Suborbital Flight Requirements w/tourists and VIPs

[Hicks695]

Hello guys.

I have a simple question: I'm trying to understand the requirements I have to reach to make a suborbital flight with tourists and vips successfully achieved.
I have created a vessel that is fully capable to bring 5 people at a stable orbit and come back safe to Kerbin, fully equipped with solar panels and experimental stuffs, using both BACC and LV-45 engines. The vessel can easily go up through suborbital trajectory first, and then circularizing and making it orbital at an AP/PE height between 90 and 110km.

I don't understand why I'm not able to achieve the green flags of tourists and vips mission that want to go suborbital and then orbital. I'm trying to bring up to space 2 tourists and 1 VIP right now but I can't complete the mission. I feel like they don't "see" I'm passing through a parabolic flying trajectory to reach a suborbital trajectory. And I don't understand why they don't see it.

I have read several topics about the suborbital flight on KSP, so I understood I have to:
1) Bring AP above 70km
2) Keep PE below 70km

If these are the only two requirements, I don't understand why I can't have green flags for the suborbital flight in the tourist and vip missions, because I fulfill these 2 requirements very easily with my vessel. So I kept reading around in some threads and I also understood:
3) Maybe having no acceleration while passing 70km of height with the vessel? I mean, keeping a constant speed adjysting it with an engine like the LV-45?
4) Maybe having a particular eccentricity (not too high or too low, so keeping the trajectory not too straight up in the sky or not too flat)?
5) Maybe passing the 70km height with a speed not too fast (I did dozens of tests with a velocity between the 500 and 1200 m/s)?
6) Maybe passing the 70km height with engines shut down?
7) Maybe passing the 70km height with the vessel lined up parallel to the terrain (pointed at the border between the blue and brown parts of the navball?)

I tried for some days with little changes of these variables, reaching different speeds, or AP altitudes, or circularizing the suborbital trajectory, or keeping a specific heading while flying, etc etc... but only 1 time, and I don't know how I did it, I took the green flags for the suborbital flight, now I can't have it anymore. I think maybe I'm flying my vessel in the wrong way, but playing around with the variables I can manipulate (velocity, heading, acceleration, AP, PE, etc) doesn't give me any result. What I'm missing? What really are all the requirements for this missions to reach? What are their ranges to make someone achieve the green flag easily?

Thank you to everyone for their help...

[ElWanderer]

Based on the v1.4.2 changelog I've just read, it sounds like this was a bug that they've now fixed.

>> * Fix tourist contracts not completing correctly and messages for tourist contracts causing NRE and infinite rewards when failing

Edited March 28, 2018 by ElWanderer

[bewing]

The bug that people were seeing involved getting the "orbital" checkmark. Not the "suborbital" one. But yes, there are only 2 requirements for being suborbital:

Pe below 70km, and having your vessel be above 70km.

Are you sure it's not the "orbital" checkmark that you are having a problem with?

Could you post a screenshot with those 2 conditions satisfied, and having your mouse hovering over your contract app (the thing that shows the checkmarks)? You'll need to use imgur.com or another image hosting site to post the screenshot.

 

 

Edited March 29, 2018 by bewing

[Kryxal]

In the more general case, you need PE in atmosphere (if such exists) or subsurface, and I think you need a real apoapsis (so not on a hyperbolic trajectory) above any atmosphere.

[Just Jim]

 

11 hours ago, Hicks695 said:

I have a simple question: I'm trying to understand the requirements I have to reach to make a suborbital flight with tourists and vips successfully achieved.

2 hours ago, bewing said:

Could you post a screenshot with those 2 conditions satisfied, and having your mouse hovering over your contract app (the thing that shows the checkmarks)? You'll need to use imgur.com or another image hosting site to post the screenshot.

Agreed... I was doing sub-orbital tourists today, and the contracts are working OK. In a nutshell I build a simple rocket-plane kind of ship, launched it up to about 75,000 meters, then let it fall back, and use parachutes to splashdown. I did maybe a dozen of these today with no sign of bugs.

I'd be glad to help, but like @bewing already said, a couple screenshots would be very helpful.

[Hicks695]

Thank you all for your answers!

I did some more tests today and I understood what's the problem: if you accept a contract (tourists one, or vips one, or surveys on kerbin above/below a certain height about temperature, pressure or crew reports, everything I can do at the moment) AND you try to do it in the same "game session", the mission doesn't get achieved even if you do everything they ask you to do. If you accept the contract, save game, exit game, re-enter game, load save and try to do it, the mission get completed.

So I think there is maybe something that create a conflict, maybe something between the mods I have and the game itself... something like if you accept a contract AFTER the game is loaded, the mods aren't triggered with it, so I need to accept any contract, then save and exit, and re-entering the game the mods are loaded again and they "see" the game situation, the mission I have to do, etc... and all it works properly...

I don't really know which mod could cause the problem, I currently have installed:
-Astronomer Visual Pack 3.63 with 4k textures
-Distant Object 1.9.1
-Environmental Visual Enhancements 1.4.0.1
-Loading Screen Manager 1.2.3.4
-MechJeb2 2.7.1.0
-Scatterer 0.0326
-Simple Orbit Calculator 1.5.0
-Texture Replacer 0.5.4

Maybe one of them is out of date and is creating a conflict with the game (current version is the latest updated by Steam, so 1.4.1.somethingelse).
I will make a check later, but definetively the problem is NOT an unknown condition for the suborbital flight to be achieved.

Thank you all again for your support!!