Oh my god, was not expecting that!

[Vectura]

Didn't get a screenshot, will see if I can reproduce it. I was burning on up to space, in my all-in-one Minmus resource mining rocket. All was going well, until around 600 meters up, when the launch clamps teleported into my main lifter tanks destroying most of the rocket. Sanalla and Valentina Kerman both died after spiralling back to Kerbin (no 'chutes, was a one-way mission). On the upside, I realised that there were no drills on the lander.

Possible reasons based on other's comments:

• I had various parts in various different symmetry numbers in odd places on the craft, including lots of launch clamps and struts
  
• Lots of part clipping
  
• A part disappeared when in the VAB, and I could still select it in mid air, but it was invisible
  

Edited May 5, 2015 by Vectura

[Temeter]

Something similar happened to my first nuclear mothership. So I was in space after the ascent, preparing for my final orbital burn, turned the camera... And found my launch clamps following in formation around 200m behind my ship.

Creepy things.

[maceemiller]

Lol! At least there was an upide with the forgotten drills! Makes a crash bearable

[sal_vager]

This has come up before and may be a new bug, can you make it happen again?

[Temeter]

I would bet that it's connecting to the symmetry bugs. You know, the weird stuff that happens if you connect a part with multiple symmetry, which has other parts connected to it including struts.

Apparently breaks hirarchy or so and causes nullreferenceexceptions. Cause of the greyed out ghosts parts you can't remove from a craft, or duplicated parts, or VAB buttons not working anymore, or a million other things this game is plagued since an eternity.

100% reproducable and very, very old. Made a thread in the support forum, but nobody answered. :/

Edited May 5, 2015 by Temeter

[Roflcopterkklol]

This has come up before and may be a new bug, can you make it happen again?

Ronin pawn has a video that shows it

[Clouds]

This just happened to me last night. Sadly I didn't think to save the .log for that flight.

I was trying for an entry to the 30s-height-challenge, and had noticed in a few of my mission reports that the launch supports were "exploding due to overheating"...and then one time, I actually saw them appear up near my craft (and then rapidly shot away, as I was going >2000m/s at the time ).

The craft was relatively straightforward, with radial decouplers from a core to its boosters, then radial decouplers on the boosters with extra boosters. The launch clamps were not affixed to the 2nd layer of boosters, but rather to their decouplers.

I can't truly say I'm unmodded, as I have the LaunchHeight and PlanetShine mods installed.