Recover Experements without recovering vessel?

[Highlad]

Ok so here is my problem:

basically I have an SSTO to take my experiments back to kerbin so that I don't need to de-orbit my munar lander (so i can repurpose it). Unfortunately I have realised that I wont be able to actually recover the data without recovering my SSTO. Recovering the SSTO, of course, defeats the purpose of having it.

The only way I can see this working is if I do some weird docking stuff with the body of my SSTO with a capsule then undock the two once landed and recover only the capsule... Still, its hardly perfect.

So, I was thinking, would it not be logical to be able to recover science if you are on the runway or launchpad?

what are your thoughts?

[Luckless]

"Recover" the SSTO craft, drag it into the hangar for checks and refit, relaunch craft. I don't think it is really all that logical to think of a craft that would de-orbit, land, top up a fuel tank and head back out without seeing the inside of a maintenance shop that was a few hundred yards away.

[richiespeed13]

"Recover" the SSTO craft, drag it into the hangar for checks and refit, relaunch craft. I don't think it is really all that logical to think of a craft that would de-orbit, land, top up a fuel tank and head back out without seeing the inside of a maintenance shop that was a few hundred yards away.

This! ^^

There is nothing wrong at all with recovering a landed shuttle, it's just the same as landing, parking, getting maintenance, and then heading out again.

[um3k]

In 0.23, you can use a Kerbal to transport data. So you could get the data out of the SSTO, recover the Kerbal, then send another Kerbal (or the same one again) using a capsule and perhaps a vehicle on the launch pad. But, yeah, what you suggest wouldn't be a bad feature. Then again, are you refueling your SSTO on the surface? If not, then you'll only be able to use it so many times, might as well recover and relaunch it, just call it "maintenance" to appease yourself.

Ninja'd...

[Highlad]

"Recover" the SSTO craft, drag it into the hangar for checks and refit, relaunch craft. I don't think it is really all that logical to think of a craft that would de-orbit, land, top up a fuel tank and head back out without seeing the inside of a maintenance shop that was a few hundred yards away.

Aye, but its fun to get into the mood. Call it roleplay.

[spyker92]

Aye, but its fun to get into the mood. Call it roleplay.

Land the SSTO, use a kerbal on EVA to take all the experiments from it, and then board a new command pod. And recover that.

[Aragosnat]

Or take out the experiments with a Kerbal and Just recover the Kerbal.

[Liowen]

Well if you have the ability to use a science lab here is a though: make a rolling science lab near the run way. You will need a probe on it to move it around and 2 Kerbals inside, one if you use the one from the SSTO as the second, and eva the science stuff to there. I would caution doing this near the launch pad as you could have it destroyed by falling debris.

[Xetalim]

Drive a rover with 10 kerbals to your SSTO, let them collect the data and recover them.

[Vanamonde]

Attach the science instruments to the plane with a decoupler, and kick them off *after* you've landed (so they don't disappear after getting more than 2.25kms from the plane).

[Kasuha]

I'd suggest using docking ports instead of decouplers so you can "refit" the plane with new science instruments after you have recovered the used ones.

You'll probably need to do the refitting in orbit, though. And it might be also easier to equip them with a small deorbit device so you don't need to leave the orbit just to get them recovered.