I created a strange situation

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

Hi all,

I'm not sure this is a bug or not so I decided to ask your opinion before I report this in. Here's the situation.

A 3 man command pod landed on Minmus. Did some EVA + surface samples and went back to Kerbin. Then I realized that I forgot to mount parachutes, so I went creative. I pushed the command pod with the crew and the science samples into a circular orbit above Kerbin at 100 Km.

I launched a "rescue pod" with on top (on the nose) a decoupler, two brackets on top of that, parachutes on the brackets and finally a docking port on the very top. I launched it to rendezvous with the Minmus pod in Kerbin orbit and docked with it.

From there I cut the decoupler that is attached to the bracket with the chutes so the "final situation" is: returned minmus lander with the docked brackets on top of it.

I set in the landing, everything went fine until the chutes fully opened at 500 m. The drag force was to big (I was afraid that it was) hence the bracket is torn of the command pod. At this point I would expect the bracket to become debris, but it went the other way around. The command pod fell to the ground as if it were debris, but the bracket with the chutes and no control module whatsoever stayed in the focus of the camera; it even responded to WASD controls. The command pod crashed, the bracket landed nicely.

After that I was able to recover the flight (only the bracket).

Did I mess up by doing this bracket transfer or is this a bug? Please share your thoughts.

[Hodo]

Did the bracket have a remote guidance unit? If it did that's why the game stayed focused on it.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

No, nothing. No control module, no guidance unit... nothing.

[sal_vager]

I don't suppose you have a quicksave we can test, or the craft files?

[Hodo]

Yeah that is odd.

[Galileo Kerbonaut]

I don't suppose you have a quicksave we can test, or the craft files?

I do have the craft files, but I used KW rocketry and KSPX; and I know, mods are not supported. That's why I posted it here. It is also pretty easy the recreate the scenario; I can do that if you want.

[Morokth]

Some of the structural truss pieces can be selected as the first piece in a ship just like a probe or cockpit. Most likely the truss ended up controlling the minmus pod instead of the other way around

[sal_vager]

Still, anyone with those installed could give it a go.

[Kasuha]

It happens to me all the time. I have a lander which has docking port Sr on top and on bottom. If I crash the lander, my camera always follows the bottom docking port like it was the most important part of the ship.

The only thing that comes to my mind is: I have this lander saved as subassembly and this docking port is root of that disassembly. Maybe the game just blindly follows the root node?

[Sirrobert]

For in the future: Try using the engine to slow down your fall just before the chute is supposed to open, that might save it

[Vanamonde]

I have had a couple of very strange situations which might be related. I had an assembly which consisted of decoupler, strut, docking ring, and when I didn't need it anymore, I triggered the decoupler. The focus moved with them after ejection, and the assembly was listed as a ship in the tracking center. I think it's the presence of a docking ring on the ejected part that causes the issue. The game seems to get confused and thinks the docking ring is still connected to a ship-root-part somewhere, and thus constitutes a ship.

[KvickFlygarn87]

To prevent these "yanks", do not timewarp, and deploy your parachutes as soon as possible (maybe even in orbit, and it'll deploy as soon as there is enough air. I've never lost anything due to a yank with these hints.

[superm18]

i suspect you had "control from here" on the bracket-dockingport

[700NitroXpress]

This can happen a lot and you can fly pieces of debris too if you go to them from the tracking station.

[magnemoe]

This happens all the time and is some bug, if you undock anything like an empty fuel tank or decoupler focus is switched to the junk most of the time.

I often put an drop tank on docking ports on landers, tank is dropped after deorbit burn.

Its just to switch focus back to the lander, just make sure you don't drop it while under trust, if you are under mechjeb control wait until you are finished with the deorbit burn and adjustments.

[DrMonte]

If you have a docking port in your design it should be the one that controls the ship.

As for deorbitting I would suggest adding 2500m chute. It will slow you down before 500m deploy.