I think Tylo ate my probe...

[sscamc]

Long story short, I had a probe headed for Val and managed to set up my approach to get a gravity capture from Tylo with a PE of about 89 km. However, the Tylo encounter was at the exact same time as a Duna transfer window, so I set a KAC alarm for it and left it alone to send out landers for Duna and Ike. Then, when I went to check back on it, it was just gone. I got a message from the Kerbin World Firsts group awarding me for entering Tylo's SOI, but not one for landing, so it doesn't seem like it crashed. So, did Tylo just... eat it?

Also, first thread, sorry if it's the wrong section.

[REMD]

well i ques that 89km was prediction... real PE after entering SOI migh been  inside Tylo it happen a lot in my game when i plan close flyby from far away...  .. not sure if it is still a thing in 1.05 or 1.1 (i got stuck in 1.0)

[max_creative]

Maybe it got slingshoted into jool? Just a guess. At least it wasn't kerbals that disappeared. That would be bad.

[sscamc]

31 minutes ago, max_creative said:

Maybe it got slingshoted into jool? Just a guess. At least it wasn't kerbals that disappeared. That would be bad.

Doubt it, according to the map view the capture would have left it in an eccentric yet stable orbit around Jool and there were no new encounters for the next orbit. At this point, though, I'm more puzzled than anything else as I found a quicksave from a little while ago, and I just have to re-do a few missions and then babysit the Val probe through its capture.

[FancyMouse]

2 hours ago, sscamc said:

I got a message from the Kerbin World Firsts group awarding me for entering Tylo's SOI, but not one for landing, so it doesn't seem like it crashed.

Note crashing doesn't count as landing AFAIK.

That's one of the reasons why I set auto-adding SoI change alarm in KAC - in order to double-check the new orbit after SoI change.

[Superfluous J]

23 minutes ago, FancyMouse said:

Note crashing doesn't count as landing AFAIK.

That's one of the reasons why I set auto-adding SoI change alarm in KAC - in order to double-check the new orbit after SoI change.

This. To both parts. So "these" I guess

I'm actually a bit surprised that you got credit for entering Tylo's SOI, considering you never went and loaded the ship while it was in Tylo's SOI. I thought you had to "be there" for it to count. Cool that it's otherwise

But yeah I'd guess (in order of likeliness) that you either hit Tylo, Slung your ship into Jool, or it got 'et by the Kraken.

[KamenRiderzero1]

Sometimes I think these things just disappear. I had a Mun geological survey orbiter disappear on me when I turned my back.

 

Are you sure you didn't accidently destroy it?

Edited April 5, 2016 by KamenRiderzero1

[sscamc]

2 hours ago, FancyMouse said:

Note crashing doesn't count as landing AFAIK.

That's one of the reasons why I set auto-adding SoI change alarm in KAC - in order to double-check the new orbit after SoI change.

I'm actually pretty sure it does, for example I remember when I was putting a rover on Ike, I ditched the transfer/decent stage leaving just the rover and its skycrane, and I got credited for landing on Ike while I was still going down because the previous stage hit the surface. As far as I can tell just touching the surface gets you "landed" status.

57 minutes ago, KamenRiderzero1 said:

Are you sure you didn't accidently destroy it?

I'm sure, I saved a shadowplay replay and after reviewing it I didn't seem to accidentally mess it up or delete it. I've already landed on Vall after loading a fairly recent save with minimal progress loss, though, so at least there's that.

[kotomikun]

Occasionally ships will just vanish, due to some sort of save glitch. Have seen it happen more than once to ships that weren't anywhere near anything they could have crashed into. I haven't found a solution other than keeping a lot of semi-redundant quicksaves.

[FancyMouse]

39 minutes ago, sscamc said:

I'm actually pretty sure it does, for example I remember when I was putting a rover on Ike, I ditched the transfer/decent stage leaving just the rover and its skycrane, and I got credited for landing on Ike while I was still going down because the previous stage hit the surface. As far as I can tell just touching the surface gets you "landed" status.

If the ship is loaded and a part is on surface in peace eventually, then I agree it will be registered as landed.

But not when you leave a ship unattended and let it crash into the terrain at orbital speed, or even the ship is not active.

[Superfluous J]

Just now, FancyMouse said:

If the ship is loaded and a part is on surface in peace eventually, then I agree it will be registered as landed.

But not when you leave a ship unattended and let it crash into the terrain at orbital speed, or even the ship is not active.

I think this is the key. Ships that are not in the physics bubble never actually "land" or even "crash." They are just removed from the game when they get below a certain threshold (because they "would have" crashed).

I'd like to test the "crashed = landed" theory, but you need to make SURE the thing that crashes is totally destroyed. To control it, I'd say crash a fuel tank into the surface or something, and test it both in the physics window and out of it.

[FancyMouse]

10 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

I'd like to test the "crashed = landed" theory, but you need to make SURE the thing that crashes is totally destroyed. To control it, I'd say crash a fuel tank into the surface or something, and test it both in the physics window and out of it.

I really doubt the equality. I've done the crashing many times - for my career I always send a tiny probe and arrive at each planet as soon as possible to unlock contracts there, so the impact speed is usually several km/s. Crashing all the parts immediately while my ship is loaded in 1x didn't give me any progression. No atmospheric flight (in the case of planets with atmosphere) nor landed, never.

[max_creative]

Crashed = landed because any landing you can walk away from.

Experiment: put something on a collision course with something, then see if when you switch to another ship and time warp see if the first ship crashes and explode in map view!

[samstarman5]

In my current career, I had a contract to enter the Mun's SOI.  I am terrible with Mk1 Pod re-entries, so I opted to just do a drone mission and at least get the contract done, but with the hope of getting some science and returning with it and not risk any of my current kerbals.  Lessons from a previous experience taught me to put a lot of solar panels around the module.

I hadn't upgraded my Tracking Station yet, so did not have access to upgraded navigation nodes.  The launch went fine, and was able to go right into Munar injection without achieving orbit first, so I figured things were going just fine.  Fast forward to entering the Mun's SOI and I find myself on a nice lithobraking rendezvous with the Mun. "I can fix that," I think to myself, and hit the controls to change my attitude. No reaction.  After a bit of tinkering, I check the electrical reserve and find it empty.  Somehow during most of the journey to the Mun, the sun was perfectly aligned with the tail-end of the craft and the batteries had drained dry, as drones tend to be real hungry for power.  I had gotten confirmation of completing the contract upon entering the Mun's SOI, but I had no way in getting the craft away from colliding with the Mun.  I opted to stick with it the whole way down and see if any light might hit the solar panels in time.  Not only did that not occur, but the craft came down on the dark side of the Mun(ROCK!), so I couldn't even enjoy the landscape.  I did get treated to a nice bright and noisy explosion upon collision, so I had that going for me, at least.

Not one part survived to mark the location so I could at least make a little memorial for my first visit to the Mun.  But it definitely is a reminder that when I leave a drone alone, that I should definitely leave it perpendicular to the ecliptic or orbital plane so, short of eclipses, the ship stays in sunlight and therefore powered.

[sscamc]

After a bit of testing, it looks like crashing and being completely destroyed doesn't count as landing, but if your vessel is made of more than one piece (ie, you actually have a ship and not an empty orange tank like what I tested with) and some pieces lithobrake you enough for so much as one piece to touch the surface and not be destroyed by the impact, it will count. So apparently KSP considers landing as "something touched the surface and didn't instantly explode." Since that's unlikely unless you're throwing single pieces at the mun or going really fast, I never noticed it and just assumed hitting surface = landed. But with that mystery solved, I still don't know how it could happen from 89 km up...

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, sscamc said:

I still don't know how it could happen from 89 km up...

That's an easy one: Passing an SOI boundary at full warp (which non-active objects will happily do in the stock game without any warning or indication) can still cause their paths to shift. If it was shifted into Tylo then bam, it'd also be destroyed (and also not notify or warn the player in any way).

This is why I won't run more than 1 mission at a time until KAC is updated for 1.1.