Help with Piggy back Probe

[youbenhad2]

Hey, so i created a small rover and attached it to a robotic arm inside my "Big Bird" carrier plane. I fly up, extend the arm and release the rover all ass planned, but the rover just dissapears after falling a few kilometers. I know it is landing safely becuase there are parachutes attached and ive watched it land, but if i keep watching it will eventually dissapear. I can enter the tracking station and its gone, I don't understand, am i doing probes wrong? My question i guess is if anyone has done a simmilar thing and how did you pull it off? Idk if it's a bug or I set something up wrong, please help.

[EndlessWaves]

This is just how KSP works unfortunately, it only simulates physics for nearby objects. Once your rover got more than around 2.5km away from you then it was assumed to be orbiting - an orbit that was about to hit a planet and was consequently removed.

There has been mention of recoverable parts so maybe in future another secondary simulation for parachutes/falling objects will be made in the same way there are one for orbits and stationary bodies but at the moment you have to hang around within a couple of kilometres until your probe comes to a stop.

[Cal'Mihe]

An alternative can be to extend the range of the physics calculation (requires tweaking the config files), though this may be bloody murder on your computer memory.

[youbenhad2]

darn, ok, thanks for the help, i was afraid it was just not do-able, it looked so cool too lol

[aleis]

did you add a probe "core" to your rover. anything i've wanted to control after it detached from the main ship i just added one of those with a small battery maybe a solar panel or two and the game seems to be pretty good on making it accessible to me later. That is through the Space Center. there is a limit on what the game will let you quick switch to.

To include that random piece that still had a core connected after crashing into the planet. At which point i just loaded it up in Space center and "Ended flight" to remove the debris.....maybe i cheat but i'm still learning and i'll use whats available to me.

Edited May 23, 2013 by aleis

[magnemoe]

If you drop the probe pretty low at low speed it should land before you get 2.4 km away, another option is simply to turn and circle the area until it lands.