Air drop help

[NoobTool]

I'm wondering how despawns work when doing airdrops in stock 1.2. Is there any way to do an airdrop without the payload or parent craft despawning? Or will I have to use a mod for this?

[Jarin]

If you can stay in physics range (25km in atmosphere, I think?) until it hits the ground, you're good. For everything else, look at something like FMRS. There's a 1.2 updated version in the last page or two of the thread. I've been using this for Virgin Galactic style high-altitude orbiter launches.

If you're just trying to get biome science info without landing, though, parachute drop-pods from a plane should do fine. Drop them low and circle if necessary.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Jarin

[NoobTool]

Hmmm... 25km should work fine. I'll have to give it a go. Thanks for your answer! Is anyone able to confirm that radius for atmospheric despawn? 

[Jarin]

1 hour ago, NoobTool said:

Hmmm... 25km should work fine. I'll have to give it a go. Thanks for your answer! Is anyone able to confirm that radius for atmospheric despawn? 

Give me a few minutes and I can test it.

Edit: Confirmed, 25km. Just remember, 25km goes by real fast when you're supersonic. Your drop pods need to be on the ground by then. You may need to adjust how low their parachutes open. My materials bay + probe core + parachute test pods set to immediate-chute-open had barely dropped 500m by the time they went out of range, and they were dropped from a subsonic flying bus.

Edited November 1, 2016 by Jarin

[NoobTool]

@Jarin

Sweet! Thank you so much! I'm planning on dropping from below 3000m at less than 200 m/s. From this:

I'm hoping to put a surface base on Laythe with it. Thanks for your help, it will allow me to focus my testing.

Edited November 1, 2016 by NoobTool

[Jarin]

13 minutes ago, NoobTool said:

I'm hoping to put a surface base on Laythe with it.

And here I assumed you were thinking small. XD

But yeah, that should work nicely. Though you might still want to consider FMRS so you can ride the base down and manage the landing, unless you're really sure of its parachute stability.

[NoobTool]

@Jarin

I'm planning on individual modules all deployed from the cargo bay in a single stack. They'll be connected by staged docking ports with parachutes and landing legs on each module. Once out of the bay, I'll switch to the stack, deploy all the landing legs, and stage through, each module deploying its chutes as it separates from the stack. It should allow them to come down close to one another, but not right on top of one another. I'll assemble with vehicles on the surface. Likely a little ambitious, but that's the fun!

[bewing]

Slight clarification -- it's actually 21.5 km in the atmosphere.

[Rath]

Wait, that seems weird.  I always thought that it was 25km for despawn and 2.5km for load.

[bewing]

No, it depends on your situation. The ranges are now actually exposed in your settings.cfg file.

On the ground it's 2 km, I think. In atmospheric flight, it's 21.5 km, in space it's 15 km. The autodeletion altitude is something different. That's 25km on Kerbin.

 

[Jarin]

7 hours ago, bewing said:

In atmospheric flight, it's 21.5 km

My testing begs to differ.

Disappeared two seconds later, immediately after flipping to 25.0km.

As for the others, I'm pretty sure the physics range for space is 2km just like landed. Either 2 or 2.5km. Tested regularly refueling craft at a big laggy space station. It doesn't halt the game to load physics until final approach (which has gotten me in trouble with time warp more than once). 

Edited November 2, 2016 by Jarin