Persistence Question

[TOAST]

As a practice for when parts have cost and can be lost, when me and my friends play KSP we make it a habit to strap parachutes on any part on a stage that gets ejected from the ship.

The parachutes always seem to activate, and if I\'m still low enough to see the part I can usually see the parachute deploy, but after a few seconds it seems as thought the ejected parts just disappear entirely. The flight log, if ended, doesn\'t say anything about the part having crashed into the surface or splashed down hard so I can\'t really tell for sure. Are the parts normally supposed to \'disappear\' like that when ejected from a ship, or are they supposed to remain persistent like crashed parts?

[Kryten]

Parts in atmosphere are vanished after they get more than 2.4km from the focused ship, as it\'s impossible to put them \'on rails\'.

[TOAST]

Parts in atmosphere are vanished after they get more than 2.4km from the focused ship, as it\'s impossible to put them \'on rails\'.

This really takes away from the whole \'persistence\' feel. I mean yeah, it would flood save files with discarded debris that managed to survive the fall, but isn\'t that the point of allowing potentially recoverable parts?

[vexx32]

As I recall, it\'s only temporary. A better solution will be worked out in time.

[WoodenBiplane]

How low do they have to be in the atmosphere to get wiped? I could swear I\'ve got some debris on an elliptical at 54k that isn\'t braking.

[sal_vager]

Debris used to go all the way down to the ground, the problem is it\'s not yet possible to take drag into account for any 'on rails' object, so as a stopgap measure to prevent having stuff orbiting at 1km, on rails debris are autodeleted at about 22km.

As vexx32 says, this will change, but it is very low on Squads 'to do' list.

[vexx32]

I thought it was 20km... Ah well. It\'s around there, anyway.

I still have parachutes attached to ejected stages anyway, just so I can be prepared for when they do add that sort of thing.

[trbinsc]

The altitude that parts get deleted at is based on atmospheric density, and is around 21 km.