Every time I land in water, I lose all the research!

[DuelRevolvers]

I suggest that you stop all the debris from disappearing from existence the second it hits water. I've lost quite a bit of science from this and it it annoying to say the least.

Thanks,

Aaron

[Nemrav]

you simply need more chutes, things do tend to break easier in water, but you might as well consider it as if your thing had exploded on land...

Or if its that you don't see things in the tracking station, you simply need to click on the debris icon near the top of the screen, this will show you debris where you can recover it...

[NoMrBond]

Debris will not disappear unless it is destroyed (it is hitting the water too fast), or you hit your debris limit

Some parts are quite fragile (like the materials bay), the maximum speed they'll tolerate is visible in the VAB (i.e. don't land on these, or use a lot of parachutes).

Have you set your debris limit to zero under game options?

[FenrirWolf]

One thing to keep in mind is that you can have your Kerbals take experiment info out of the science modules and store it in the command pod instead. If you do that before reentry and landing, the only part that needs to survive is the pod and you get all your science.

[vger]

What kind of enormous thing are you trying to land in water?

[Bilfr3d]

I thought that debris also had a sort of 'time-out' thing if it wasn't in an orbit. Because I have noticed that when I do missile testing in KSC, the moment (only un-guided missiles do this) they pass the 2.5km mark, they disappear COMPLETELY from the game.

[NoMrBond]

I thought that debris also had a sort of 'time-out' thing if it wasn't in an orbit. Because I have noticed that when I do missile testing in KSC, the moment (only un-guided missiles do this) they pass the 2.5km mark, they disappear COMPLETELY from the game.

During atmospheric traverse yes, if debris (or in fact anything nearby and not on rails) gets more than 2.5Km away while you're in atmosphere it gets deleted (No scaled-composites/virgin-galactic white-knight style launches without auto-delete of the carrier plane as the rocket departs for example)

[Superfluous J]

Never ever leave the science in the Materials bay. If Jeb sneezes (in his suit!) it can break. As soon as you take the reading, get out there and take the science from the bay.

[r4pt0r]

if using the 1 seater command pod, i always place the science tools on top of the pod, it ends up looking sorta cool that way.

[Dunbaratu]

Debris will not disappear unless it is destroyed (it is hitting the water too fast), or you hit your debris limit

That statement is false.

If it's flagged as debris, meaning there's no command core on the vessel, and it's "on rails" before it got settled into a landed stable state yet, then any debris in the thick atmosphere DOES get deleted regardless of whether you are at your debris limit or not.

If you are landing at Kerbin and you try to parachute your debris down to the surface and it gets more than 2.5lm away from the camera, that debris is deleted. I've had mission return vessels designed to jettison the science experiments as separate parachutable parts because that makes it easier to keep them landing slow and gentle, and had problems if I jettison them too high because then they can drift more than 2.5 km away from the main craft and thus get deleted.

[xcorps]

Attach a probe to the eject module in the VAB. Then it becomes a vessel and not a piece of debris.

[Superfluous J]

Attach a probe to the eject module in the VAB. Then it becomes a vessel and not a piece of debris.

...which adds a useless part and weight to get around a game limitation, which is bad design (both of the craft and game).

Back when I did this sort of thing, I just didn't detatch my stuff until I was under about 3km, so they wouldn't get too far away.

[RenevB]

...which adds a useless part and weight to get around a game limitation, which is bad design (both of the craft and game).

Back when I did this sort of thing, I just didn't detatch my stuff until I was under about 3km, so they wouldn't get too far away.

And unless I'm completely mistaken, it would not even work. I am quite certain that anything on rails, be it a piece of debris or a ship you're not controlling, in low enough atmosphere (23 km on Kerbin) gets deleted.

[xcorps]

And unless I'm completely mistaken, it would not even work. I am quite certain that anything on rails, be it a piece of debris or a ship you're not controlling, in low enough atmosphere (23 km on Kerbin) gets deleted.

It does work. I just did it last night. I brought 4 sci modules to Mun, jumped around for science points, returned to Kerbin and cut them lose at 5km altitude. Used [ ] to switch around and deploy parachutes, went back to my main ship and let it land and recover. Recovered the science modules with no problem.

[Tery215]

It does work. I just did it last night. I brought 4 sci modules to Mun, jumped around for science points, returned to Kerbin and cut them lose at 5km altitude. Used [ ] to switch around and deploy parachutes, went back to my main ship and let it land and recover. Recovered the science modules with no problem.

let's stop having conflicting ideas

the reason you could recover those modules was because they weren't "on rails" because they weren't far away before they landed

[Laie]

From the recently-edited wiki (http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Mobile_Processing_Lab_MPL-LG-2):

"The Lab is quite fragile, withstanding only impacts up to 6m/s. It takes ridiculous amounts of parachutes to land it safely. Other approaches to the problem trade in a few chutes for lander legs, or tiny engines and a miniscule fuel supply to pull the brakes shortly before impact. Test your design before actual use."

This applies to any fragile equipment, not only the lab. Lander legs, even a single leg(!), will soften the impact quite a bit. Actually, any sufficiently resilient equipment on the bottom (docking ports for example) will protect everything above it -- but only on dry land. When splashing down, you have to slow the impact to whatever is the safe rating for the equipment in question.

[michaelhester07]

Get out of the ship and grab the data. That gets you the same return for the data as if you had returned the pod itself. There's no other workaround needed.

You can store 1 packet of data from every experiment type you have for each biome you visit with that experiment. That is to say if you do a low mun orbit at 15km you can store an eva report for every biome you fly over. The only one you can't store multiples of is crew reports so bring a radio attachment to transmit them back home (I don't recommend this until you have basic solar panels though. radios will drain your batteries.)

[Superfluous J]

The only one you can't store multiples of is crew reports so bring a radio attachment to transmit them back home

Not strictly true. You can EVA your Kerbal and right click the pod and "take all data." Sometimes you have to do it twice. That will take the crew report out of the "crew report storage area" and then when you get back in it'll put it in the "general science storage area" and you can take a new crew report. It's clunky but consistent with how other science parts work.