Missing hulk...

[Omar X]

I had a mission to rescue someone from the surface of the Mun, and also recover their hulk. I successfully rescued the person, but could not find the hulk anywhere. Thinking that maybe it was in orbit, I cleaned up all of the orbiting junk (needed to happen anyway, but no luck. In the Tracking Station I could see her on the moon, but the hulk didn't show up then, and still doesn't now that she has bee rescued. The mission still shows that I have not completed that part of it. Any ideas? What am I missing?

Edited June 21, 2017 by Omar X
missing detail

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

I don't think you're missing anything. This is some sort of bug. It's happened to me so many times that I don't even take these contracts anymore unless it says "rescue so and so and his hulk" and it's in orbit. Then the Kerbal will be inside the ship and so it wont disappear. I can't even take the "recover this or that piece of ship or debris", because it always disappears. The first couple times it happened at Duna, so I (perhaps wrongly) blamed it on Ike. But it also happened at Minmus, Bop, Pol, Vall, and Tylo. They were all stable orbits before disappearing, so a bug is about the only explanation. This has gone on in 1.1, 1.2, and now in 1.3 as well. With each update I think the problem will be solved, so I try again, but it's always the same.

[bewing]

Depending on some mystery circumstances, sometimes (apparently) the hulk can be generated a few km above the ground. As soon as you get close, it falls to the surface and gets destroyed. It is never in orbit. It is supposed to be parked right behind the kerbal, on the surface, when the contract is accepted.

 

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

1 hour ago, bewing said:

Depending on some mystery circumstances, sometimes (apparently) the hulk can be generated a few km above the ground. As soon as you get close, it falls to the surface and gets destroyed. It is never in orbit.

 

I'm using the wrong wording then. If it says "so and so and his module" or whatever, then it will be a command pod, or passenger module, or hitchhiker storage facility. In this case, the Kerbal will be inside and it will be there. If it says just to recover the module, with no Kerbal, it will be in a stable orbit (I always check to see where it is after accepting the contract), but it will disappear before I get there. I have an open contract to recover a module from Pol that I just accepted when 1.3 was released to see if it would work, but it again disappeared before I got there.

You're certainly right about the hulks, though. Didn't think about it 'til you said that, but I have one at Gilly right now (just the Kerbal on the surface, don't need the hulk), and as soon as I got close enough to see it, I saw that it was spinning and flying away. I just assumed it was Gilly's fault for having such low gravity.

[Weywot8]

I've seen the hulk and occasionally the kerbal as well fall through the surface of whatever planet/moon they were spawned on - guessing it's when they spawn slightly below ground level. 

[bewing]

8 minutes ago, Cpt Kerbalkrunch said:

I'm using the wrong wording then. If it says "so and so and his module" or whatever, then it will be a command pod, or passenger module, or hitchhiker storage facility. In this case, the Kerbal will be inside and it will be there. If it says just to recover the module, with no Kerbal, it will be in a stable orbit (I always check to see where it is after accepting the contract), but it will disappear before I get there. I have an open contract to recover a module from Pol that I just accepted when 1.3 was released to see if it would work, but it again disappeared before I got there.

You're certainly right about the hulks, though. Didn't think about it 'til you said that, but I have one at Gilly right now (just the Kerbal on the surface, don't need the hulk), and as soon as I got close enough to see it, I saw that it was spinning and flying away. I just assumed it was Gilly's fault for having such low gravity.

That probably means you have too much debris in your game, and the system is autodeleting it.

[Cpt Kerbalkrunch]

42 minutes ago, bewing said:

That probably means you have too much debris in your game, and the system is autodeleting it.

I try to keep my debris cleaned up (it gets to be a nuisance around Kerbin), but there are peak times (after a few launches back to back), that it might build up a bit 'til I delete it. I don't know much about the auto-delete system, so I can't say for sure. I'll accept another one and see.

[bewing]

Edit: I was trying to ask for a savegame, because I couldn't find one in the tracker. My search fu was weak and someone found it for me.

So NVM! There is indeed a report of this in the tracker:

http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/15027

 

 

 

Edited July 9, 2017 by bewing