Manned Pods Vanish

[Mark McRobie]

So I'm having this issue with my manned pods vanishing from my career mode. I have been able to repeat this over and over. Basically, I designed a plane that can carry a manned lander on top. Same idea as the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft that NASA used to ferry the shuttle.

So here's what happens: Everything works great until I've safely landed the plane. So I take off from KSC, fly to south pole where there is a surface mission waiting for me. When above my target site, the lander is launched with 2 kerbals inside. After launch, I hang around circling the pod as it floats down ensuring it safely touches down in the right spot. Once it does I return and land safely at KSC.

The map at this time still shows my pod and my 2 kerbals safely on the ground on the surface near the south pole. The entire pod is 100% in tact. I recover my plane at KSC, and instantly the pod vanishes. Cant be found even flew out to site for visual confirmation. This keeps happening every time.

I tested this craft at least 20, times prior to going all the way to south pole with no issues at various distances within 100km of KSC roughly. Water and land landings were all 100% successful. So I fill.my craft with kerbals and go for the manned mission and each time the pod and its kerbals vanish?

It sucks cause even with respawn on I lose the kerbal as the AC shows they are now KIA and unrecoverable. The 1st time this happened I lost Jeb. I first tried setting the plane on a straight level course and switched to the pod to ensure it reached ground safely, when I looked up I saw Jeb flying off and then vanish before my eyes. No plane on tracking and Jeb is KIA and gone forever. I was so upset I built him a memorial of his first plane he flew and wheeled it out in front of the flag. I assumed when I lost eyes on him that maybe he crashed.

So to test my theory i started landing the plane before switching to the pod. But again nowhere to be found and the kerbals on board are KIA.

What is going on??? Sorry for the length and before everyone posts obvious solutions, I've been through the entire forum and tried them all to no avail. Filters at tracking are correct, dozens of manned and unmanned tests within 100km of KSC worked fine. But as soon as i try to drop a pod for the actual mission it goes to crap. So many needless kerbal deaths. I've checked and re-checked everything and have repeated this "glitch?" a handful of times. I can actually cause it to happen.

 

So basically I have a craft, I split it into 2 manned crafts in flight, visually ensure both safely land and when I recover 1 of the 2 they both disappear from tracking but only 1 of them gets actually recovered. They other craft just vanishes, no science, no resources, and worst of all dead kerbals?

Has anyone else experienced this, am I doing something wrong, or is this a glitch where I just cant fly a ground station out to a distant site? Once I even lost a kerbal standing beside his plane when I switched, but not the plane. Like he was struck by lightening and vaporized when I wasn't looking. Oh, I forgot, playing a fully updated, vanilla version of Xbox KSP Enhanced, purchased/downloaded just a couple weeks ago. I'm a longtime, over 10yrs, player of KSP on PC, and have completed this type of mission with no issues 100s of times with a near identical design. Please someone help, I cant see how I can progress through game if my pods/probes, manned or unmanned, will disappear the instant I look at something else.

[Mark McRobie]

So, if I dont "recover" my plane on landing I can still see it on tracking station. So as long as I never recover the plane that carries the lander to its spot, the lander will remain with the kerbals on board.

The problem with this is, I would like to use this plane to launch research bases all over kerbin. I would have to leave each plane I use parked at KSC or lose the lander it deployed. I know from experience on PC that parking even 2 or 3 aircraft at KSC causes massive performance issues. Good luck trying to land on the runway at 2 FPS as it draws in the planes you got parked there.

If anyone is wondering, my endgame here is to drop a lander on all the surface research areas that come up in the missions. Then when sometimes they repeat on future missions, all I gotta do is wake up the engineer and scientist at the ground station to complete the research (science).