Bug maybe, or I don't know how it works?

[chd]

So, I'm confused about what just happened, but I'm still new at this so maybe it's just how things work....

The setting: Brave but math-challenged Jeb sets out on a mission to somewhere, Mun I think, and runs out of fuel, leaving himself in an eternal eccentric orbit around Kerbin.

He chills there for a long time until the guys at home develop The Klaw, at which point an enterprising mission comes out to get him, mostly with success---we find him, grab his ship, pull us both into an orbit that now intersects the planet (return trajectory!), and then detach.

Now I have two separate ships again, both coming back to Kerbin, and I switch back and forth between them making sure both have chutes deployed (well, armed to deploy, this was at 80 or 90k altitude still). Since I can only have focus on one at a time I follow the rescue ship back, and ol' Jeb just disappears! After I splash down and can switch to KSC again his mission is gone, and he is listed as MIA. Boo!

What happened? Is the only way to rescue a fuel-less ship either give it fuel or stay locked to it all the way down? :/

[SRV Ron]

What happened?

When the two ships reentering Kerbal are below 25k and are more then 2.5k apart, the ship not being controlled at the time will be deleted. This is most annoying to those that want to recover boosters during launch or to drop delicate science packages separately during reentry.

Solution is one of the mods to extend that distance or just bring one ship down at a time.

[Taki117]

Since KSP doesht model reentry heat at all (Yet) you could just leave them attached since they both have parachets that should be enough to slow them down, and if its not (I.e the chutes deploy and are not slowing you down fast enough) you can separate them then since it is unlikely they will get more than 2.5km away after parachute deployment.

[Laie]

...or to go down as one parcel and detach only when you're out of the worst. If neither has wings and the parachutes open at similar heights, detaching at 40km should work, 20km will work. Though if you get to 20km, you can as well wait until the very last moment.

(Edit: I'm too slow, am I?)

[r4pt0r]

some minecraft mods have "chunk loaders" that keep areas of the game world loaded, no matter how far you are from it. perhaps squad could add a "tracking beacon" part that would keep a craft loaded. to prevent it from being loaded all the time and eating up processor power, make it toggleable from the map view.

for example:

in orbit over kerbin.

map view, click your ship, click "activate tracking beacon"

begin your re-entry to kerbin

detach your "science pod" or whatever you wish to call it(ensure it has the beacon not the command craft!)

follow the command craft to touchdown

use tracking station to recover the science pod

as for recovering booster stages i think the game should auto-recover them provided they have: 1.deployed chutes and 2. a ratio of 1 chute for every 6 tons?(is that reasonable? i dont view the weight of my craft ever)

then bigger boosters would need more chutes, cuz realisim or something...