Help! They're stuck together

[Long Finger]

I just launched a crude space station module to add to a Minmus station. I put an orbital scanner in a protective airstream thingy with the girder thing turned off and auto strutted it to a command pod with an o-ring tank and tiny motor on the back of a stack separator. I was expecting the fairing when staged to eject the pod as well but it hasn't! The pod is stuck there, being held on by empty space.

I guess I could use the separator to free the pod and then rescue the Kerbal, but I'll still have the tank and motor suspended out there in a void. Is there another way to free the motor and tank and pod from the remaining invisible fairing?

[bewing]

The truss is just for decoration. You have to use decoplers or separators to free the parts from the fairing -- starting from the top, down. It all depends on how many attachment points you used when you built the fairing. If it was just one, then staging the separator will free everything. You can test it in advance by making a savegame, staging, and then reloading the savegame.

 

[Long Finger]

Well staging the separator frees itself, the tank, and motor, which then tumbles off into space. The heat shield has a Jettison Shroud option that doesn't do anything, and jettisoning the heat shield frees itself and the now useless pod. It does however leave me with a strange magic ring floating in mid-air though.

[Long Finger]

Ok sorted. The tracking station considered the magic o-ring to be debris and allowed me to delete it along with the pod remnants. The pilot will just have to live in the station until I can retrieve them.

To remind myself of this frustration I've renamed Minmus Station Alpha to Minmus O-Ring Station Alpha!