My orbital altitudes keep dropping at a steady rate

[SalehRam]

I took my time to setup a 99% KSC connected relay satellites, however, I have noticed shortly after starting to do other stuff that the satellites positions in orbit is getting messed up, I investigated and I found out that either AP or PE values for every satellite is steadily dropping at a rate of -0.2 per second, which led some major orbit changes on some satellites...

I am not sure what is going on, whether this is a bug or something wrong with my orbital attributes... I tried to edit the orbits for all satellites in the save file, but it is still the same...

Not sure if a screenshot will help here, so I made this short video to explain what is the problem...

Note the changes in the AP, PE in the orbit section in KER window... (put it on 720 or 1080 to see the numbers)

[xtoro]

Sometimes I also get phantom forces. Sometimes they're more dramatic to the point where a ship will actually deorbit with hours. Sometimes a restart will fix it but I've also had to relaunch because restarting didn't help. This is stock ships with nothing but MechJeb added, sas off a d rcs off. Just some bug.

[radonek]

I once left ship on 12x12 mun orbit and went away a while. Upon return I found my ship at 5km on suborbital trajectory. Maybe Kraken was in playful mood.

[imaspacestation]

I had the same problem on a munar orbiter myself. It had parts from the SCANsat mod and the 1.25m rocket cargohold from another mod I can't recall (modular rockets, I think?). Anyway, my AP would constantly change whenever the ship was under 1x time warp. Even if I would "freeze" it by going to 2x warp and then came down to 1x warp, it still would change.

I thought it could be maybe the deployed parts from SCANsat somehow applying some kind of force on the ship, but I think it's actually more likely parts wobbling within the cargo-bay, because apparently even a tiny amount of wobble can actually cause the ship to move (not just rotate).

So yeah, probably a bug due to wobble, so once again we can all thank Unity4's joints.

[Snark]

By any chance, do you use the claw for anything, ever, anywhere? (Doesn't have to be on the ship where you're observing this problem-- did you switch focus to any ship with a claw on it during your current play session, before you went to this ship?)

The claw is notorious kraken-bait, and can do all sorts of weirdness. For example, against my better judgment I tried out a ship with a claw just yesterday (thinking, in my naive optimism, "maybe it's not quite as horribly buggy as it used to be?"). As soon as I grabbed something with the claw, my ship started experiencing a phantom acceleration and wouldn't stop.

Fine, thought I, the claw is still broken, I just won't use it. I did a revert-to-VAB. Then I went to launch a totally different, brand-new ship that has no claw at all, and guess what? Phantom acceleration, the game was simply horked. I had to exit KSP and re-start the game entirely to get things back to normal.

[SalehRam]

By any chance, do you use the claw for anything, ever, anywhere? (Doesn't have to be on the ship where you're observing this problem-- did you switch focus to any ship with a claw on it during your current play session, before you went to this ship?)

The claw is notorious kraken-bait, and can do all sorts of weirdness. For example, against my better judgment I tried out a ship with a claw just yesterday (thinking, in my naive optimism, "maybe it's not quite as horribly buggy as it used to be?"). As soon as I grabbed something with the claw, my ship started experiencing a phantom acceleration and wouldn't stop.

Fine, thought I, the claw is still broken, I just won't use it. I did a revert-to-VAB. Then I went to launch a totally different, brand-new ship that has no claw at all, and guess what? Phantom acceleration, the game was simply horked. I had to exit KSP and re-start the game entirely to get things back to normal.

Well, I never used the claw before, and this is the case now, the problem is coming from a normal satellite probe, with 1 core probe, 1 engine and small tank, with remotetech 2 antenna and few solar panels... I'm not sure what is causing this.

I tried restarting and it is the same problem, and doing a re-launch is maybe what I will do, I will even launch the satellites randomly and put them in orbit using the save file...

Good to know at least I am not the first or the last one to see this strange thing.

[SanderB]

I'm having a similar issue, during ascent before circularizing my periapsis continually drops ~0.25m/s even after reaching above 70km.