Recovering Boosters

[maddog59]

I'm trying to figure out how to recover boosters correctly. I've built them with probe cores and parachutes, and tested them by following them down to make sure that the chutes deploy on their own and they land safely. But it's a total crap shoot as to whether or not (usually not) they show up in the Tracking Station as 'landed' or 'splashed down' on Kerbal, and therefore recoverable. Even when I filter for debris, probe, or anything else I can't find them. Any suggestions would be appreciated. 

[AHHans]

You don't need probe cores if you activate the parachutes in the stage that separates the boosters. But to have them recoverable you need to follow them all the way down to the ground until they are landed or splashed down. Anything that is in the lower atmosphere but outside the physics range of the current craft (IIRC 2.5 km around the current craft) will just be considered "crashed" and is silently deleted.

[Caerfinon]

If you want to automate it, the mod StageRecovery does a pretty good job. It abstracts chutes or powered recovery and presents you funds based on speed of reentry and distance from KSC.    

Or... sometimes the Kraken shows up and your stage just goes boom

Edited November 26, 2020 by Caerfinon

[Lewie]

Stage Recovery really is one of the best mods for stage recovery-as long as you leave enough fuel for it to land, it will. (If it doesn’t crash or burnup, of course) chutes always work to.

[maddog59]

I installed StageRecovery, checked the readme and various videos to see how to use it, restarted the game, but I'm not seeing any icons either in the VAB or at the launch pad for SR. but I can't seem to find how to get any of the messages about recoverability of a given stage or otherwise use it. I'm using 1.10 (Windows) if that makes a difference. Any suggestions on what I might be missing?

BTW: I also tried to install FMRS as an alternative, but it hung during loading with a message that the DLL was incompatible, so I uninstalled it.

Edited November 26, 2020 by maddog59

[linuxgurugamer]

4 minutes ago, maddog59 said:

I installed StageRecovery, checked the readme and various videos to see how to use it, restarted the game, but I'm not seeing any icons either in the VAB or at the launch pad for SR. but I can't seem to find how to get any of the messages about recoverability of a given stage or otherwise use it. I'm using 1.10 (Windows) if that makes a difference. Any suggestions on what I might be missing?

BTW: I also tried to install FMRS as an alternative, but it hung during loading with a message that the DLL was incompatible, so I uninstalled it.

You probably didn't  install the dependencies, listed in the OP.

If that doesn't  help, provide a log file for analysis 

[maddog59]

10 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

You probably didn't  install the dependencies, listed in the OP.

Oops. Missed those. Thanks!

[bewing]

In the stock game, if you follow them all the way down until they land, they are definitely always there. I don't know why you are having trouble seeing them in the tracking station, but I am pretty confident they still exist and  can be recovered.

 

[maddog59]

12 minutes ago, bewing said:

In the stock game, if you follow them all the way down until they land, they are definitely always there. I don't know why you are having trouble seeing them in the tracking station, but I am pretty confident they still exist and  can be recovered.

I'm afraid I wasn't clear ... yes, as long as I follow them down, I can recover them. But I was looking for a way to recover them while staying with the main vessel. It looks like StageRecovery mod is going to do the trick (I'd like to try FMRS as well, but it doesn't seem to be compatible). 

Thanks!

[jimmymcgoochie]

Any time something drops below ~25km in Kerbin's atmosphere and isn't loaded in (outside physics range or in space centre/tracking station) the game just destroys it automatically, which means no matter how many parachutes you stick on your stages it won't have any effect.

Stage Recovery is my favourite solution, it makes a huge difference early in a career game to be able to recover those boosters either using parachutes or later by powered recovery. It's entirely possible to make entirely stock reusable boosters that can launch a payload towards orbit, burn back and land at KSC before being refuelled, a new payload attached and launched again without recovering them, but this requires some pretty specialised design and flying and the payload has to be thrown high enough to still be in space when you switch back to circularise its orbit.