Electrical system zapped while in high Kerbin orbit

[BobsYourUncle]

Hey guys, first post and I need your help.  I'm a relative newb and not sure what to do in this situation.

I sent a probe to scanSAT Minmus (ScanSAT mod of course). Did the scan and moved back to a high Kerbin orbit. Have a Z-200 battery pack and 4 solar panels. Rather than adjust at AP and shoot into Kerbin reentry quickly, I decided to head to PE and burn retro to gradually bring the orbit and my speed down (I had extra Delta V). So I warp down to PE and I guess I had SAS on, and the probe was turned away from the sun, and zapped my juice. I realized I should have placed the solar panels better as they are all tilted towards to top of the probe which is pointed away. But to fix this, I warped around for a while, hoping the probe will turn enough to fix the issue, but it just doesn't seem to turn toward the sun at this orbit.  

So what do I do? Keep warping and hope a Mun encounter affects it and turns it? Or if it sits up there long enough, will Kerbin's orbit move to a spot where the probe will face the sun? It's not critical to get it back down so I could wait. What might be cool is to try a rescue mission just to practice.  Not sure if there is a mod to EVA and place a battery or a solar panel perhaps?

Thanks in advance!

[DD_bwest]

where exactly are you pointed?  directly away from the sun?

 

Im not 100 percent sure, but if your pointed away from the sun, wouldnt you point towards it at the other side of the orbit?(6 months later)  So eventually it would probably get power again,  but if the orbit reaches out towards the mun still, you will likely get another encounter (and worst case smack right into it)

 

also on the rescue side,  you panels on it, so if you can put it into a tumble, itll grab power each rotation, and then once you have power, stabilize it and keep it pointed at the sun until its recharged.   So you wouldnt need to do anything fancy, just something small to "bump" into it lol or even a kerbal with a jetpack lol

[Geschosskopf]

1 hour ago, BobsYourUncle said:

So what do I do? Keep warping and hope a Mun encounter affects it and turns it? Or if it sits up there long enough, will Kerbin's orbit move to a spot where the probe will face the sun? It's not critical to get it back down so I could wait. What might be cool is to try a rescue mission just to practice.  Not sure if there is a mod to EVA and place a battery or a solar panel perhaps?

Thanks in advance!

Welcome aboard! (have a like)

Anyway, yeah, you CAN wait months for the sun to shine on the panels again.  Or you could send ANY type of ship up there to rendezvous with your dead probe. Then you can just bump into the dead probe with either the rescue ship or an EVA Kerbal so that the dead probe rotates to face the sun.  Then switch to the resurrected probe and do what you need to with it.  Or you could use the mods KAS and KIS to have an EVA Kerbal attach a battery or a solar panel.  Or you could rendezvous with a rescue ship equipped with the Claw, grab the dead probe, and transfer some juice into it that way.  Or you could use HyperEdit to just cheat EC into the dead battery.

 

 

[James Kerman]

I had the same problem a few times and I now disable some charge in the VAB (a trick I learned from these forums) - right click the probe core (I think it has 15EC) and disable the stored electricity in it.

Caveat - I am still using 1.05 (almost all my designs incorporate wheels) and EC might not work the same way in newer versions.

[Pecan]

15 minutes ago, James Kerman said:

I had the same problem a few times and I now disable some charge in the VAB (a trick I learned from these forums) - right click the probe core (I think it has 15EC) and disable the stored electricity in it.

Caveat - I am still using 1.05 (almost all my designs incorporate wheels) and EC might not work the same way in newer versions.

It doesn't - if you don't have power you can't turn on the only battery that has power :-(

[Mjp1050]

@BobsYourUncle, Welcome to the forums!

First, there is a mod that lets you add parts from EVA: Kerbal Inventory System!

So I think a rescue is more feasible in your scenario...you could nudge the probe so the panels face the sun again, or use KIS to plop a panel or battery on the probe, and voila! Problem solved.

If all the solar panels are facing away from the sun, you could warp until Kerbin is on the opposite side of its orbit...but that will take a while, so bring a book.

And for future reference, it's a good idea to design your probes so that regardless of the orientation, one solar panel will always face the sun. I recommend the SP-L 1x6 Photovoltaic Panels.

Hope this helps!

[dafidge9898]

2 hours ago, BobsYourUncle said:

So what do I do? Keep warping and hope a Mun encounter affects it and turns it? Or if it sits up there long enough, will Kerbin's orbit move to a spot where the probe will face the sun? It's not critical to get it back down so I could wait. What might be cool is to try a rescue mission just to practice.  Not sure if there is a mod to EVA and place a battery or a solar panel perhaps?

If you want the experience, then by all means send up a rescue probe. There is also mod that let's you attach things like batteries, solar panels, etc:

I'm going to be honest, I've made this mistake more than a few times. I play realism overhaul, so everything is bigger. More than once on my TLI orbit I've run out of electric charge because my solar panels were blocked, and I didn't notice until 2 days had passed. I didn't want to have to go through another 12 minute launch, so I hit the alt-f12 menu and turned on infinite electricity. I lied to myself saying "Oh, it was always in the correct position."

[bewing]

If you just sit and watch the ship for awhile then gravity will cause it to precess, and little random motions will also cause it to change its alignment to the sun over time. All you have to do is watch it for awhile. Maybe a half hour. Just don't timewarp -- that stops all rotations again. Some ships experience more little random motions than others -- especially depending on any clipping you did when you built it.

 

[BobsYourUncle]

Thanks everyone!  As it turns out, bewing was correct.  Time warping, no matter how slow, seemed to ensure no spin will occur.  I kept warping for small intervals expecting it to turn just a bit.  I swear that I warped around Minmus and it still turned.  But it wouldn't on this HKO.  What worked best was to let it move through PE or AP on its own for a while with no warping or anything, which is what I expected to happen to begin with.  I just wasn't being patient enough.

Too bad, I actually wanted to try a rescue "bump."

So one more question...  Why does KSP allow the electrical power to drain when I'm warping when nothing is using power?  I'm supposing SAS wasn't turned off, but warping usually turns it off or at least doesn't affect it.

[bewing]

Your probe core has a permanent constant electricity drain. That is the thing that used up all the juice in your battery. About .02 zaps per second, and you can't turn it off.