Any contact with ground or water will destroy a recovered part?

[seamutt]

Is the only way to recover a part to use a cargo bay and grabber, or build a legged lander and grabber which will prevent the part from contacting a surface on landing?

Unfortunately I have 4 recovery contracts in various stages going, and I was thinking that a reasonable parachute touchdown speed would work (the best I could get on the first mission to return by hanging onto my engine for a last minute retro burn was 3.8 m/s, and even that didn't work on either land or water- the part just rolls over and dies on contact). I'm simply reluctant as heck to scrap all these contracts. I put a lot of work and money into them. However I guess my question has more to do with what my methods will be in the future regarding recovery missions.

Note - I do have Kerbal Inventory System, but no engineers in the barn right now to go up and try to fix things. However I do suppose I could wait a couple of weeks in game time for an engineer to return to Kerban. But even then, how would he be able to rendezvous with ships on elliptical orbits returning from the Mun and Minmus? And also, after sending off a truly massive expedition to Duna and Ike during this same period, I now only have $450,000 in funds left. So this has all become a huge pain in the rear to deal with.

Thanks for any information or suggestions.

Edited October 11, 2015 by seamutt

[manaiaK]

I have recovered a few parts using the klaw and parachute on a capsule method, and all the contracts have completed OK despite, er, "rapid unplanned disassembly" on landing a couple of times (the parts didn't explode, the joints failed).

I'm not using KIS though, just KER and Alarm Clock.

I hope someone more knowledgeable helps you.

[FancyMouse]

Place chutes near the klaws, keep it at the same side of CoM as the rescue part. This way when chutes are popped, the ship will flip so that the klaw is pointing upwards with the part. You can then blow up whatever below but the part should still be fine.

[Reactordrone]

I haven't had any problems recovering parts on land or water using the claw and parachutes. Some parts have very low impact tolerance so the issue might have been part specific so I'd probably try recovering the next one but make sure you F5 before re entry just in case.

[seamutt]

Thanks you guys. As suggested, I just F5 saved and decided to see what would happen. I did not fool around with trying to add more parachutes using KIS, etc.. Here's the report:

Kerbodyne S3-3000 Fuel Tank - This was my first recovered part try, and as mentioned nothing seemed to work here. I got the impact speed down to 3.8 (this part has a listed impact tolerance of 6.0), and it was still no go. I just cancelled the mission. One further thought occurred to me, though. Perhaps the tank had fuel in it and that made a difference. With a fuel tank recovery it might help transferring the fuel out before touchdown. The claw connection can apparently do this. If you have the "TAC Fuel Balancer" mod (with it's dump feature), it would be easy. Otherwise, maybe not so easy if you don't have enough space in your primary vehicles tanks.

Poodle Engine - Impact Tolerance 8.0, my touchdown was at 6.8. No problem here.

MK3 Cockpit - (This is the big space shuttle type cockpit) Impact Tolerance 60.0, touchdown 8.4. No problem.

4th Part - Okay, I screwed up. I didn't have a 4th recovery contract.

Last thought. As I saw mentioned in a few other posts and videos, many of these recovery contracts, and especially parts in Kerbin orbit, pay extremely poorly. They are probably best avoided in the first place.