Do parachutes work when you switch off of the spacecraft?

[gxmikvid]

Title says it all.

There are escape pods ready on my station, and i started wondering if the parachutes would open if i release them and then switch off of them.

Edited January 12, 2020 by gxmikvid

[Geonovast]

No.

When you switch away from a vessel the game sticks the vessel onto rails.  This means that the only calculations done for its trajectory are the ones related to gravity.  Each planet also has an "auto-delete" altitude, which means that any vessel that's on rails and falls under that altitude will be automatically delete.  The game will consider it destroyed and any crew on board will be killed.

The game has what's called a "physics bubble".  Your selected craft, and any other crafts within that bubble will have the physics calculations done for them, which is required for the parachutes to work.  So you would have to follow your pods down fairly closely with another craft to get them to work.

I'm not sure if the Stage Recovery mod would help in this situation.

Also I'm moving this to Gameplay Questions.

[gxmikvid]

Thx...

Now that i think abaut it... it makes sense... and i will use it 1 by 1  (or try the mod you mentioned)

[Superfluous J]

However if the ship has no power and only probe cores and the chutes are active AND you follow the ship down through the atmosphere, the chutes will trigger.

[Curveball Anders]

18 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

However if the ship has no power and only probe cores and the chutes are active AND you follow the ship down through the atmosphere, the chutes will trigger.

I've actually used this to drop a minimal science container thingy back to Kerbin without landing the main craft.

It's a bit tricky since have have to release the drop pod inside the atmosphere and follow it down without letting the main craft crashing or getting deleted.

 

[Superfluous J]

55 minutes ago, Curveball Anders said:

I've actually used this to drop a minimal science container thingy back to Kerbin without landing the main craft.

It's a bit tricky since have have to release the drop pod inside the atmosphere and follow it down without letting the main craft crashing or getting deleted.

 

If you're either low enough of eccentric enough, a properly timed retrograde decoupling can do it