So I'm in the early days of career mode and I'm trying to leave the atmosphere and then return to Kerbal in 1 piece. Not orbit (I'm not far along the tech tree enough to succesfully do that) just fly up to 70km and then land. My approach so far has been to fly straight up, detach my engines, wait until I start falling back down. So far so good. My problem is that every time, my parachute gets destroyed. When it's in half-deployed mode, I'm still accelerating (at this point, my ship is just the basic command module, a science module and the parachute, nothing else) and eventually, I get the message that says the parachute got destroyed. (if I fly too high, by the time the parachute can be opened at all, it's too late, I'm falling too far) How do I decelerate enough in order to make sure my parachute does not get destroyed? Remember, I'm really low on the tech tree. EDIT: Thanks all. Yes, drag slows me down enough to open my parachute between 2km and 4km above average sea level.
