De orbit without watching?

[steakbbq]

I love bringing back kerbals and all, but it takes forever for a re entry.

I guess i could test this out but I dont know if it will work.

Can I do my de-orbit burn, let the chutes out and forget about it? Or will the ship not renter safely if im not sitting here watching it for 5 minutes?

Edited December 29, 2013 by steakbbq
Answered

[Roastduck]

I just get through the upper atmosphere. When I stop glowing, I turn off SAS, deploy chutes and go get a snack.

[Murph]

You need to keep it active between 22km and the surface, or it will be auto-deleted as crashed. Active means the current ship, with no exceptions other than another ship within 2.5km of it.

If the ship is a single pod or quite small, it's reasonably safe to use physics warp, other than when parachutes are deploying. Physics warp does have problems, so it's not going to work for all situations (but mostly under heavy thrust, large ships, parachute deployment, and touch/splash down).

[sgt_flyer]

Yes, you can as long as you keep the ship as the active vessel (with 0.23, you can even set your parachutes to semideploy much later ( i usually use a value of 0.2 for the parachutes air density)

[Aphobius]

Are you people serious? "takes forever", "get a snack"? What am I missing here? xD

[sal_vager]

Just tested this to be sure, and if you leave a pod to re-enter when it is not the focussed vessel it is deleted and the crew is lost.

So make sure you are watching the vessel, you can use phys-warp (shift <>) to speed things up, or go make tea, but if you switch to another craft you'll lose your Kerbals.

[Murph]

One other tip which might prove useful. You can trigger the parachute early (in orbit), and it won't deploy until there's some atmospheric pressure. So, you can do the de-orbit burn, drop any remaining stages, trigger the parachute, and go do something else while it lands. Don't use physics warp with that technique, and it only applies if you don't really care exactly where it lands, and the re-entry vehicle can land on parachutes alone.

[Kasuha]

You can squeeze 5 minutes into 1 minute if you use time warp wisely.

Make deorbit burn, then time warp to atmosphere, then physics time warp through reentry and till your speed is below 300 m/s. Then deploy chutes and time warp till 2500 m above terrain (if you have drogues), let drogues open, time warp to 500 m above terrain, let chutes open, time warp to 50 m above terrain and let the craft land.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Kasuha

[steakbbq]

Okay thanks. The only reason its a real issue right now is I am getting a communications network going for remote tech 2 and I am doing lots of re-entries, Shouldnt be a problem now that I have my 3 up at kerbal though, now I dont need to man the flights

Also is there a way to register my steam purchase of KSP on the forums? It wont let me set a signature at the current moment.

[Sirrobert]

Use timewarp.

Just make sure you are NOT in timewarp at the moment the chutes deploy fully, or they WILL rip off

[Taki117]

There is a mod out there that automatically stops timewarp just before chute deployment. (I believe it's called Safe Chute, but don't quote me on that) that will also help with the timewarp issue.

[Guest]

Also, RealChutes mod allows much smoother chute opening which maybe usable under high warp.

[Superfluous J]

Use timewarp.

Just make sure you are NOT in timewarp at the moment the chutes deploy fully, or they WILL rip off

You can lose the ship even when the chutes partially deploy. Trust me. It's happened to me

Edited December 30, 2013 by 5thHorseman