My ships rip themselves apart in orbit???

[Kennedy988]

Hi guys o/

I seem to be having issues with resuming flights from the Tracking Center, and was hoping to get some possible fixes or workarounds...

A similar problem was brought up in this thread a while back: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/74420-Did-I-finally-meet-the-kraken

[Details]

I put the first module of a space station into a 100-ish km orbit around Kerbin the other day, and then went to sleep for the night. The next day I came back and wanted to take a look at the ship again, so I opened the Tracking Center, clicked the ship's icon in orbit and resumed the flight. Not 3 seconds in, the ship proceeds spin violently and tear itself apart, sending bits and pieces of it flying outwards in all directions. The module that I had put up was one with a lot of solar panels on it, so everything was just absolutely shredded. I ended up having to exit the flight via the space station and terminate it because there was no way to reload.

I tried sending up the same ship multiple times since that first occurrence, and every single time...

The ship is structurally sound, and it made it into orbit without any problems whatsoever.

I also terminate all debris after every few flights, so there's no way it could have hit debris in its orbit.

...?

Has anybody else experienced this? Is there a way to make it stop?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[Bobnova]

Any clipping involved with the construction of the ship? That's where most of my random explosion issues seem to come from.

[Claw]

For future reference, there are two ways to rescue your game in a situation like this.

In both cases, stay right where you are and press Escape to pause the game. Don't exit back to the tracking station or space center. Don't quicksave, and don't leave.

1) Go to your save folder and copy the persistent.sfs file. Rename it something else. Exit and copy your copied file back over to persistent.sfs

2) Force close the application without exiting the game. Don't "exit to tracking station," just close the program. The game will not save over the persistent.sfs file.

After that, you can restart the game and go back to your save game. It doesn't work 100% of the time, but it will rescue your game more often than not.

[Drew Kerman]

Just experienced this myself:

I went into my persistent.sfs file and found a ton of extra parts had been added. I actually think in my case this is due to a RemoteTech2 (mod) bug. Anyways, I tried deleting all but one instance of every part and when I went straight from the tracking station to my craft it loaded fine in orbit but the planet was an inverted texture or something. I found it did the same thing when I tried just deleting the entire VESSEL structure and replacing it with an earlier version from my backups. No idea why.

BUT I found that after I modified my save file so the vessel only has one of each part it was supposed to have, went from the tracking station to a craft I knew was fine and then switched focus over to the problem vessel, it loaded and the planet was loaded and everything was good. So you may want to try the roundabout way of getting to the vessel to see how that works.

Now after every session I use Kerbal Edit to look at my save file and confirm that all craft only have the parts they are supposed to have

[Aedile]

Duplicating ship issue from remote tech 2?

[Starwhip]

Check this out. I think you are experiencing a "gyro kraken", as you say that the ship was spinning violently.

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Deep_Space_Kraken

[Kennedy988]

Thanks for the help guys. Though the issue hasn't been solved yet and I'm still open to advice, after googling "Gyro Kraken" as Starwhip suggested, I've determined that to be the cause.

A bit of extra info that I forgot to include in the OP:

I don't use mods, and the issue has persisted after every consecutive launch with the same ship. Immediately exiting the flight via the Space Center has not yielded any results.

I'm going to try rebuilding the ship from scratch and launching it again, cause unfortunately everything that Gaiiden said to do seemed way too complex

I will update this when I've put the new ship into orbit, but if anybody has any more info please feel free to add it

[Kennedy988]

Update:

Since the last post I've completely rebuilt the module I want to send up into orbit. The module actually ended up being about 30% larger because I realized that the structure was easy to get into space. Its somewhere around 110 parts (Mostly in Octagonal Girders,) and was put into a 150km orbit.

The booster stage that I used to get this one up has also been completely redesigned since the old one would now be too small to carry the larger ship.

Results:

The Kraken still hates me :*( This new module still only lasted about 2 seconds before being obliterated and though I can manage to get in a quick save before it agitates itself to pieces, reloading has no effect and neither does immediately exiting and re-opening the program. Reverting and re-launching yields the same result every time. Have at you Mr. Kraken.

Next step:

I will try three things: 1 - Will attempt to take Gaiiden's approach, though I can see myself running into problems. 2 - I will attempt to rebuild the module making it less "parts-intensive." A single space station module with 110 pieces is getting up there....3 - I will see whether or not its just "this" module that sends the Kraken into rage mode or if every other ship I leave hanging in orbit also triggers it.

I will update in a day or two after I've gotten around to doing these things. I'd be really appreciative for any more advice from readers. I'm hoping that this thread will be beneficial to any player newer than I who has encountered the same problem.

Will follow up with pictures if I ever figure out how

[Claw]

Will follow up with pictures if I ever figure out how

Pictures would be incredibly awesome. You can use an image hosting site like imgur.com To take a picture, press F1. Then go to your KSP/screenshots directory and drag/drop the picture into imgur. When you click on the picture, copy the one called "BB Code" (surrounded with IMG tags) and paste it into your post here in the forum.

Also, you can put your craft files up on pastebin.com