saburai

I have doubts about how successful they'll be, but make no mistake, they intend to fully reuse the stage: Source: http://www.spacenews.com/article/launch-report/41350spacex-releases-footage-of-falcon-9-first-stage-splashdown

Excellent contribution! Also, very cool note on the relative prices of fuel for liquid vs. solid rockets. I agree that a feature that automatically recovers large liquid fueled rockets would be unfairly easy. But a feature that allowed you to ATTEMPT to recover a large liquid fueled rocket, but requiring careful design and (perhaps) great skill, would be pretty cool.

Well, technically Shuttle had liquid (monopropellant) fuel tanks and they were recovered every time, so yes. But in terms of large, cryogenic boost-phase tanks where the tank represents the major structural element, I don't know of any successful recoveries thus far. But it's not impossible, or at least SpaceX doesn't think so, as they have outfitted their Falcon 9 first stages with landing legs and intend to attempt to recover them in the future. The first attempt managed a water landing, but I don't think the stage was in condition for reuse. Maybe next time. (http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2014/02/spacex-crs-3-landing-legs-plan-first-stage-recovery-ambitions/). This would make a great high-tree technical ability: "Recovery and Re-usability". The way I see it, it would work like this: 1. All jettisoned debris without a control function is 100% lost, as it is currently (I think), until the Recovery tech is researched. 2. Once the tech is researched, two things happen: i) you get a new part, the "auto chute" which can be used to slow the decent of jettisoned parts, and ii) the acceleration survival rating of all parts in the tree are increased by, let's say, 20%, due to better hardening and engineering. If the number of chutes installed is sufficient to get the jettisoned assembly under the lowest acceleration rating in the jettisoned part list, the part is automatically salvaged. Penalties for distance from KSC remain. In addition: a. Any part whose acceleration rating is violated is destroyed 100% and the remainder are penalized 15% each for collateral damage due to the failed part (you get a report explaining what happened). b. Part trajectories during reentry are estimated based on an assumed wind resistance acting as a gravity vector, so they don't drain processor (is this possible? I don't know, maybe). The intent would be to realistically estimate the reentry location without having to do a full physics simulation. c. Parts landing in water get no landing damage penalty. Parts landing on plains get a 10% landing damage penalty. Parts landing on desert, ice, or mountains get a 20% landing damage penalty. Parts landing on rugged mountains get a 50% landing damage penalty. Landing physics are thus handled procedurally, not through physics simulation. d. The difficulty of recovering thin liquid fuel tanks would be handled by giving them very unforgiving g-force survival ratings. Solid boosters, struts and frames, and other gear would have more robust ratings and so the auto-chute would work very well for them. 3. There could be a "Recovery and Reusibility II" tech, that would i) boost your part acceleration rating further and ii) give you a new module, similar to a control pod, but radially attachable and very light. It would automatically cause jettisoned liquid tanks/rockets to attempt a restart/landing, let's say with 75% success. But you'd have to jettison them with at least 5% fuel remaining, and the tank would have to have landing legs installed unless the landing was in water. That would close the loop and allow the player to attempt to reproduce SpaceX's feat. Again, the landing location estimate would be procedural, not physics based, and the damage/recovery value would be computed statistically per the overview above. In reality, managing hardware costs are a huge part of running a space program, so this would allow/encourage realistically low contract payouts and would force the player to spend a considerable amount of forethought planning her reuse and recovery opportunities, which is very true-to-life. Because the recovery value/survivability percentages are quite adjustable as I've laid them out, this scheme could be play tested against several possible difficulty metrics, and could be adjusted for novices and experts in future releases. Perhaps something like this will make it into the beta.