disable autodelete

[Commissar]

is there a mod that disables the 20km autodelete present in ksp? i would liek to be able to recover my lower stages and boosters via chute. they do have probe cores... so idk if that affects how ksp treats them...

[Xyphos]

the autodelete is a simulation for re-entry overheating, without actually doing any of the physics work.

there's no mod that I know of that will help you, so I'm going to suggest that you learn how to build SSTSO lower stages and aim for LKO of about 80km.
that way, your lower stage is on a sub-orbital trajectory, you can pilot your middle/upper stage to circulurize in less than 70 m/s dV which is a fairly quick burn,
any higher and your circulation burn will take longer to complete.
then use the bracket keys to switch control to your lower stage and pilot it back down to Kerbin.

Edited July 22, 2016 by Xyphos

[h0yer]

You could try 'Stage Recovery', it certainly can recover boosters with chutes and even do semi-powered returns/landings of the core stage, if enough fuel is left and if it has some means of control.

But it does this in the background, with much less 'simulation', just terminal velocity calculations and drag from the chutes.

Dropped stages still 'disappear', when falling below that altitude, but they don't just get deleted, you get the funds back. If you use KCT, you even get the parts back into your inventory for reusing them and speeding up production of rockets that use those parts..

And there is that 'flight manager for reusable stages', requires much more activity, since it makes different save-files, for jumping back and allowing to manually land the core booster, for example.

There was once this Lazor mod pack, that allowed adjustment of that rendering/loading/simulation distance (between active and non-active vessels/debris), but I have no idea what happened to the mod and game mechanics have changed in those regards, if I'm not misunderstanding stuff.