Any way To delete a part from a craft in orbit?

[cxg2827]

I remember seeing a trick to open the persistence files if you want to manually delete debris. Can this also be used to delete certain parts from a space station? I accidentally left on a kerbal engineer chip and i want to get rid of it. I attempted to delete the set of lines of the part, but it ends up also deleting some other portions as well.

[Jason Patterson]

The difficulty with deleting a part from an existing ship is that it changes the structure of the vessel. In the persistence file the parts are included as an ordered list, from 0 up to (N-1) parts. So rather than saying that your command module is connected to an ASAS unit, it knows that your command module is connected to whatever is listed in PART section 1 (the command module itself being part 0.) If you deleted the ASAS from this fictional ship, then the fuel tank below would become part 1. But that part lists a connection to the original part 1 (which has now become itself.) All of the other parts in the vessel become connected to the wrong stuff. Mayhem ensues.

Basically, unless the KE chip happened to be the very last thing you installed, you can't delete it without messing up the ordering of that list.

However, what you can do is replace it with another small part. Back up your persistence file, then open it in a text editor. You can then copy a strut part from another vessel (one that will never see this vessel, preferably.) Paste it into your space station in place of the KE chip.

Your two parts will look something like the following. Keep the parts in bold from each.

PART

{

name = strutConnector

uid = 1414521987

parent = 26

position = -3.01716828346252,-7.21935367584229,0.77482545375824

rotation = 0.5000001,-0.5000002,0.5,-0.5000001

mirror = 1,1,1

istg = 2

dstg = 2

sqor = -1

sidx = -1

attm = 1

cData = tgt: crewCabin_20; pos: -2.566856,0.02590767,2.270836; dir: -0.7746013,-0.01954721,0.6321477

sym = 42

sym = 56

sym = 69

srfN = srfAttach, 26

mass = 0.05

temp = 0.8914859

expt = 0

state = 1

connected = True

attached = True

EVENTS

{

}

ACTIONS

{

}

}

PART

{

name = EngineerChip

uid = 3489291551

parent = 0

position = -7.55431415200292E-08,0.527184963226318,-0.861178278923035

rotation = -2.135703E-08,0.8330047,-0.553266,-4.685067E-08

mirror = 1,1,1

istg = 0

dstg = 0

sqor = -1

sidx = -1

attm = 1

srfN = srfAttach, 0

mass = 1E-06

temp = 17.70184

expt = 0.5

state = 0

connected = True

attached = True

EVENTS

{

}

ACTIONS

{

}

MODULE

{

name = BuildEngineer

isEnabled = True

EVENTS

{

}

ACTIONS

{

}

}

}

Combining the two should result in a strut part stuck in the same spot as the chip and connected to nothing else.

[togfox]

Whilst technically possible, I strongly suggest you make a back up or two before you try this!

[Dedjal]

back up files.

Make/reload the craft, remove the piece. Put it on the lunch pad, quit, find craft in the persistent file, copy it all, replace the other craft with the new one in the persistent file.