Reusable/recyclable rocket stages?

[rofltehcat]

When some people share space craft screenshots, especially of rocket cargo lifters, many seem to include recyclable booster stages. I have tried the same a few times but when I decouple the stages and open their parachutes these stages still seem to not be recoverable once I finish the mission. Does someone have any design advice?

How I tried doing it was pretty much by building a well-strutted lower stage and by putting many chutes on them. Then I'd set up the staging so the chutes would open at the same times as the stack decouplers and the engines of the upper stages would be in a separate stage so they don't burn the chutes.

However, this doesn't seem to work. I suspect the chutes can't take the speeds but I can't really check because of control restrictions (only one vessel at a time).

Edited June 1, 2015 by rofltehcat

[KerbMav]

While in the atmosphere KSP (now, since 1.0) keeps calculating vessels up to ca. 22km away.

So if you manage to time the opening of the parachutes or better the landing of your booster stage with the ascent of the rest of your rocket you might get lucky.

But most of these users most likely use the StageRecovery mod which refunds your lower stages as soon as KSP unloads them (below ca. 22km in the atmosphere).

If you do not want to mod your game, you can try to build rockets that take there booster stage high up into the atmosphere and while your next stage is on its way to a high APoapsis or maybe even after it has reached a stable orbit, you can switch to your booster stage and watch it land - might require you to add a probe core to the booster, but activating parachutes at the same time as seperating the stage should work too.

Edited June 1, 2015 by KerbMav

[Warzouz]

Short of using the mod mentionned above, you can't reuse everything. As the range is now 22.5km, you can recover very early stages such as boosters, but they don't cost a lot. You can also recover very late stages. but you can't recover mid flight stages (which is usually the most expensive part. Further more, if you want a good rate of recovery, you have to control the landing site.

For cost efficiency reasons, I went also into reusable launchers and ended with SSTO rockets. The easy way to do it is to design SSTO rocket stage able to orbit payload then deorbit itself and reenter as near as KSC as possible. If you time it right, you get a very cheap price to LKO. When you have your basic design, you can easily tweak it for each of you needs.

Here is what I did : Cygnus family reusable rockets (SSTO). In the end, it's as very simple design which is quite easy to fly.