Spacecraft explode over South Pole.

[RCgothic]

6x polar probe launcher in a 150km x 205km orbit at 90 degree inclination over Kerbin explodes for no reason over the south pole. (Happens at 90'S as best I can tell.) I have a save about half an orbit beforehand and it happens every time.

Basically every part goes from cold to the temperature of Stellar Plasma instantly and the craft explodes. At first I thought it was a service bay bug, because that was the first part to overheat on the incident report. But if I detach a probe with no service bay, still happens, only a battery is first listed.

It happens to every vehicle in the active physics bubble. Whether one complete craft or 6probes, launcher and associated debris in formation. The only time anything survives is if I get it far enough away from the active craft in time, such as when I De-orbited the launcher.

I don't think this is mod related, but I don't have system space to run multiple installs (small SSD) to test. Only modded parts on the craft that I'm aware of are KER circuit boards, DP-10 Antenna (RT2) and procedural fairings.

Mods: FAR, Chatterer, Planetshine, RCS build aid, Procedural Fairings, Remote Tech 2, Tac Life Support, DMagic Orbital Science. May be a couple others. Highly doubt mods are responsible anyway.

I think this may be a replication of this bug.

I suspect there may be some work arounds - switching to another craft whilst passing the pole, or using a slightly lesser inclination for instance. But that's pretty inconvenient.

Files/Saves/Pics available on request.

[turkwinif]

Basically every part goes from cold to the temperature of Stellar Plasma instantly and the craft explodes.

Found your thread via Google search, I had the same problem! I was approaching the south pole by rover, maybe only going 8m/s max, when suddenly, the entire craft exploded. I checked the log and it stated that all of the parts had overheated. I sent a duplicate rover, quicksaved on landing, and approached the south pole. Same thing happened. Had Kerbal Engine Redux up, the point at which I exploded was -89 55' 09'' (or was it 56' 09''? One of those two). I will try to replicate this weird bug on a clean install soon: I too, was running mods, but none that change the atmosphere like FAR.

A very strange and curious bug. And talk about a jump scare, I wasn't expecting something like that to happen at all, especially after just visiting the north pole.

EDIT: Can confirm that the bug happens on a vanilla install, rover overheats in between the -89 59' 09'' and 11'' mark. Leaving the death zone does not cool down the rover at all. Since this also appears to affect things in orbit, I'm now curious if this "death zone" is cone- or cylindrical-shaped.

Time to put something on the cusp of Kerbins SOI in a polar orbit and wait for the fireworks.

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EDITEDIT: Even at almost 70 million meters out, Jebediah is no match for south poles. I resorted to using hyperedit to make my inclination exactly 90, since blindly trying to hit as close to 90 inclination without mods and then harmlessly passing by the south pole...is no fun. Needed more explosions, I got it to happen with hyperedit.

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Edited October 2, 2015 by turkwinif
non->none

[Torgo]

I had a similar occurrence last night with a scanning probe. Launched it into a stable polar orbit, then went upstairs for some dinner. I'm eating with the family when the sounds of explosions come from the computer. My probe had overheated and exploded near the south pole.

I reverted and launched again, but went back to the Space Center after I circularized. It was fine when it was on rails. I'll play with it later to see if I can replicate the south pole issue.

[Padishar]

This has already been reported to the bug tracker (#5305) though it was closed as a duplicate of another bug even though the circumstances and symptoms aren't really the same (there is a general issue with some parts suddenly overheating but that happens anywhere, possibly depending on vessel orientation rather than only happening at/over the south pole).

It sounds like there is some issue in the code that calculates heating, I was thinking that maybe the latitude adjustment for air temperature could be generating an "infinite" value when very close to -90 (when talking temperatures anything over 1e10 can probably be considered infinite) but this wouldn't explain it happening to a satellite outside the atmosphere.