Launch Roulette?

[SpacedCowboy]

Okay guys, hear me out. I'll try to make this short: Built a ship called "Kethane & Science", obviously entailing a lot of parts and tonnage. Built and tested each stage,(meticulously I might add). Launched for the Mun, got there but due to my poor piloting skills, crashed, hit the escape button, and got the options of "revert to VAB" or "revert to launch", which I chose the latter. So I'm ready to launch and the second stage starts to just fall off the rocket! Reverted to launch again, and with the same results, 3 or 4 times! So why is this ship (originally sound) falling apart on the launch pad? I made no structural changes! What's the variable factor here? A bug?, or what?

Edited March 21, 2014 by SpacedCowboy

[PUNiSH3R]

Revert to the VAB, sometimes my bigger ships get bugged on "Revert to Launch" and CATO without the TO...

Edited March 19, 2014 by PUNiSH3R
[sic]

[SpacedCowboy]

Thanks for the response, I did go back to the VAB a couple of times just to check it out, but made no changes. Went back a third time and put in an additional strut, that worked. Third launch was finally good. Still don't understand the difference between my first and second launch attempts. P.S. Don't know what "CATO without the TO..." means?

[Capt. Hunt]

CATO stands for "Catastrophe At Take-Off," also known as a "Rapid Unplanned Dis-Assembly," or "Tragic Loss of Vehicle."

[federally]

When the launch loads up and the physics engine kicks in my rockets often experience a jolt or shake. This occasionally causes random failures on proven good designs. I'm guessing your rocket wasnt dealing with this experience very well.

[SpacedCowboy]

Well, thanks for clearing that up at least. And to think all this time I thought it meant the Green Hornet's sidekick! (just kidding) Anyways, got any ideas for the main question here? Why does the same ship that sits on the pad and launches fine the first time, and then falls apart on the next launch before I can even hit the space bar?

[Skorpychan]

I think it's because of the physics snapping back to no forces from acceleration.

I've seen it happen. I reverted to launch after things broke in mid-air, and the first stage ripped it's way through the upper stages, even as the boosters shot downwards.

[StrandedonEarth]

I've noticed that when I revert to launch a few times, it starts to get a little laggy. The extra delta-time between physics calcs may cause bigger shakes which breaks stuff. That's my theory anyways.

[Jasmir]

I think, this is simple a race condition. Restarting KSP mostly fixes such a behavior for me.

[Amaroq]

Note also that ferram4's Kerbal Joint Reinforcement has a fix in it which brings up the physics load slowly when a craft first reaches the launch pad, to prevent exactly the sort of "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't" problem you had.

[SpacedCowboy]

Okay guys, appreciate all of the input. Guess it's just one of those things you have to deal with. A game physics thing. Still love this game anyways!