Fully re-usable lifters in career mode?

[glen.mack]

I like the idea of recovering things, but as far as I'm aware, parachutes "don't exist" if you aren't in control or in control within 2km of the object affected by gravity, therefore they crash, but with career mode, (I do this anyway, but it would be good to have a reward) will having an asparagus lifter with stages that can land safely net you a "re-usable" lifter? Will fuel costs be a hefty burden do we think?

Thoughts, knowledge, comments welcomed.

[Aphox]

I like the idea of recovering things, but as far as I'm aware, parachutes "don't exist" if you aren't in control or in control within 2km of the object affected by gravity, therefore they crash, but with career mode, (I do this anyway, but it would be good to have a reward) will having an asparagus lifter with stages that can land safely net you a "re-usable" lifter? Will fuel costs be a hefty burden do we think?

Thoughts, knowledge, comments welcomed.

This can't really be answered right now, as only the devs know what's happening with career mode. If anything, I can see this being more of a game mechanic suggestion than a question. For all we know, career mode might not even go in-depth enough for re-usable crafts to matter, but we won't know until we get there.

[rpayne88]

Also, you may also have to pay refurbishment and recovery costs. You would need to maintain your boosters and pay for some to go pick the thing out of the ocean.

[bsalis]

Anything further than 2.2km from the craft you are in control is "on rails". Anything on rails, and below a certain cutoff threshold altitude (which i *think* is about 30km for Kerbin, but please speak up anyone if that's wrong) will be destroyed. I don't see any of this changing soon. Recovery feature has already been added, yet it still works like this.

With the way it works now, best I can think of for a re-usable multi stage rocket is to have two stacked booster stages. First stage needs to be large, and be able to lift the whole rocket into a sharp suborbital, with say Ap at 100, with trajectory set for splashdown just off KSC. That suborbital will give you enough time to decouple and use the next stage to circularise, then switch back to the first stage booster to land it. Then return back to the craft in orbit, decouple second stage, deorbit and land.

[Kasuha]

(which i *think* is about 30km for Kerbin, but please speak up anyone if that's wrong)

23 km for Kerbin. Tested yesterday.

[rhoark]

There's a mod, TT NeverUnload that does what it says.

Squad has said that recovering a vessel will reimburse cost proportional to how far it is from KSC.