parts including a container full of stuff. So I welded them back to the ground. Valentina drew the short straw and got the job of retrieving the replacement fuel transfer gizmo. I gave her infinite fuel and she jet packed it to the site, where she could not remove the needed bit because she isn't an engineer. So I had to send Bill out there too. He grabbed the precious part, and then disassembled the probe for retrieval. Unfortunately a Kerbal carrying an air wrench and a fuel transfer thingy is so heavy his jet pack can't get him in the air, so he began a two hour march back to base.But not before half the parts of the probe, now scattered about, suddenly leapt into the air and detonated. They seem to do that at every opportunity. As he entered the base area a loud explosion shook the dry Duna air. An entire container of parts, in a mount, attached to a CB-1 which was in turn anchored to the ground, had (guess what) leapt into the air and detonated. The other concrete anchors were floating in the air again. I'm not quite sure what to do. Parts are spontaneously exploding so frequently that I can't ship up replacements fast enough to keep up with carnage. Any part placed with KIS/KAS seems likely to erupt in flames at any time without even being touched. I am seriously considering uninstalling the mods.

I may be losing my mind, but I could swear there is a "man in the moon" face on Ike that appears under grazing illumination from the right, as seen from Duna. And it bears a strange resemblance to Miss Piggy. Piiiiiigs In Spaaaaace!

And then a century later NASA put a rover or two on Mars using a sky crane that had the same configuration.... rockets on top, all the weight at the bottom Does this mean NASA is immune to pendulum fallacy?

OK the scenario is: You have placed a satellite in orbit around Duna consisting of the following: 1 basic okto probe core 2 HG-55 antennas 2 thermometers 1 Oscar-B fuel tank, full 1 Ant engine 2 OX-STAT photovoltaic panels You also have available a number of landers on the surface of Duna, including one that has a wide selection of parts In inventory. You have a good engineer and KIS/KAS installed Now this satellite is, of course, perfectly useless as a relay satellite and no one in his right mind would build one. (coff coff) let alone go to all the trouble of getting it to orbit around Duna, then spend 2 days trying to figure out why it won't relay anything. Well, almost no one. Anyhow, the challenge is to come up with a use for the damn thing. Best answer gets a pat on the back, an uptick on their post and a mantra suitable for recitation in a hard vacuum.

You know Bewing, sometimes I think this game only exists to convince me I don't belong in the gene pool.

I have a relay sat around Duna that is behaving oddly. It shows a 69% signal to Kerbin and it shows green lines down to the surface where I have several landed craft. When I shift focus to anything on the surface, the craft show no connection and cannot transmit data home. Other relays around the Mun and Minmus seems to be functioning normally. I'm guessing my Duna relay, which has a pair of HG-55 dishes, has some kind of hidden power requirement or something. The power source on the relay is a pair of the smallest solar panels. The battery on the OKTO is full and enabled, but only holds 10 charge units. My Kerbin station is fully upgraded. It's been 2 days now and I haven't cracked this nut. Any suggestions? Oh wait maybe the HG-55 isn't a relay. I better check that.Doh. Gah! I just checked and found that even though it looks like a dish, the HG-55 blurb does not mention any relay capabilities. Well I hope this has some entertainment value for you all!

I am starting to think that it is a general principle in KSP that bigger rockets do not go farther, they just lift more, and in order to go farther you don't need larger rockets so much as better designed, more efficient ones. What's your opinion on this ?

What would happen if I planted explosives on the offending parts? How much damage would you expect?

I looked at the solution but it doesn't apply to my situation. He starts with one port offering an undick option that doesn't work, while neither of my ports offers the undock option. Worse yet, the docked assembly has two command modules, one of which is on a lander that was originally launched upside down on its booster and was merged into the build in the VAB. So there were all kinds of fiddles done to convince the VAB to allow this. Basically this deck o cards has been well and truly shuffled. Welp, looks like my station just acquired some permanent tankage. p.s I found the validation feature on Steam that you mentioned. First time it found four files it didn't like, next time it found two. No effect on docking tho. But thanks for a very useful suggestion. It also seems that KSP dislikes running for days at a time. My keyboard and mouse were cutting out, then burn calculations went bad and I was estimating burns by eye. I guess the game needs a restart every day or two!

I'm building a small station at Minmus. On my last launch the stack was engines, fuel, a three man capsule, a pair of linked Clampotron Jrs and a 4 man habitat, an inverted decoupler and a nose cone. The intent was to deliver fuel and the habitat module. Docking was routine. When it came time to leave, one of the ports was offering the undock option and I clicked it. The ships remained docked. The option to undock was no longer present on either port I brought up an engineer but he can't fix the parts or remove them. I suspect both ports think they are attached to the 3 man capsule. After the failed undocking I noticed certain kinds of spacecraft drift caused by Kerbal helmets clipping into parts were also causing this port linkage to rotate as if it were some kind of bearing. I had the entire crew on EVA simultaneously trying to grab the parts but alas I was one Kerbal short of the required six. I have verified that all the tanks engines and command capsules have autostrut disabled. Identical docking ports on the opposite end of the habitat module are working normally. I'm running version 1.7.3.2594 64 bit with KIS/KAS, no other mods. Interesting fact: when an engineer tries to grab either of the docked ports, the game reports the weight as over 5 tons. Other identical docking ports are easily grabbed.

I'm building a small station at Minmus. On my last launch the stack was engines, fuel, a three man capsule, a pair of linked Clampotron Jrs and a 4 man habitat, an inverted decoupler and a nose cone. The intent was to deliver fuel and the habitat module. Docking was routine. When it came time to leave, one of the ports was offering the undock option and I clicked it. The ships remained docked. The option to undock was no longer present on either port I brought up an engineer but he can't fix the parts or remove them. I suspect both ports think they are attached to the 3 man capsule. After the failed undocking I noticed certain kinds of spacecraft drift caused by Kerbal helmets clipping into parts were also causing this port linkage to rotate as if it were some kind of bearing. I had the entire crew on EVA simultaneously trying to grab the parts but alas I was one Kerbal short of the required six. I have verified that all the tanks engines and command capsules have autostrut disabled. Identical docking ports on the opposite end of the habitat module are working normally. I'm running version 1.7.3.2594 64 bit with KIS/KAS, no other mods. Interesting fact: when an engineer tries to grab either of the docked ports, the game reports the weight as over 5 tons. Other identical docking ports are easily grabbed. Any ideas?

Okay, so today I get in the game, right click on the runway and lo and behold I get the option to upgrade it. Swear to God I tried both buttons yesterday and nothing happened on left click.. Anyhoo, everything seems to be normal now with the single runway upgrade And the plane flies like a dream, I'm into adjusting the controls now. I figured out how to make a stock set of flaps and am testing those too. You should see her take off. Set full power and SAS, release the brakes, then hands off and she gently rises into the air about halfway down the runway. Landings are similar.Top speed 350 knots, ceiling seems a bit low at around 8000m but then it has a lot of wing and might be a bit draggy. It will pull a 180 turn in two or three seconds, if you push it.:) I think of it as a delta winged Lear jet. I put two service bays in to get the length just so. One has a probodobo for optional remote flight and the other has the science suite..

Additional info: if I rotate the plane INSIDE the hanger so it is in the position of a 90 degree banked turn, it will launch. However it then lands on a wingtip and flops over onto its back. A sad sight indeed.

The only mod is KIS/KAS . In KSC view, if I click on the runway, nothing happens. Visual inspection shows a beige, stony surface, Clicking on the Hangar shows full upgrade, I do not know what a steam validation is. Correction: if I click on the runway, a window opens allowing selection and launch of ships. It does not mention the level of the runway.

I built quite a small ordinary aircraft, but the game has become confused about it's dimensions. The game refuses to launch because it thinks the plane is too big and then puts up the following table; UNABLE TO LAUNCH CRAFT IS TOO LARGE FOR RUNWAY! Length 3.94 m [max 20] Span 16.2 m [<<2>] Height 12.8 m [max 15.2] In fact the plane is 3.94 m tall, has a wingspan of 16.2 m and a a length of 12.8m. The runway is fully upgraded. Any ideas? I reloaded but no dice.

p.p.s. I just checked Bob, Bill and Jeb.. On EVA only Jeb has a visible parachute and Jeb does have the option to deploy it. None of these guys has a star, but Jeb had one before he died.

This is actually the second time I've had a KIA in a game set up to MIA then resurrect. I have never had a failure to respawn an MIA, although the clock on the MIA timer seems to only run down while there are active missions in space. Val's parachute did open. She augured in at high speed because she was executing spirals and dives to lose altitude as rapidly as possible. She basically misjudged her altitude. Your explanation of stars and parachutes fits perfectly with the facts. I lost Bob (scientist) and Bill (engineer) due to lack of parachutes. Both were passengers trying to collect their first star. Bill died on the third rescue mission which I didn't mention. I did not discover his lack of a parachute until he was in free fall. The version I am running is up to date, stock KSP without the two expansions. 1.7.2.2556, I believe. So that leaves only one or two cases worth checking. If a non-pilot is in the pilot's seat, and is in sole possession of the craft, a qualified pilot having left the craft and died, will the non pilot KIA instead of MIA if the craft crashes? If a pilot leaves a single-seat craft, his parachute opens and he then hits the ground at high speed, will he erroneously show as KIA instead of MIA? This one is what I recall happened to Jeb and might be easier to check. p.s. I had assumed that every Kerbal could parachute. The only way I would have discovered this was false, aside from losing crew members, would be to go look up a problem I did not know existed!

A strange resolution... on re opening the persistent file I found Bob is now listed as Dead. I editted that then closed and reopened the game. That didn't work, still dead. Then I thought maybe the game does some tidy up when closing, looking into the astronaut centre and seeing Bob listed as KIA and then saving the new persistent in accord with that. So I exitted to the game selection menu screen, THEN editted the persist file. That worked. Bob lives again. Thanks for the help.:) BTW when it changed the persist file to read "Dead" the game also gave Bob a new parachute. So it seems that scientists do get parachutes after all. Probably what happened was Bob attempted to deploy his chute while still clinging to the ship. This is very bad because I think the chute deployed then disappeared. The moral of the story is, jump first, give it second to clear the ship, THEN deploy your chute. You only have 1 chance to get this right.