Ok, killer Kerbal?

[HedgeKnight]

I was flying to the desert launch site, tried to do an eva, ok  flying too fast... except I was able to switch to Bob, deploy his shoot, and with him nicely floating down, switched back to my plane... After an hour more of irl time I got to and landed(crashed but didn't die) at my target, in hopes of unlocking it. and nothing, Bob's gone and I can't launch from the new site....

what are the game mechanics on this?

cheers

john

[Streetwind]

Vessels in KSP exist in two states: physicalized, and "on rails". Only the vessel you are currently focusing on, plus everything around it in a bubble with a radius of 2 to 2.5 km, is physicalized. Everything else is packed up and put on rails, and only unpacked again if it comes close enough or you switch focus to it.

A vessel that is on rails does not have any physics calculations performed on it. It does not check for atmospheric drag, it does not change its speed or orbital parameters for any reason, and it does not process collisions. Not even with the ground. They phase straight through. Because that makes no sense, all celestial bodies have a certain altitude threshold below which on-rails vessels simply get deleted, as a stand-in for colliding with the ground and/or burning up in the atmosphere.

As you left Bob behind, he was put on rails. The game then checked his altitude above Kerbin sea level, eventually concluded that he was too close, and deleted him.

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by Streetwind
Typo

[Vanamonde]

What Streetwind said. There are mods which can get around this, or if you could manage to get Bob safely landed before the plane was out of range, he'd be okay. 

[HedgeKnight]

Thanks, good to know.

 

And unlocking launch sites? I'm guessing you need to touch the right 5hing, what's that?

[jimmymcgoochie]

If the Des(s)wet Launchsite is there at all, you can use it- but you need to turn on “enable other launch sites” in the difficulty settings (escape > settings > difficulty settings in game)