'shot down' space shuttle

[TJPrime]

Ok, I was just testing my space shuttle for a space station and everything was going very well (with a few loose ends, most of them just needing struts). I was coming in to land after over-shooting and I was just thinking 'thank god, it's finally over!' just before it happened. First, it was just one of two tail wings. I thought it was just a small bug. Then, the unexpected happened: my plane seemed to be almost shot down out of the sky. I didn't get a screenshot of the actual explosions, but I do have some screenshots of the debris field, as well as the F3 menu.

Debris field

The two furthest pieces are over a kilometer apart

F3

It shows that I seemed to have collided with the launch pad, but it's over 2.5KM away, as well as a few hundred meters above sea level. I have a lot of mods installed, but there are only a few that I could think would cause this soft of thing. One screenshot of my GameData folder...:

Any hints of what could have happened? Or have is this a new kraken?

[Alshain]

Structural Failure. You were putting too much stress on it and it wasn't strong enough. Yes, that can happen in stock aerodynamics. Struts are your friend.

[comham]

This happened to me earlier too, no manuvers or anything, left wing and right wing collided with the VAB (according to the F3 report) about a minute apart. While 20km out from the VAB. If it was structural failure there wouldn't be any mention of VAB or Launch Tower in the report.

When the first wing went I thought I was bummed, then the second one balanced it out and I had a chance to land. The final crash was merely a reflection of bad spaceplane design.

[zekes]

It's a bug, that no one really knows why or how it works. Best to quicksave on re-entry, and reload save if it happens. It's hard to reproduce multiple times. It's not your fault, it's just a game bug.

[RocketPilot573]

It's a bug, that no one really knows why or how it works. Best to quicksave on re-entry, and reload save if it happens. It's hard to reproduce multiple times. It's not your fault, it's just a game bug.

Actually, quickloading can make it worse, the only way I've found to stop it is to reboot the game.

[TJPrime]

Structural Failure. You were putting too much stress on it and it wasn't strong enough. Yes, that can happen in stock aerodynamics. Struts are your friend.

Just before the explosions, I was flying at around 200 m/s. How could it not handle that after re-entry?

[Padishar]

As others have said, it is a bug in the core game. It happens in stock too, and can happen much further away from KSC (it has even been reported in orbit around minmus). It has been reported in the official Squad bugtracker but is very difficult to reliably reproduce which makes it very difficult for Squad to track down the cause.