0.24 and part recovery, will it change your approach to debris?

[katateochi]

I've always been really OCD about not leaving debris in orbit so ascent stages are dropped on a suborbital path or de-orbited later to burn up in the atmo. But with recovery of parts coming in 0.24 that is actually going to be more wasteful, especially with large ascent stages.

Partly because of this and partly because I'm becoming jealous of peps who've had near misses with orbital debris, I'm going to change my approach and design craft to leave their ascent stage in a low orbit. On the really large ones I'll add some parachutes and a core and leave them with enough fuel to deorbit and then I'll hopefully land them. I'm also thinking of having a craft that can go round and pick up medium sized bits and then land with them. Ok yes it's basically running a refuse collection service around Kerbin; not that glamorous and it prob won't pay that much, but it will have some interesting design challenges.

So, are you planning to try and recycle your debris or do you think that it's not going to be worth the effort?

[Tery215]

I'm planning to build a spaceplane.

Then I'm going to build a refueling rover and a rover to put a payload in. (mods)

The refueling rover and the payload rover will pick things up from the launch pad, optimally.

It doesn't waste a lot of money to keep all your equipment unrecycled.

[Superfluous J]

It really depends. If money isn't tight (and from what I can tell it won't be) then the return on recovering spent stages is likely not worth the time. That time would be better spent launching new missions for thousands of Roots in funds. Why work and strive to save $2000* on a booster when you could instead launch a new mission for $100,000?

*We need an easy way to make the √. Maybe a smiley? :root: or something?

[Renegrade]

I'm also thinking of having a craft that can go round and pick up medium sized bits and then land with them. Ok yes it's basically running a refuse collection service around Kerbin; not that glamorous and it prob won't pay that much, but it will have some interesting design challenges.

I was actually hoping that this would be a contract that would appear from time to time.

The game would have one of the organizations take objection to the amount of trash in orbit, and put out a contract to de-orbit a few of 'em... Ideally these would be bits you've left behind in prior missions rather than stuff getting spawned up there... (this contract would NOT appear if you never left debris up there, in that case)

Ex.: "The Kerbin Astronomical Society is annoyed by the number of false positives for new objects detected, and are asking KSC to de-orbit at least 3 pieces of junk weighing 500kg or more.."

[Kurtvw]

Yep.. The biggest fail I'm seeing in this otherwise brilliant patch is that its hard to go broke. That kinda just doesn't make sense. Why have a currency if it doesn't even matter?

I think I saw a blog about that being adjustable, and I hope that is true... Because honestly, I play all hard mode all the time. I like to be challenged. But at the same time, I do understand that there are 7 year olds out there that need a goal they can handle to keep the game fun.

As long as the difficulty can be adjusted, then I'm good with whatever...

[Duke23]

Yep.. The biggest fail I'm seeing in this otherwise brilliant patch is that its hard to go broke. That kinda just doesn't make sense. Why have a currency if it doesn't even matter?

I think I saw a blog about that being adjustable, and I hope that is true... Because honestly, I play all hard mode all the time. I like to be challenged. But at the same time, I do understand that there are 7 year olds out there that need a goal they can handle to keep the game fun.

As long as the difficulty can be adjusted, then I'm good with whatever...

Well a challenge is nice, but if you go from what we're used to, to a game where you have to keep really close eyes on your funds or else you'll go broke and can't do anything, could be devastating. I like the idea of contracts and funds, but I don't want this to be a NASA Budget and Economy simulator either, I want to build some cool rockets and do fun things.

To answer the OP I think it won't change my approach much. If it's worth it I may recover debris from orbit since a couple of my designs tend to leave large liquid booster assemblies in LKO if I don't plan ahead... If it's worth it I might send a tug up to bring some of it back down. I think some of the SSTO designs I've come up with may do well on some smaller contracts like tossing up a satellite or testing equipment, so that'd be interesting to compare to a multi-stage rocket. I guess I won't truly know until I play around with it a little. The way I look at it is the more money I can get back from each launch, the bigger and more obnoxious rocket I can build for the next one.

[Kurtvw]

Well a challenge is nice, but if you go from what we're used to, to a game where you have to keep really close eyes on your funds or else you'll go broke and can't do anything, could be devastating.

Well, that's why it should be adjustable... Because to some folks its not 'devastating' it just means you didn't to it right... But to others, yes, it'd break the fun... and the game will hopefully provide a slider that allows everyone to find their preferred level of challenge.

[boxman]

I would if you could actually get funding from recovering the debris, but from what I have heard this wont be the case.

[AlexinTokyo]

I already design for no to minimal debris.

Boost stages are and will be dropped and forgotten during the ascent.

Upper stages are either decoupled prior to circularising and forgotten or, more often, equipped with probe cores and deorbited after. Currently I just crash these stages into the ground, but will probably put chutes on and recover in the future. Caveat - it's entirely possible that the cost of the chutes (after recovery) will exceed the recovery value of the spent stage, as most of the stage's initial value is in fuel, which will have been burned off.

The biggest change for me will probably be my clean up missions, which rid LKO of debris left over from failed launches, where the above strategy didn't work. Currently these missions are grab, deorbit, destroy, but I will switch to grab, deorbit, recover by adding chutes to the clean up grabber ship.

Edit to add: the other change is that I'll probably try to deorbit spent upper stages to land near KSC and maximise recovery potential, whereas now they get deorbited wherever they happen to be.

Edited July 17, 2014 by AlexinTokyo

[Eric S]

It doesn't waste a lot of money to keep all your equipment unrecycled.

If you're doing a spaceplane and you actually land it on the runway, go ahead and simplify things and recycle it, landing on the runway is the one place you get 100% value. If you're landing near the runway but not on it, you'll get 98%, at which point you may or may not want to do the extra steps.

Yes, I have mental images of people dropping SSTO rockets onto the runway for that last two percent.

[timsfitz]

There will be plenty of kerbucks to go around so I don't think it will change the way I play much.

[SkyRender]

Other than probably not being able to max the tech tree in two launches quite as easily, I doubt my strategy will change at all from the addition of funds and reputation. Though it should be amusing to see how the game handles mission 1 being a trip out to Minmus and a flyby of the Mun...

[Mischief]

My goal is 100% recovery, actually. Either by putting probe cores on every segment and separate recovery-engines and chutes to get them (sooner or later) back to Kerbin and down to the surface or by leaving them in an orbit that can be recovered by missions using KAS and the like.

Jeb at his junkyard -

'You're not going to just... throw that away are you? You could reuse that at least 2 or 3 more times! Hell, I don't trust a rocket that hasn't successfully gone into space five times! They're just getting broken in!'

[Kurtvw]

I would if you could actually get funding from recovering the debris, but from what I have heard this wont be the case.

Debris that is landed before you leave the physics area (2.3km) is recoverable. So, if you drop a booster 44km up, you're probably not getting that credit... But junk ejected (and not destroyed) low enough in the flight that it is landed before you leave the physics area you can get money for... Obviously, thats not going to include much in the way of serious boosters...

Wait - Maybe someone can come up with an absurd machine that generates orbital DeltaV instantly, so that the debris is close to the ground? Now thats a thing!

[cpast]

Debris that is landed before you leave the physics area (2.3km) is recoverable. So, if you drop a booster 44km up, you're probably not getting that credit... But junk ejected (and not destroyed) low enough in the flight that it is landed before you leave the physics area you can get money for... Obviously, thats not going to include much in the way of serious boosters...

Parts only get removed passing below 0.01 atm (around 22 km on Kerbin), so something you drop at 44 km may well be recoverable - you just have to get to orbit before it reaches apoapsis, re-enters, and descends to 22 km.

[Taki117]

Since I already design for minimal debris I will just have to adjust things. Realchutes on every stage, and a Heat Shield for the ones that leave the atmosphere.

[Brotoro]

I will continue to hope that Squad will give us a method to recover dropped stages. Perhaps a special probe part that can be added to any subassembly (such as a dropped booster) that tells KSP (when this subassembly gets separated and moves beyond the normal physics limit) to calculate the landing for that hardware...at the cost of waiting a bit while this is handled, if necessary.

[The Destroyer]

Early-game, I will build what I need! Period.

Mid-game maybe some sort of landing system

Late-game ROCKET AND PLANE SSTOS

End-game debris? Do I care?

@above idea or, as soon as you put the part on, it calculates it.

[Renegrade]

If you're doing a spaceplane and you actually land it on the runway, go ahead and simplify things and recycle it, landing on the runway is the one place you get 100% value. If you're landing near the runway but not on it, you'll get 98%, at which point you may or may not want to do the extra steps.

Yes, I have mental images of people dropping SSTO rockets onto the runway for that last two percent.

I have mental images of people taxiing spaceplanes onto the runway after landing anywhere in the flat area around KSC for that two percent as well. "Stick a runway landing" (as the FAQ puts it) my foot.

[MR4Y]

Why care about debris and part recovery when it's impossible to run out of money? Let those debris populate your planet in order to substitute the other Kerbals that aren't astronauts.

[Grover]

I tried testing a recoverable asparagus booster... but because it was so... Kerbal, it needed a very kerbal number of parachutes to land without blowing up, to the point where the part count was doubled due to the radial parachutes...

Recovering boosters isnt much worth it, ill just strap some dirt cheap SRBs onto the side of the rocket and let them clean themselves up.

As for debris, NEVER leave anything up in orbit with any launch, my staging is designed to leave any spent stages where i cant crash into them. Once theyrr out of Kerbins SOI though, i dont care much...heh, i mean, what are the chances?

[KerbMav]

If I should ever succeed in building a spaceplane that flies (and lands), I will most likely use it - weather I use KAS to refuel and build a crane to put in new payload will be decided if I succeed ...

Would adding this to e.g. all parachutes be sufficient to make spent/deorbited stages/vessels recoverable without really adding command authority or more passenger seats?

CrewCapacity = 0

MODULE
{
	name = ModuleCommand
	minimumCrew = 1
}

[Streetwind]

It won't change my approach at all. I am not a spaceplane person, and I expect to largely ignore the funds (I'll have them coming out of my ears after a few launches). I couldn't care less about part recovery

[Roastduck]

I recently watched a video on Youtube where Elon Musk pointed out that only 2-3% of a rocket's weight is payload, and the equipment to make a rocket recoverable will take about 2-3% of the rocket's weight, so you normally can't have both. He went on the state that one of his goals with SpaceX is to build hardware that is so efficient, that 3-4% can be payload, and 1.5-2% can be recovery hardware.

Once KSP gives us the ability to do research along those same lines in-game, I'll start giving serious thought to making things recoverable. Until then, I'm not too worried about it

Also, Scott Manley just today posted a video about this:

[KerbMav]

Although real-world percentages do not apply in KSP I think.