Simulate parachute landing for on-rails flight

[Grumman]

TLDR: When not focused on a spacecraft and it drops below the critical height for despawning, check if the weight is less than X*deployed parachutes + Y*deployed Mk 25 parachutes. If it is, let it land safely.

I was attempting a 100% recoverable run now that 0.21 is here, and was confused when with two identical rockets, one's main stage splashed down safely as I watched it, but the other appeared to have crashed. Looking into the matter, this was apparently caused by a bit of shorthand used by the game when a vehicle doesn't have focus.

Since this is obviously quite a setback for my plan, I was hoping for a kludge that would guesstimate whether a despawning object had enough parachutes to land safely (say, 1 ton per parachute for Kerbin). If it is, find the center of drag/center of parachutes and the center of mass, and declare that it landed in an orientation with the former directly above the latter. This would not be intended as a substitute for a controlled landing so you could set the numbers lower to err on the side of failure, but it would be nice as a way to let us land boosters and fly our rocket at the same time.

[blueshark15]

I have this same issue, in fact, I made a thread about it, although mine was more about the issue than a possible solution but anyway, this is good.

[Kegereneku]

I've got to admit that even if it's way too complicated or too soon to implement this, I look forward something like this.

But more seriously, that's more career feature than Sandbox for now, because :

...you have infinite budget anyway.

...so you don't actually re-use component unless you can refuel them.

...you don't even have a (ingame) reason to go look if it landed correctly.

...and as of now the recovering process is still manual, if you only jettison one or two stages it's ok, but if you have 10 boosters to recover manually it will rapidly become annoying.

On the other hand I bet everybody saw the Shuttle's Booster and SpaceX reusable plan and wish to mimic it NASA-style.

[rodion]

I've got to admit that even if it's way too complicated or too soon to implement this, I look forward something like this.

But more seriously, that's more career feature than Sandbox for now, because :

...you have infinite budget anyway.

...so you don't actually re-use component unless you can refuel them.

...you don't even have a (ingame) reason to go look if it landed correctly.

...and as of now the recovering process is still manual, if you only jettison one or two stages it's ok, but if you have 10 boosters to recover manually it will rapidly become annoying.

On the other hand I bet everybody saw the Shuttle's Booster and SpaceX reusable plan and wish to mimic it NASA-style.

You fail to completely understand the mindset of the reusability fanatics...they don't do it because it is practical, or because reusability is naturally well-supported by KSP, or because it's convenient or simple, they do it because they can and because EVERY part will come back safely...NO MATTER WHAT.

[marach]

not to mention its fun to do...