Multiple Curious questions, first playthrough.

[GarrisonChisholm]

Good morning all. So I had a couple "funnies" show up yesterday and today, and I'd like to get everyone's take on them.

1) Bob ... at the hospital?

So Jeb and Bob were driving a plane from point A to point B through mountainous terrain in the dark (what could go wrong) when something went wrong- Jeb took them airborne at 35 m/s over a cliff, dropping about 120 meters or so- Kaboom. The plane broke apart, only Jeb's cockpit survived. Jeb looked back but saw no remains, so he walked 100 meters, did his survey, then reboarded his cockpit to recover the craft. Bob was dead. I checked the VAB, sure-enough, no scientist. I was saddened, but figured 'hey these things happen'. Then, about 8 missions later, I'm filling out a ship's crew and- hey, where'd you come from Bob? Orange-suit Bob was back. So what happened? Did the game re-spawn him, or did he really not die and it took him days to walk back after I recovered Jeb?

2) Anomalous burn.

I launched a rocket with cross feed, and noticed that 2 engines that should have had identical piping and stock were not bleeding down the fuel stocks at the same rate. Before the stage could be seperated I had to wait an extra 3 or 4 seconds for the 2nd liquid fuel booster to burn out, and then make a flight correction to recover the ball. So, does this ever "happen" in the game, that odd things like this pop-up, or do you think that if I tore down the rocket stage by stage I would find an engineering error of some kind to blame?

[UmbralRaptor]

1) Kerbals respawn after a while at lower difficulties.

2) Probably there's something wonky in how the stages are laid out. We'd need to see pics (and maybe a .craft file)

[G'th]

Well for number 2, if you had your boosters connected by fuel lines, then its likely a matter of:

1. One engine's thrust not being equal to the other. It is easy to accidentally to it. Right Click the part in the VAB and make sure the thrust limiter is equal for both boosters.

2. Fuel lines not being set up properly. If you set up your boosters in a symmetry, then its very possible that one of the booster's fuel lines didn't copy over correctly. Recheck the fuel lines.

3. Fuel not being equal in both boosters. AGain, right click and check the levels. Can also happen if you don't have exact copies for the boosters, if you set them up individually.

[Goddess Bhavani]

Good morning all. So I had a couple "funnies" show up yesterday and today, and I'd like to get everyone's take on them.

1) Bob ... at the hospital?

As replied by @UmbralRaptor, you can enable/disable the crew respawn after death using the difficulty options.

2) Anomalous burn.

Some complex craft designs may exhibit abnormal fuel flow due to how the fuel feed logic works. These issues are partially resolved with jet engines, as they now drain fuel equally from all tanks to ensure correct CG positioning.

For rockets, keep in mind usually they drain "top down" or for spaceplanes, front to back. That means the top/front tank will drain first. If you have external tanks or side tanks, the outermost tanks will drain first followed by the center core. Sometimes during heavy use of symmetry or undo/redo in assembly mode, the fuel feed sequence may get corrupted somehow.

Without rebuilding the whole craft, I have remedied this in the past by placing cross-feed fuel lines between the affected tanks (meaning, allow fuel to flow both ways), or removing all the fuel lines and re-doing the fuel lines. Simple designs and fuel flow layouts is my best bet of avoiding such issues. Ensure you do a ground-fire test to ensure everything is working right before an actual flight! It's difficult to troubleshoot a solution when it happens in the stratosphere at Mach 3.5...

As your issue is occuring on a set of liquid fuel boosters, do ensure both engine thrust values are set the same, and that the fuel supply for both sets of engines / tanks are isolated for now.

If the issue persists, there are mods that allow you to override fuel flow sequence and manually balance fuel tanks. Back in the Beta I used one called TAC Fuel Balancer.