Recovering lifter stages

[Sandermatt]

I currently play with kerbal economy, which means I should recover as many parts as possible.

I added parachutes and a drone control to my lifter stage. Sadly I cannot switch to the lifter stage in atmosphere and deploy the chutes.

Is there a way to deploy them? If I open them while still attached (which I would prefer not having to do for obvious reasons), will I be able to recover the stage or will it unload as soon as it is too far away?

Edited January 5, 2014 by Sandermatt

[Dogface]

I put chutes on my boosters once. I set the chutes to stage with the booster separation. It did work, but as there is no economy yet, I never checked to see if I got my money back. koney? ah, kurrency

Of course, there is the danger that an unattended part will be classified as debris and deleted.

Edited January 4, 2014 by Dogface

[Smidge204]

Add the chutes to the same stage as the decoupling? Not sure if that works.

Maybe use Tweakables to change the altitude at which they deploy so you can safely deploy them before detachment?

=Smidge=

[Sandermatt]

and do they land or do they get lost when the distance becomes too large?

[Seret]

Putting chutes in the same stage as the decoupler(s) does work, whether it's got enough time to land before you move out of range is another story. I've done it before but I'd be surprised if anything made it to the ground. It'll be interesting to see if that problem gets addressed when we start getting cash back for recovery. It might just be the case that anything that despawns while slowly descending under a canopy counts as recovered.

[BlackBicycle]

Never tried this, but give it a try, won't take too long.

Make sure your "separate boosters" and "open boosters chutes" are in the same stage. Add probe cores to each of your boosters. At the start of the flight, make sure you "Control from Here" from your main payload - capsule or core.

The boosters should become separate craft when jettisoning.

To check it, just make a very simple small rocket. I'd do it, but I don't have access to KSP right now.

[Mystique]

My bet is that it won't work (like also won't work dropping probes with chutes from jet or from low orbit) - they'll just disappear when you get far enough, there is no way to counter that currently. Those parts that decouple at 3-4 km altitude may have enough time to land, but who actually needs such short stages?

[KASAGD]

if you aren't focused on anything hitting the atmosphere it always burns up afaik

[rpayne88]

In stock:

If they land before you are 2.5km away, they will stay as they are. If they are still in the air, they will despawn. Try a mod such as TT never unload to make them land safely.

[BlackBicycle]

Never tried this, but give it a try

Erm... to quote myself. Okay, a bit of a mistake. You should attach MechJeb modules, rather than probe cores, to your boosters or any other "debris". Checked yesterday, accidentally plopped my MechJeb (the only one in that craft, so this needs rechecking) onto my pre-last stage. When that jettisoned before final landing, it splashed into the ocean and was considered a "probe". It never expired, until I "recovered" it from the Mission Control (umm... "tracking station?")

[Peppe]

You might suggest to the kerbal economy modder to look at what the Mission Controller Extended mod did. It basically ran a check before the game deleted something in atmosphere and if it had either enough parachutes or enough fuel / engines it deposited a recovery value to your account.

The other option is you take everything to orbit/near orbit. Separate./stage circularize main craft, switch back to other craft before it hits atmosphere again and take it back down to the surface.