My orbital altitude just keeps falling??

[geek180]

Last night I launched the first section of a Munar orbital lab/refuel station. I got the thing into orbit around kerbin, stupidly quicksaved, and then as I was prepping for my maneuver to the Mun, I noticed both my Ap and Pe altitudes were dropping quick, Pe got all the way back into the negatives. I was on a crash course. I attempted a trajectory correction, which got my altitudes back up to normal (they were around 120k and 70k) but then as soon as I stopped the burn the altitudes started dropping again. It was past bedtime at this point so I just quit and I haven't had a chance to mess with it since.

Any ideas why I wasn't able to maintain altitude? I've put rockets into Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus orbit many times, and as far as I could tell, I wasn't doing anything wrong. This vessel was a bit larger than most of my other ships, do I need to get my Ap even higher than 70k for larger vessels?

Also, I spent over 100k on this launch. I only get a few hours of play time per week, I don't have time to go through contracts to earn back the money to try again. Is there a way to cheat and give me some money for a do-over?

Thanks for the help!

[Pecan]

'Space' start at 70km above Kerbin but to be on the safe side you should have a periapsis >=75km. Even if you were dipping into the atmosphere at ~69km though the atmospheric drag should be so little (thin air) and for such a short time (climbing back to apoapsis) that your orbit shouldn't degrade very quickly. Size of the vessel shouldn't matter at all. Are you using any mods? RSS, for instance, would give you an Earth-sized atmosphere and you'd have to be a lot higher.

[EdFred]

Are you sure you shut all engines down including RCS?

[geek180]

Are you sure you shut all engines down including RCS?

Hmmm I think RCS was on for most of the time since I needed to reposition to 0 degrees to circularize the orbit, it was after that the ship began falling. I am using Mechjeb (mainly just Smart ASS), I suppose it's possible MJ was sending some sort of signal to fire RCS but I'm not sure why it would be firing retrograde like that.

Are you using any mods? RSS, for instance, would give you an Earth-sized atmosphere and you'd have to be a lot higher.

No environmental mods installed.

[NecroBones]

Aerodynamic drag is a great guess, but I'm going to assume you were at an altitude above 70k?

There is a bug that pops up from time to time, that applies phantom acceleration to your craft. The only thing you can do is exit out of the game and come back in.

[MarvinKitFox]

press '>'

this takes you to 5x time, but also switched off all engines and rcs firing.

At this point, 1 of 2 things will happen..

1) your orbit drop vanishes, because your burning engine/thruster has shut down.

or

2) you get a message telling you that you cannot timewarp, because you have a nonzero throttle.

[geek180]

press '>'

this takes you to 5x time, but also switched off all engines and rcs firing.

You know what, I was actually in the middle of time accelerating when I noticed the dropping altitude. I went back to 1x as soon as I realized what was going on and that's when I attempted to correct the issue. I didn't realize acceleration stopped RCS, but if it does, then there goes my main suspected explanation. What the hell happened then??

[Sirrobert]

You know what, I was actually in the middle of time accelerating when I noticed the dropping altitude. I went back to 1x as soon as I realized what was going on and that's when I attempted to correct the issue. I didn't realize acceleration stopped RCS, but if it does, then there goes my main suspected explanation. What the hell happened then??

Were you at physics timewarp (2x,3x,4x) or nonphysics timewarp (5x and higher)?

If you were at nonphysics timewarp, there should be no input on your craft, it's on rails. If in this case your orbit was changing, than you had a bug.

If you were at physics timewarp, all physics and thrust is still applied. Now this could offcourse still be a bug with phantom forces, which is also my best bet.

I have never heard of Mechjeb effecting translation RCS outside of docking, so I doubt that is the problem.

Do you have a screenshot of your rocket, we might be able to figure out a problem. Phantom forces are often created because some parts clip inside eachother.

As for the post crash recovery. The best you could probably have done was revert to lauch, but that's to late now. In order to get the money back, you can add it directly by editting the save file.

Go to KSP main folder (if you have steam, it's in Steam->steamapps->common->Kerbal Space Program.) Than go to saves, find the name of your save file. There is a file there called persistent.sfs. That is your save file.

Make a backup (always make a backup before you mess with it), and open it with notepad (or something like it).

Now you need to find the line that records how much funds you have. Sounds daunting, but it's actually really easy. Ctrl+F and search for 'funds'

The line you are looking for is "funds = <number of funds you have>" Change this number to the desired amount, save, and load up your save file

[Jimbimbibble]

Definitely sounds like a part clipping issue. Are your landing legs (or another part) clipping?