Kerbonauts are missing in the VAB after returning to Kerbin

[Sitting Duck]

Am I doing something wrong?

When I complete launches and return my Kerbals safely, they no longer appear in the VAB Kerbonaut list to assign to future missions. I am running out of Kerbals!

Now you see them:

Now you don't. Note the obvious non-presence of Jeb, Bob, Tim, and Val.

Bonus GIR in his dog Kerbal suit:

[Sitting Duck]

Okay, so Val (who disappeared first), just mysteriously re-appeared in the Kerbonaut roster, although the others have not yet returned.

Are they just taking a "break" or something after a long snack- and terror-filled flight?

[malkuth]

So if you watch the kerbal list as you load up kerbals into the vessel your about to take off in, you will notice there is 10 Kerbals.  When you move them out into the Pod they are replaced with new names.

No big deal, but it really is because the list is locked at 10 kerbals only.  So when you return, and your kerbals are added back to the list they are not listed.   Now you can cheat the list by adding the kerbals back into the list if you cancel loading up the vessel, and you will have 10 + however many you took out.  But now you have to wait for the list to go below 10 again for more kerbals to be added.. 

So to beat this (sorry for the long explanation) you can load up the MK3-5 Pod with bunch of kerbals, in hope that your lost kerbals show up in the list.  when they don't or if they do launch the pod and than recover it.. This will put them in the back of the list past 10 again.

I know its stupid.. Its just another bug.

[Sitting Duck]

5 hours ago, malkuth said:

So if you watch the kerbal list as you load up kerbals into the vessel your about to take off in, you will notice there is 10 Kerbals.  When you move them out into the Pod they are replaced with new names.

Hey thanks! I did not notice that. 

Unfortunately I loaded up the workspace with 24 x 5-kerbal pods, and the game only re-loaded the roster with procedurally-generated names as I transferred kerbals to the capsules. So in the end I had 130 more or less randomly-named kerbals, but no star kerbonauts in sight.

Val did re-appear at one point before your post, though, so hopefully the others are just in a time-out (maybe eating snacks in the kerbonaut lounge). Which seems very silly, since we can't tell anything about any of them that we didn't already know from KSP1.

C'est la Vie...

[Tazooka]

I noticed this too. I haven't been able to recover Jeb yet and Bob is now missing after my latest mission

RIP

[Vl3d]

The missing kerbals are in your other pods in the workspace.

[CiberX15]

I've noticed that after recovering a vessel with kerbals in it, the kerbals sometimes don't appear in the list again until the game is rebooted.  I knew they cycled around in the list so I placed a 16 kerbal crew canister on my ship after recovering Jeb, and filled the canister expecting him to show up, but instead just kept getting auto generated kerbals. So then I loaded all the kerbals I had generated into a truck and parked it off the side of the runway so they wouldn't get recycled back onto the list, saved the game, quit, then launched clean. This time when I started filling up the crew canister Jeb showed up in the list. 

[Sitting Duck]

18 hours ago, Vl3d said:

The missing kerbals are in your other pods in the workspace.

I didn't make this clear: this problem happens even though there is currently nothing in my build space. There are no other pods. No capsules, no captive kerbals anywhere either in flight, on the ground, or in the VAB.

14 hours ago, CiberX15 said:

I've noticed that after recovering a vessel with kerbals in it, the kerbals sometimes don't appear in the list again until the game is rebooted. 

This happens to me regardless of restarting the game, unfortunately.

14 hours ago, CiberX15 said:

So then I loaded all the kerbals I had generated into a truck and parked it off the side of the runway so they wouldn't get recycled back onto the list, saved the game, quit, then launched clean. This time when I started filling up the crew canister Jeb showed up in the list. 

Thanks for the idea. I was filling up a bunch of Cockatoo cabins. When I deleted them all (with kerbals inside) they all returned to the main roster. But no star kerbals.

So I loaded up eight 16x cans + one 4x cockpit, and now I have 132 kerbals in that monstrosity inside the VAB, plus 10 on the roster. The roster now contains Val, Jeb, Bob, Bill, and Tim, plus five random kerbals. I don't know whether it was just their time to reappear, or what, but they are FINALLY back.

Edited February 28, 2023 by Sitting Duck
Correkted teh speelings