Unattened Ship Explosion

[insylem]

Hello,

Has this happened to anyone besides me? I couldn't find anywhere where anyone has talked about it.

But twice, I left KSP running, with a ship in a steady orbit somewhere. I come back the next day (Time 1X)

and there is the message and aperently my ship was destroyed by.... ???

[Roastduck]

Aliens.

But I don't know. I recently had a whole Mun expedition explode on me, lander and EVA kerbonaut. Poof, gone. I'd love to hear if anyone else has experienced this.

[Markus Reese]

Yup, I have had it. Space is big, but with frequent or even only a couple uses of an orbit launch pad, you can get debris in orbit. If your patch crosses at all, there is a chance for collisions. I think there are a few lets plays out there where it happened by accident, and many stories. I try to keep separations from getting junk in orbit, but I had some debris once come flying within 100m of my ship once. Knowing the specifics of the log helps.

Worst is when something is destroyed in orbit, you get a debris field in that orbital area dramatically increasing the odds. Head to your tracking station and set it to show debris.

[Roastduck]

Yup, I have had it. Space is big, but with frequent or even only a couple uses of an orbit launch pad, you can get debris in orbit. If your patch crosses at all, there is a chance for collisions. I think there are a few lets plays out there where it happened by accident, and many stories. I try to keep separations from getting junk in orbit, but I had some debris once come flying within 100m of my ship once. Knowing the specifics of the log helps.

Worst is when something is destroyed in orbit, you get a debris field in that orbital area dramatically increasing the odds. Head to your tracking station and set it to show debris.

Yeah, after every couple of flights, I always go to the tracking station and "terminate" the flights listed under "Debris"

[stevism]

i really doubt it's debris collisions.

not even sure if that's calculated if you don't have one of the two objects as your "active" flight?

this happened to me in 0.22 when I made my first orbit around Eeloo. I went back the next day to do my landing and my entire craft was gone and the kerbal was back home.

i hadn't done any staging out there so no debris

it's a kraken glitch, one that made me step away from 0.22 and not play until 0.23 came out.

[Markus Reese]

Hrm... I wonder if what happened is did you jettison something after getting your orbit on the same flight? If so, then it is quite probable that eventually, they would meet back up again. I wouldn't expect the speed difference to be enough to destroy unless it was small so had a high ejection force... Never had it happen to me, though never ran for long periods of time idle....

Same with kraken. That usually only happens with an error calculation on load up, or change in timewarp when it re-enables the physics. It begins recalculation, conflict and boom!

[SkyHook]

I've had mun bases blow up on me when the physics is reinitialized. Are you sure this hasn't happened to you?

[FITorion]

need more specifics.

Where were you orbiting?

If Kerbin... equatorial?

Any debris about that you could have run into?

Did your orbit dip into the atmosphere at any point?

By unattended do you mean not focused or you weren't at the keyboard? They mean different things...

If Kerbin... and equatorial... and focused then it could have been the shifting Launch pad hit boxes. Leaving the game running for a long time is inadvisable as weird things happen.

If it was focused anywhere then it could have been debris.

If you weren't focused then it would have to be wiped out by having too low of an orbit to be taken care of by the auto delete... or have been classified as debris itself and deleted by having your debris allowance set too low.

Or it could be something completely different. These are just some of the know possible causes for such things.

[InterCity]

I have experienced that before. It often happens on landers, when the ship is moving ANY DIRECTION OR ANY SPEED. I think that is caused because the game detects a surface collision before the velocity is set and uses orbital velocity to calculate the impact.

[insylem]

This was a ship in open space just coasting along. Time = 1X I come back the next morning, (was in orbit) and it was showing the Catastropic Failure screen.

[insylem]

need more specifics.

Where were you orbiting?

Yes

If Kerbin... equatorial?

Yes

Any debris about that you could have run into?

No

Did your orbit dip into the atmosphere at any point?

No

By unattended do you mean not focused or you weren't at the keyboard? They mean different things...

Focus was on the ship. In stageing view. I went to bed, left it at 1X I come back to the Catastropic Failure Screen

If Kerbin... and equatorial... and focused then it could have been the shifting Launch pad hit boxes. Leaving the game running for a long time is inadvisable as weird things happen.

Maybe this is what happened

If it was focused anywhere then it could have been debris.

No Debris, they didn't make orbital velocity

If you weren't focused then it would have to be wiped out by having too low of an orbit to be taken care of by the auto delete... or have been classified as debris itself and deleted by having your debris allowance set too low.

It was focused

Or it could be something completely different. These are just some of the know possible causes for such things.

Who knows

[TheDarkStar]

The best way to stop something like this from happening is either to use timewarp for anything that is not in use or to not focus on it. If you don't already know, you can change your timewarp options in the atmosphere between 1 and 4 (although higher timewarps can cause larger ships to explode if you use them with it) and from 1 to 100000 in orbit depending on how far you are from the planet/moon/sun you are on.

[insylem]

Ya, I figured that out. Alright thanks Guys