(I guess I didn't "Knock on Wood" re Kraken), or, ...what just happened?

[GarrisonChisholm]

So, the 10x too big Eve probe was 10 days out from its Orbital Insertion Burn, so I selected it in the tracking station, clicked "Fly"...

And it loaded the probe's staging on the Left of the screen, but no probe- in fact, no Stars; no Altitude on the UI, no colors in the Nav Ball.

This frightened me.

I went back to KSC... and there was no PLANET. Just the Skybox as far as the eyes could see. This too was frightening, so I closed them.

I exited, re-loaded, ...and the Solar Syatem was there, but the Eve Probe was gone; erased. I remembered I had Quick-saved Just before switching to the Eve Probe, so I loaded that save, and tried again... and this time everything was as it should be. Orbital Burn was successful after successful time acceleration, game seems normal.

So, what kind of drinking binge happened at the Space Center? - i.e., what the heck happened? o.O

If I had not been able to recover, I would have chalked it up to "Lost communications due to an unexplained malfunction" (since parts don't "fail" this fills that niche kind-of), but still it was weird.

Edited August 13, 2015 by GarrisonChisholm

[Geschosskopf]

You have found what I call the SOI Doppler Effect Kraken, a sadly familiar annoyance.

I really have no idea what causes it, but it's a common occurrence when a ship is near the edge of an SOI, especially if behind the body it's approaching. Such as when your interplanetary ship leaves Kerbin and passes just behind Mun on the way out. Or when approaching another planet from the inside of its orbit so you're catching up with it from behind. So tell me, where you approaching Eve from inside our outside of its orbit?

My theory is that SOIs do not move with analog smoothness but rather in discrete steps, and that the SOI's steps are fewer and longer than the steps taken by the associated planet. Especially when using warp. Thus, there is like a Doppler Effect on the SOI as the planet gets off-center in it. As a result, SOIs extend more behind a planet than in front of it, and this confuses the game. Part of the game thinks you're inside the SOI, part of you thinks you're not, and the game can't decide what to draw so the universe goes away and takes the ship with it.

While this theory is almost certainly wrong, it's Kerbal enough for my tastes. And it really doesn't matter why this happens anyway, just that it does.

[GarrisonChisholm]

You have found what I call the SOI Doppler Effect Kraken, a sadly familiar annoyance.

I really have no idea what causes it, but it's a common occurrence when a ship is near the edge of an SOI, especially if behind the body it's approaching. Such as when your interplanetary ship leaves Kerbin and passes just behind Mun on the way out. Or when approaching another planet from the inside of its orbit so you're catching up with it from behind. So tell me, where you approaching Eve from inside our outside of its orbit?

Fascinating. It was an "outside-Eve's-orbit" approach, so Eve would have been just passing up the probe, as SOI entry (10-days away) would be low (anti-normal?) and to the retrograde of Eve's motion- the capture orbit though is nearly polar, much to my surprise.

[Vegetal]

Oh this happened a lot with me already. It's just a matter of time for it to happen if you are playing for some time.