The casting on my nuclear engine popped off my nuclear engine!

[Pbhead]

after 11 years in orbit, day 4440something, it was time to rev up the NERVA for a burn to plunge me straight into the sun.

after using my rcs (my rcs tanks are below my nuclear engine, and ports above it), jettisoned the rcs tank, hit the nuclear engine and.... no fuel.

cant click the darn thing.

fuel tank above it is full.

all the sorrounding tanks are full. all... 24 of them.

all the pipes connected.

but the darn shield on the engine decided to BREAK MY ENGINE OFF AFTER 2 RL DAYS OF...

*sigh*

couldnt quickload too, cause for somereason the game refused to quicksave. or let me go back to the vab. or anything like that.

[softweir]

Game doesn't allow stuff if you have the throttle on, whether the engines are working or not. Might that have been the problem with reloading?

[Guest]

I've had this happen, it's annoying.

[OUScooby]

Not sure I'm totally understanding what you are saying, but has your craft run out of electricity?

[Johnno]

And this is why it's important to test your spacecraft before launching it. It may even have been a clipping issue. I've had engines break off because I tried to attach stuff too closely & inside other things.

Design - test - launch.

[Pbhead]

throttle was down.

had electricity.

[Noticeably FAT]

Yeah, those fairings like to do that, especially the ones on the NERVA. As Johnno said, always test that stuff before you leave. Often you don't even need to leave Kerbin, you can test staging on the ascent and make sure that it 1) works in the order it should and 2) doesn't remove parts it shouldn't.

If you haven't ended the flight it shouldn't be difficult to do a little persistence file editing to swap in a non-busted version, if you don't want to completely scrap the mission.

[Forgettable]

This has happened to me. I've got an interstellar 100 kerbal bus in orbit that I've been putting together over several days to learn that the fairings can't eject without exploding all my engines. I've been trying to edit my persistence file to put the engines back on but the trial-and-error tedium of the thing has put me off the game for a few weeks.