Dropable space plane probes

[jimos]

Hello, im trying to create a space plane codenamed kerban Explorer, the basic idea is to fly to a place on kerban and drop a payload of a goo container or the bigger lab thing onto the surface to conduct experiments, I have created the plane and attached a structure part underneath the fuselage along with a decoupler parachutes an unmanned pod batteries and radio transmitter etc, the problem i have is when i fire off the probes they are set as abandoned. what i wanted to do was drop them land at kerban and use the tracking station to use the dropped probes. Does anyone know a way to stop them going abandoned or has anyone created a mod for 0.22 that allows some kind of missile type probe launcher for space planes?

[Jaxal1]

I think currently uncontrolled objects in atmosphere are despawned more than a few kilometers from the active craft. That would include dropped probes.

I'd love to see an answer for this too, because I have an idea for a mission to the moons of Jool where parachuted probes are dropped into Jool during aerocapture. But I realized the probes would despawn before I could do anything with them, or worse, I'd switch view only to make my main mission craft despawn.

[rhoark]

There is a mod called NeverUnload. It's a part you can put on a vessel (or fragment thereof) so that it will never unload.

[nhnifong]

Your mothership is in orbit right? Just switch focus to the dropped probe and follow it down.

[aven17]

It isn't doable stock with a plane unless you stay within the area until the probe has touched down, ie fly circles around it or just land and detach the device then. It would be easier to do using controllable probes jettisoned from a larger craft in a stabilized orbit that you can then manually guide down.

I have personally used the probe from orbit method. I launched a mothership made up of 4 manned probes into a polar Kerbin orbit and then manually detached and guided each one down into specific landing sites.

[jimos]

hmm no i flew at an alt of 5000 over the mountains and dropped the probes.

[Pursuedtank]

It's not going to work if you do that. In the stock game, if part of a craft is separated from 20000-0 meters above sea level it will disappear from the game when it gets 2.3-2.5 km away from the currently controlled vessel. There are, however, mods that may help you such as NeverUnload as is listed above.

[Dangerous_Beans]

It's not going to work if you do that. In the stock game, if part of a craft is separated from 20000-0 meters above sea level it will disappear from the game when it gets 2.3-2.5 km away from the currently controlled vessel. There are, however, mods that may help you such as NeverUnload as is listed above.

does that mean you can do it by air-hogging and flying really high? get in a stable flight at 25,000m, and just drop probes on parachutes?

[Captain Sierra]

does that mean you can do it by air-hogging and flying really high? get in a stable flight at 25,000m, and just drop probes on parachutes?

25km can be achieved without air hogging.

And no. The above scenario will result in the probe being fixed on rails after 2.5km if not unloaded. Then it falls to ground and crashes. The only way to really make this work is a mod like NeverUnload that force loads the vessel so parachute physics are calculated.

[Nabiscovinco]

Have you tried putting a probe body (and rtg's or solar panels) on the science thing, and do it that way?

I've tried goofing around with drop things, and that is how I get mine to work.

[Joe8]

I'm pretty sure you can make sure the probes don't unload by using docking ports instead of decouplers to drop them,

so that they are 'probes' of the original vessel. I tried this once with a (failed) droppable polar base. You can set up action

groups to make the docking ports 'decouple' instead of 'undock'.

[Wallace]

If you fly very low and slowly when you drop them, then they could reach the ground and be safe before you get 2.5 km away. You'd have to be pretty low though, and pretty slow for the chutes to work before it hit the ground, it would still be easier than landing, when I tried landing a research plane in the desert it ended up like this:

Edited October 22, 2013 by Wallace

[Securus]

Anything you can walk away from is a success!

[sdj64]

The best way to do this is to fly as slow as possible and very close to the ground, so that your probe hits the ground faster. You can make sure by flying in circles until it lands. Once it has landed and stopped rolling you can fly anywhere else and it will not unload anymore.

[Claw]

Dear goodness, this is an old and outdated post.

Time for it to rest at the bottom of Kerbin's oceans with the fish.

Cheers,

~Claw