TR-18A Decoupler explodes "due to overheating" on WARP

[Roninpawn]

Seeing a lot of this in the forums with the 1.04. Irrational part explosions. I have a super simple craft. Chute->Pod->Science->Decoupler->Fuel->Engine. The decoupler explodes "due to overheating" (quoth F3) on warp. Primarily physics warp, but I have footage of it blowing when engaging warp on rails... (I think, anyway - still have to review the video tape.)

Just throwing my bug report on the pile. Guessing we'll see 1.05 by tomorrow with all the reports of this in the forums.

[SLinkY]

I've just discovered the same issue you're having and I've only seen it happen since 1.04 as well.

My"explosion by overheating" occurs when I exit rail warp near Mun, this is after an transfer burn from Kerbin. Warping at any time before that works normally. I've got a quicksave just after the transfer burn and it happens to the same part at the same place every time.

The other time it happens is during Kerbin ascent, I'd stage some radial boosters way down at the bottom of my ship and the same rover wheel near the top of my ship always explodes due to some phantom overheating. I eventually got the thing into orbit after about 2 hours and 20 attempts... and some luck I guess.

I've tried with and without joint reinforcement since with the Mun warp explosion, the ship shakes quite violently before the part explodes, but alas, no difference.

This is really frustrating since it's preventing me from completing a biggish contract and so I'm stuck in career mode for now :\ (I suppose I'll just turn part damage off until it's time to land, but that makes me feel like a dirty .....)

Edited June 27, 2015 by SLinkY

[SLinkY]

Okay, so I turned on "ignore max temps" and this is what happens. Infinite heat.

[Roninpawn]

I've just discovered the same issue you're having and I've only seen it happen since 1.04 as well.

My"explosion by overheating" occurs when I exit rail warp near Mun, this is after an transfer burn from Kerbin. Warping at any time before that works normally. I've got a quicksave just after the transfer burn and it happens to the same part at the same place every time.

The other time it happens is during Kerbin ascent, I'd stage some radial boosters way down at the bottom of my ship and the same rover wheel near the top of my ship always explodes due to some phantom overheating. I eventually got the thing into orbit after about 2 hours and 20 attempts... and some luck I guess.

I've tried with and without joint reinforcement since with the Mun warp explosion, the ship shakes quite violently before the part explodes, but alas, no difference.

This is really frustrating since it's preventing me from completing a biggish contract and so I'm stuck in career mode for now :\ (I suppose I'll just turn part damage off until it's time to land, but that makes me feel like a dirty .....)

Wow! You described it exactly. I was recording for YouTube during this issue and I've just gotten around to editing the footage and can now confirm. My scenario is exactly the same. Exiting on-rails warp as I approached my Munar periapsis, after orbit, caused the decoupler to overheat and explode without cause. I reverted and carried on without issue until I tried to return to Kerbin which, due to fuel shortage, I was doing with some trepidatious aero-braking, starting at 52km or so. When I tried to physics warp through atmo, 1 in 5 times the decoupler would overheat and blow again, meaning I had to sit there in real time and wait for the ship to exit atmo before I could safe-ish-ly warp again.

[SLinkY]

Wow! You described it exactly. I was recording for YouTube during this issue and I've just gotten around to editing the footage and can now confirm. My scenario is exactly the same. Exiting on-rails warp as I approached my Munar periapsis, after orbit, caused the decoupler to overheat and explode without cause. I reverted and carried on without issue until I tried to return to Kerbin which, due to fuel shortage, I was doing with some trepidatious aero-braking, starting at 52km or so. When I tried to physics warp through atmo, 1 in 5 times the decoupler would overheat and blow again, meaning I had to sit there in real time and wait for the ship to exit atmo before I could safe-ish-ly warp again.

I tried letting things run in real time, but yea, that's not really a solution at all. The problem isn't even exclusively caused by warping either, it manifests during staging as well, as I mentioned. I've never had it during physics warp though, but interestingly it always originates from the same part. For you it's the stack decoupler, for me it's the cubic strut thingy.

What I did to work around it is to ignore max temps, do your mission, what ever it is, with a ship that's infinitely hot (like in the gif above. Another thing I've noticed is that infinitely hot solar panels don't generate any power). In my case this was a Mun base, four modules all landing separately (two of the modules are in the gif), joining together, then I went and edited the save file to bring the temps back to within a reasonable range. For me this meant changing "temp" and "tempExt" of the overheated parts from "Infinity" to "103" , which seems to be the ambient temp on the surface of the Mun. I can now warp on the surface and exit warp without any issues.

Unless someone has a better way, this is what I'll be doing until it gets patched.

*Edit: I should mention that I did a clean install and only reinstalled utility mods, i.e. Kerbal Engineer, docking port alignment, etc

Edited June 28, 2015 by SLinkY

[Roninpawn]

And if SLinkY's gif wasn't proof enough of the bug...

[TheOrqwithVagrant]

I'm being hit by this too and with really bad timing. I have my Kerbals first interplanetary craft just leaving orbit of Minmus to meet up with the crew transfer/return ferry. A small lander 'caught up' launching from the surface of Minmus, and when it reached the main craft and docked, Infinite Heat appears to have streamed from the clampotron jr into the whole vessel, turning the expedition into an explodition. I've had minor things blow up before, but this is aggrevating - I've spent days of gaming time prepping this mission.

The one item of data that I feel I might add is that once I reloaded, set 'ignore max temp', and docked, it was VERY clear that the 'source' of the heating was the point of docking - the heat quite visibly 'spread out' from there. Perhaps a clue for the bughunters...

Imgur album here:

http://imgur.com/a/ssr0S

[Targa]

Having the same issue with TT-38K Decouplers. In my case, warp has nothing to do with it. In normal time, I just took off from the Mun, and during ascent one of the 4 TT-38K's I have attached to my ship instantly went to max temp and exploded for no reason. I doubt it has anything to do with one of the 5 mods I'm using (MechJeb, Chatterer, Toolbar, Alternate Resource Panel, and Enhanced NavBall).

Went back and did some testing, since I had quicksaved there. They only overheat/explode randomly for me. Some attempts only one will explode. Other attempts 3 out of 4 will explode. On several attempts none exploded. Very odd, random bug.

Edited July 9, 2015 by Targa

[Roninpawn]

I've just experienced it on the pad, a few seconds after physics kicks in. Had to relaunch three times, finally got one that didn't blow up on the pad; get sub-orbital; phys warp to Ap... boom. Consarnit' decouplers. Tell you what though, you don't even need the Dang It! mod with this. One of these decoupler's "overheated" while I was burning for orbit and detached my pod from the rocket. I was still steering with the SAS, and being pinned to the unthrottlable engine. Had to ride it like a cowboy, spin it retrograde, then prograde, then retrograde... but not too retrograde! In order to burn out the fuel while leaving the pod on a descent that it could survive through re-entry! Very fun.

That said, I'm never going to start a Hard mode without revert enabled in KSP from here on out. For no man knows when the Krakken will call.

[khadgarion]

This is kind of ridiculous.... Happens to me too. It's hard to complete a mission when half your craft blows off... Here's what's happening. The radiator doesn't help...

EDIT: It seems to be random. It can happen under warp. It can happen in real time. Warping can make the heat dissipate. The heat dissipates on its own when not warping. I've had it happen when in Kerbin orbit, Munar orbit, and Minmus orbit. Really hard to reproduce because it does seem to be random.

Edited July 26, 2015 by khadgarion
added more info

[Triarius]

I'm having similar problems in 1.0.4. Random parts exploding suddenly for no reason. The radial decouplers seem especially prone, but I have also noticed other items doing it. I built a space probe and put it on the launch pad to test unfurling of radiators and solar panels, but the cubic octagonal struts I used to put it together start heating on the launch pad. Even sitting stationary on the launch pad, in the dark, with no engines running, with radiators unfurled. Heat shields also seem to do nothing for these issues.

[Roninpawn]

The information I've been gleaning suggests that it has to do with low mass parts. Maybe even low surface area parts. It seems to strike small things -- I'm guessing that don't dissipate heat efficiently under the current system where skin heating is distinct from radiant heat. I've also seen it put forward that it may be linked to missed physics calculations. When the game is struggling and it fudges the numbers together in order to try to make up for missed ticks... That would help explain how random and difficult to reproduce this bug is.

Has anyone tried reverting to before the overheat then restarting KSP and trying to continue? I wish I had when I last saw the issue, because once you're getting the problem at a certain point its really consistent across quickloads. But I'll bet that if KSP shuts down, releases its resources, and gets a chance to breathe, it won't repeat the error even from the same quickload. I'd like to see that tested anyway, or hear from someone who has.

[Captain Sierra]

The information I've been gleaning suggests that it has to do with low mass parts.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head here. There is a known issue with super-low mass parts (only found in mods) that's able to trigger this bug more reliably. I believe a part with a mass below 0.00000001 (thats 7 zeros and yes it matters) can trigger this bug with an almost 100% reliability. Symptomatically the two are identical. Code-wise, its possible the two are unrelated. Its unclear right now whether or not the various methods of triggering runaway overheating are actually triggering the same code.

[PhilTact]

Is there a work around for this? It's mainly happening to me near the surface of the mun. And not with mod parts for me. The 38k radial decouplers are the culprit for me.

[Major SNAFU]

For me, this didn't start happening until I had reached the tech level where I unlocked things like octagonal struts, etc.

I have only played 1.0.4 (which is when I bought the game) and I was having a great time in career mode and never saw any random explosions until I reached a certain tech level. Could this problem somehow be related to the level of tech that has been unlocked? I haven't made any other changes. I have run with the same mods installed since the get go.

[Roninpawn]

I can attest to having this issue with the TR-18A decouplers well before unlocking the Precision Engineering with the octagonal struts. But if you're getting the issue while using those new .001 mass struts, that makes sense, since low mass appears to be the thing here. Is there anything recently added to your save or any new program running in the background that might add an extra load to the CPU occasionally? I'm still floating the idea that this is linked to the game making catch-up calculations on dropped physics frames. (Proof? Who needs proof?)

Also, I read an odd 'fix' for this in a reddit thread - useful if it happens on the pad or if you're able/willing to revert and re-launch. I can't confirm this as a solution but I'll pass it on for whatever its worth. Someone claimed that rotating the ship 90 degrees in the VAB - who knows why - and relaunching resolved their problem. Hey... crazier things have happened.

[mussalo]

I have a problem where the TT-70 decoupler starts to heat up and finally explodes at 2000 degrees. Although it could be that the actual heat source is the Jumbo-64 fuel tank it's attached to.

What makes this interesting that this happens even without liftoff. The heating up starts almost immediately after spawning at launch pad, and after about 2 minutes the decoupler blows up. Same result always whether I launch the vehicle or not.

EDIT. Oh well it seems that a dozen of radiator panels dissipated just enough heat from the fuel tank for me to reach the upper stage. Strange behavior anyway.

Edited October 8, 2015 by mussalo