Engines stopped mid-burn, need help

[m1dane24]

I recently just started playing KSP, have about 80 hours+ of game play and still consider myself a newbie. The problem that i am experiencing now is that my engines stop functioning midburn - and by that i mean all engines, both 2nd and 3rd stage, and they wont start up again.

Some background, i took 2 tourist missions that are exactly the same - orbit Kerbin, orbit Mun and orbit Minmus -, reason is, i had missions to fly by, orbit and collect data from both Mun and Minmus and told myself that i could take the tourists along and make more money out of the trip. So, i made improvements on a craft that previously used to orbit the Moon. First stage had 4 Skippers, 2nd stage with 3 Reliants and the 3rd stage with 1 Reliant - combined Dv is around 5k (which is actually more than enough).

Now, here is where it gets weird (for me anyway), i completed the first tourist mission using the craft that i designed without any issues, all stages worked fine and was able to land safely on Kerbin again. Saved the game and proceeded to run the second tourist mission. Everything starts as per normal, i proceeded with my usual ascent profile (which i have to improve), completed an orbit around Kerbin and created a maneuver node for a Mun transfer. As i am burning my node for the Mun transfer (40 seconds+), midway my engines would stop working. It can't be a fuel issue because everything says i have fuel, i am puzzled, thinking that it might be some glitch or the game might be acting up i exited to my desktop and restarted the game. But lo and behold, same thing happens on my second and third retry. As checked what went wrong i noticed that all Electric Charges on all engines are ZERO, that goes for 3 Reliants on my second stage and 1 Reliant on the first stage. I tried ditching the second stage thinking it would solve it but no, same, engines wont start.

As i try my fourth run on the mission, i noticed that my Electric Charge gets sapped slowly when my engines are IDLE, which i find weird because the only part on the ship that requires electricity is the Communotron16 and i haven't even activated that yet. Turning OFF/ON SAS and RCS doesnt help either.

Im not sure, it has never happened before and dont know why its happening now, all along i thought Reliants didn't use Electric Charge. I haven't tried again after the 4th run, maybe i should rebuild the ship? Remove the Communotron16?

Any ideas? Advise? Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Edited August 3, 2015 by m1dane24

[steve_v]

Are you out of electrical power? Check the command pod or probe core. No power = no control, but if this was the case you wouldn't be able to stage either... so ??

What does the right-click menu for the engine say regards it's status?

The command pod / probe cores "reaction wheel" (magic gyroscope) will use power. This might be your mystery drain.

Engines that show electric charge do so because they have an alternator - they should generate electric charge when running, not consume it (except ions OFC).

Pics (with the engine and command part right-click menus open) might help here.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and welcome aboard

[Solar71]

If you are using RemoteTech and your craft goes out of range or loses signal to KSP the engines will throttle down to ZERO instantly.

[steve_v]

Yeah, that's a good point. Any mods involved?

[Chaia]

Are you out of electrical power? Check the command pod or probe core. No power = no control, but if this was the case you wouldn't be able to stage either... so ??

What does the right-click menu for the engine say regards it's status?

-snip-

Manned pods still give control without any electric charge left. As m1dane24 said

As i try my fourth run on the mission, i noticed that my Electric Charge gets sapped slowly when my engines are IDLE, which i find weird because the only part on the ship that requires electricity is the Communotron16 and i haven't even activated that yet. Turning OFF/ON SAS and RCS doesnt help either.

So I guess he doesn't use any remote control pods, but I have no clue what is draining his EC, if he only have a communotron needing EC.

We could really use a picture of your vessel and a list of all mods installed

[FancyMouse]

OP can turn off SAS/RCS so can't be RT related. But yeah, unless we get some pictures, all we can do is to guess.

[m1dane24]

Thanks for responding

As for you questions, first, i dont have any probes and reaction wheels installed or any EC requiring part for that reason. Right clicking on the engine doesnt show much other that "Nominal" and a zero Electric Charge, for what its worth, all parts/module show ZERO Electric Charge when this happens. No Ion engines though, haven't reached that far in the tech tree yet

As for the alternators, yes, you are correct, they do generate EC when powered up and running and i did see them generating EC during these periods BUT as i stop my engines EC gets drained... slowly. I can see it go down from 41... 40... 39... 38... all the way to zero. And of course, i have to power them down when i create nodes and or drift/warp along my orbit. Do take note that i am basing all of these in Kerbin time and not real world time, because in KSP warping seems to make getting from point A to point B faster but essentially the same amount of time has passed, only faster - with this in mind you spend more Kerbin time idle than burning, which, as i stated before - my EC drains when engines are idle. And this i noticed in my fourth attempt because i let my craft drift along its orbit until all EC is drained then try to power up which i couldnt because there is zero EC.

With regards to mods, i have - KAS, KIS, KER, ScanSat, a few parts pack, asteroid day, alarm clock, near future (4x), station science, chatterer - not that much and no MechJeb and no RemoteTech.

Once i get home and start KSP ill post a pic of the ship with the necessary info so you guys can have a look at it and help me find out whats wrong

Although, i am starting to think that it could be a bug/kraken and might just rebuild and/or redesign the ship.

Thanks!

PS - does staging/decoupling need EC? Never really noticed that and well, last night when i was drained of EC i can still release my stages without issue

[Streetwind]

I'm super confused how you can run out of Ec mid-burn with a Reliant engine, which has a 7 Ec/s production built-in. That is a LOT of Ec/s for stock KSP, the only thing that uses that much is an ion drive or perhaps an ISRU converter. Neither of which I suspect is on your tourist ship. Running out of Ec while the engines are off, sure, there's ways to do that. Mid-burn? I'd call it impossible.

I'll echo the questions of others here and ask if you have any mods installed.

If you do not have any mods installed, can you try and share the craft file, so other people can try flying your mission and check what goes wrong?

Edited July 31, 2015 by Streetwind

[cantab]

With a command module crewed by a Kerbal who is not a tourist you will always have control unless you are in timewarp. The ship's controls do not require electricity to operate, and you should see the pitch/roll/yaw indicators in the bottom left and the throttle marker on the navball move even if the ship doesn't actually turn or fire any engines. Being in timewarp without realising it is really common, but that ought to stop you starting your burn in the first place. Note that tourists cannot control a ship, and non-tourists cannot control a ship from a module that isn't a command module for example the Science Lab.

With only a probe core for control you will of course lose control if you run out of electricity.

The engine fuel gauges show fuel only but a rocket engine also needs oxidizer, however if the engine is oxidizer-deprived it should show you that when you right click it.

So the behaviour you describe definitely sounds like a game bug. I have had a similar bug before, when taking off from Tylo one of my engines stopped producing thrust for no obvious reason.

[cephalo]

Sometimes the pass through fuel rules can be a bit confusing. I wonder if your fuel tanks are not connected to where you are assuming they are. Fuel gauges tend to show all the fuel available to that stage, even if the various rockets have different amounts of fuel available. It's possible to design a ship where fuel gauges are useless. Make sure you have fuel lines placed where you need them.

[jkool702]

This may not directly help your problem, but its good to get in the habit of disabling one battery pre-launch. Then, if you find you run out of electricity for whatever reason, you have one battery you can manually enable/disable as needed to make maneuvers, stage, etc.

I've noticed that electricity has a tendency to slowly drain for no reason, so an alternate method would be to have all electricity sources enabled/disabled by some hotkey, then only enable them when you want to do something. Batteries cant be drained when they are off.

[m1dane24]

To those that have replied so far, i appreciate all your suggestions but please do note that i have finished the first tourist mission with the exact same parameters as the second (the one that im running now) with exactly the same ship and there were no problems with that. So, no fuel line issue, no battery issue, just plain engines stopping midburn and losing EC

I'll be home in a while and when i do ill get those screenshots and possibly a video if i can manage to record, haha!

Thanks!

[m1dane24]

Mods, i have - KAS, KIS, KER, ScanSat, a few parts pack, asteroid day, alarm clock, near future (4x), station science, chatterer - not that much and no MechJeb and no RemoteTech. I havent even used a single part in the parts pack mod since my tech tree has not yet reached their levels (in career mode).

Thanks!

[tutike2000]

Screenshot of it happening, please. Ideally with right-click menu on the engine visible.

[cephalo]

Are you sure it's exactly the same ship? You didn't make any last minute changes to the first one that weren't saved?

[m1dane24]

With a command module crewed by a Kerbal who is not a tourist you will always have control unless you are in timewarp. The ship's controls do not require electricity to operate, and you should see the pitch/roll/yaw indicators in the bottom left and the throttle marker on the navball move even if the ship doesn't actually turn or fire any engines. Being in timewarp without realising it is really common, but that ought to stop you starting your burn in the first place. Note that tourists cannot control a ship, and non-tourists cannot control a ship from a module that isn't a command module for example the Science Lab.

With only a probe core for control you will of course lose control if you run out of electricity.

The engine fuel gauges show fuel only but a rocket engine also needs oxidizer, however if the engine is oxidizer-deprived it should show you that when you right click it.

So the behaviour you describe definitely sounds like a game bug. I have had a similar bug before, when taking off from Tylo one of my engines stopped producing thrust for no obvious reason.

Yes, you are correct about the Oxydizer part, after several more tests i found out that the Oxydizer gets drained way before i start my second stage. I made a few changes on my initial craft and tested a few more things, instead of 3 i now have 4 Reliants fueled by 2 FL-T800 tanks on top of each other. The first picture shows the Fuel and Oxydizer gauge right after i ditch my first stage, if you notice one FL-T800 only has 50% Oxydizer left which is strange because i haven't even activated the second stage yet - as indicated by my staging sequence on the left. And same with the EC, notice that its already drained a little of the total EC and i have not activated anything that would require EC yet.

Any ideas why this would happen? Its never happened to me before so ill need to do some more tests to find the cause but if you can help suggest stuff that'll help a lot.

Thanks!

- - - Updated - - -

Are you sure it's exactly the same ship? You didn't make any last minute changes to the first one that weren't saved?

On my first 4 retries, it is exactly the same ship and there would be no point making a new design when i know that the original design works fine and as intended

- - - Updated - - -

More stuff - found out that even before i launch the rocket the top FL-T800 tank only has 50% Oxydizer. No idea why, haha!

[cantab]

More stuff - found out that even before i launch the rocket the top FL-T800 tank only has 50% Oxydizer. No idea why, haha!

You can right-click a tank in the VAB and change the resource amounts in it. You probably did that by accident, or forgot about it.

[cephalo]

Exactly the same ship eh? Yeah, it's easy to make unintended changes to ships in the VAB. Especially with all the click-through that can happen.

[FancyMouse]

Any command control module (pod or probe) will consume small amount of electricity, which is indicated in part description (at a level of 1~2/min mostly). If engine doesn't generate electricity, then you'll see the small decrease during launch.

And yeah half Oxydizer might be root cause for not burning - the lower-left gauge is indicating only LF, not O, so it will seem some fuel left but really engine cannot burn. Potential cause is what people mentioned - accidental clicks being the most probable one.

[m1dane24]

WOW! Just as i said, i am still new to the game

Didn't know that was possible!

Thanks a lot guys for helping out, im marking this thread as ANSWERED!