recycling debris and abandonned parts

[Justin Kerbice]

For the incoming money system, it would be great if we can recycle debris (ejected parts or as a result of crashes) and parts left here or there by either get them back to VAB or by a "auto feature that will do the job for us" (leaving us the choice of what to do).

The idea is get one part back put it in the inventory without the need to buy another one so it makes part saving important (like using parachutes on SFB and be sure to drop them on water as NASA did), and In addition to damage talked in this thread, damaged parts/debris might worth less than brand new parts. Something like this:

damage = 0 to 10 (0 = garbage, destroyed by game, just to let the game know), 1 = almost destroyed, completely out of order, but with some more or less valuable raw materials like gold, copper, platinum, titanium, etc up to 10 which mean brand new. A value of 5 (average) can be for used parts that have come out and back to Kerbin (=need service). The value could be use to set price we can get back (0= 0 * base price, 10 = 100 %) and by adding recycler and parts dealers, we can make money by selling old parts, gathering parts left by others (randomly generated, just to make some extra money, or eventually from multiplayer game).

It will be also a repair cost and this let us creating cheap spaceship by buying cheap used parts, repair them (the cost should be < brand new price - used price obviously) and make some money by delivering goods.

This may add another dimension to rocket building: reusability.

[coolitic]

You can recycle the ones that go back to kerbin. In reality, it's impossible to recycle ones in space without getting another ship to haul it back but that would cost even more.

[RSwordsman]

You can recycle the ones that go back to kerbin. In reality, it's impossible to recycle ones in space without getting another ship to haul it back but that would cost even more.

Not necessarily. If you designed a ship with high TWR and a mechanism for hooking up with pieces (docking ports or otherwise), you could attach to a piece of debris, deorbit, then parachute down to avoid an explosive landing.

Better yet, bring a piece of debris to an orbital recycling plant, reduce it down to components, then apply them to the Orbital Construction mod and build new ships.