[1.4] StageRecovery - Recover Funds+ from Dropped Stages - v1.8.0 (March 11, 2018)

[magico13]

Mini bug: flag on kerbal was recovered with a recovery message on my save just now... yet "flag" is on the ignore list...

Flags also aren't "flying" or "suborbital" so that's especially weird. Let me know if you see it happen again, it's minor enough to not be an issue but if the ignore list isn't working properly then THAT is an issue Thanks!

[futrtrubl]

For whatever reason, time acceleration seems to cause that. I'm starting to wonder if maybe KSP sets the lat/lon to 0, 0 for some vessels in certain situations.

I think it may be because KSP doesn't clamp lat/long to sane values so you may see over 360 degrees sometimes. It was a big problem with scansat, mechjeb et al before they clamped it themselves.

[magico13]

I think it may be because KSP doesn't clamp lat/long to sane values so you may see over 360 degrees sometimes. It was a big problem with scansat, mechjeb et al before they clamped it themselves.

I'll have to look into that too, thanks! I'm going to start logging the lat/lon as well when things go to be recovered. Something is definitely not right with it fairly frequently.

[Smurfalot]

I had a fully automated Falcon Heavy using the 3 meter parts as my standard lifter, saved me a LOT of money being able to recover all the main stages automatically, with a lighter cargo the core 1st stage often ended up in stable orbit so I would kick it back down to let it recover, heavy cargos the second stage ended up in orbit

Wetapunga: Just to clarify for my own understanding, do you use a probe core or something to let you nose the stages that end up in orbit back down into a reentry path so they can be recovered?

Magic: I have not played around with powered recovery, but it seems like adding couple of parachutes to slow it down some would allow you to do a powered recovery even if you a little short on fuel. Does SR account for the partial effect of parachutes on terminal velocity before making the powered recovery calculations?

[futrtrubl]

Magico did say

Then, using that total ISP it calculates how much dV the ship has compared to how much it requires (which has always been 2.5 times the terminal velocity, after parachutes are accounted for),

previously, and since in the last change he said

You now need 300 m/s of dV and the terminal velocity is set to 200 m/s for any vessels that don't have parachutes.

that looks to still be true.

[magico13]

Wetapunga: Just to clarify for my own understanding, do you use a probe core or something to let you nose the stages that end up in orbit back down into a reentry path so they can be recovered?

Magic: I have not played around with powered recovery, but it seems like adding couple of parachutes to slow it down some would allow you to do a powered recovery even if you a little short on fuel. Does SR account for the partial effect of parachutes on terminal velocity before making the powered recovery calculations?

Powered recovery was definitely having issues detecting probes with SAS (checking the modules on each part in the Vessel apparently doesn't work, I had to instead check the protoModuleSnapshots on the ProtoVessel), but it should be working properly (including checking for SAS capabilities) in the dev version I posted a page or so back. So even if he included a probe, it probably wasn't detecting it. Just to drive the point in more, the log files would have told me that right away

As for parachutes helping with powered recovery, as futrtrubl pointed out, it uses the terminal velocity as determined after parachutes. So you could use a small chute to drop the terminal velocity from 200m/s down to 50m/s, which would only require 75m/s of dV instead of 300m/s. There's probably an optimal mass of parachute to use to maximize the total dV of a stage, but I don't really want to try to calculate it right now

Oh, and if a parachute drops the terminal velocity to below the minimum cutoff, then the powered recovery won't kick in at all, if that wasn't already obvious

[Toyotawolf]

So i had something weird happen, a 3.75m stage with 72 stock parachutes, still crashed and burned.....ideas?

[futrtrubl]

So i had something weird happen, a 3.75m stage with 72 stock parachutes, still crashed and burned.....ideas?

Crashed and burned.... you saw it do that? If so then it never left phusics range and if so SR can't do its magic.

If that was only figurative what version and logs.

[Smurfalot]

Magico did say previously, and since in the last change he said that looks to still be true.

Thank you, I somehow managed to skip a page of reading and miss that answer.

As for parachutes helping with powered recovery, as futrtrubl pointed out, it uses the terminal velocity as determined after parachutes. So you could use a small chute to drop the terminal velocity from 200m/s down to 50m/s, which would only require 75m/s of dV instead of 300m/s. There's probably an optimal mass of parachute to use to maximize the total dV of a stage, but I don't really want to try to calculate it right now

Actually that was what I was trying to figure out (at least ballpark guess) to see what the break-over point would be on parachutes vs. powered recovery vs. a combination of the two.

Until I can test it properly, I am totally just guessing, but I would think that even if you intend to PR a stage having even one small/cheap chute to slow it down even a little bit would take it under 200m/s and give you pretty good bang for your buck in reducing the dV requirement.

[Toyotawolf]

Crashed and burned.... you saw it do that? If so then it never left phusics range and if so SR can't do its magic.

If that was only figurative what version and logs.

Where do I look for logs? The game didn't crash, and yes I meant figuratively, the message came back that it was destroyed

And i am running version 1.5.5

Edited May 8, 2015 by Toyotawolf

[Vorg]

Ran into a problem last night because the physic range is now 10x what it was. Dumped a lower stage shortly before reentry and as I normally do, but the shutes with the decouple. But now chutes burn up and with the increased range that is what happened got a message that the chute had burned up and started checking the pod, but the chute was stilll good and deployed. But then the lower stage went flying by and blew up in the water because it's chute was the one that burned up.

We now need ether Squad or the mod to and another option to chutes setting the alt/speed they deploy in addition to the options for when they fully open..

[futrtrubl]

Ran into a problem last night because the physic range is now 10x what it was. Dumped a lower stage shortly before reentry and as I normally do, but the shutes with the decouple. But now chutes burn up and with the increased range that is what happened got a message that the chute had burned up and started checking the pod, but the chute was stilll good and deployed. But then the lower stage went flying by and blew up in the water because it's chute was the one that burned up.

We now need ether Squad or the mod to and another option to chutes setting the alt/speed they deploy in addition to the options for when they fully open..

RealChutes can help with that.

[magico13]

Where do I look for logs? The game didn't crash, and yes I meant figuratively, the message came back that it was destroyed

And i am running version 1.5.5

This post contains the locations for the log files (on Windows, it's in the KSP_Data folder). Screenshots of the vessel in question, and perhaps a screenshot of just that stage in the editor with the SR editor helper window would be nice. Might be something wrong with the calculation for those parts. It could be also that the parachutes burned up due to the stock heating? Or that the stage itself burned up due to SR's interaction with the stock heating. When did you drop the stage? Was it at 2km/s at apoapsis, because it burning up is probably what happened (the destruction message, either the stock one or the one through SR's Flight GUI, will indicate if that's the case). The log should also indicate if that was the case. If you've restarted KSP since that flight, you'll have to do the flight again for any of that info to appear in the log.

Ran into a problem last night because the physic range is now 10x what it was. Dumped a lower stage shortly before reentry and as I normally do, but the shutes with the decouple. But now chutes burn up and with the increased range that is what happened got a message that the chute had burned up and started checking the pod, but the chute was stilll good and deployed. But then the lower stage went flying by and blew up in the water because it's chute was the one that burned up.

We now need ether Squad or the mod to and another option to chutes setting the alt/speed they deploy in addition to the options for when they fully open..

As futrtrubl mentioned, RealChutes has options that can let you deploy chutes at various altitudes/pressures. Additionally, once finals are over for me I'll probably add a feature to have the stock chutes open automatically so you don't have to stage them at the same time as the decoupling.

If you can get outside of physics range, SR doesn't require that chutes be deployed for recovery, but it sounds like in this case you can't get far enough away.

[scribbleheli]

I am also having issues with stage recovery I think. I have zero successful recoveries of my stages, when I am in the VAB and have added my chutes. I click the SR button to find out what my recovery percentage will be. It tells me something like 98%. But every single one has been destroyed.

Can anyone point to ways to successfully recover in the new 1.0.2?

[magico13]

I am also having issues with stage recovery I think. I have zero successful recoveries of my stages, when I am in the VAB and have added my chutes. I click the SR button to find out what my recovery percentage will be. It tells me something like 98%. But every single one has been destroyed.

Can anyone point to ways to successfully recover in the new 1.0.2?

Are you running 1.5.5? KSP 1.0.1 broke SR 1.5.4 with that exact problem, so SR 1.5.5 was released to fix that.

[scribbleheli]

I would think I am running the most current version. I use CKAN, and check before every time I play for updates.

But I don't actually pay attention to numbers, so I cant be sure.

[magico13]

I would think I am running the most current version. I use CKAN, and check before every time I play for updates.

But I don't actually pay attention to numbers, so I cant be sure.

CKAN lists the currently installed version number. If you're on 1.5.5 and still having issues I'm going to need logs and precise reproduction steps in order to be of any help, plus I'm going to be fairly busy the next few days and probably won't get an opportunity to turn on KSP during that time (though, when do I ever? I average about 3 hours a week of KSP time, with minimally 2 hours of that being debugging things)

[CatastrophicFailure]

Just gonna throw this out there, since I have NOT been having any trouble... Stage your chutes when the stage drops, BUT set their deployment pressure all the way up to like .5. This inhibits actual deployment till they get down to like five km, by which time (if they're even in phys range) they should be slow enuf the chutes don't burn.

[scribbleheli]

CKAN lists the currently installed version number. If you're on 1.5.5 and still having issues I'm going to need logs and precise reproduction steps in order to be of any help, plus I'm going to be fairly busy the next few days and probably won't get an opportunity to turn on KSP during that time (though, when do I ever? I average about 3 hours a week of KSP time, with minimally 2 hours of that being debugging things)

I have logged about 5 hours of KSP since January. And 3 of them were yesterday. I will definitely check my version number.

Just gonna throw this out there, since I have NOT been having any trouble... Stage your chutes when the stage drops, BUT set their deployment pressure all the way up to like .5. This inhibits actual deployment till they get down to like five km, by which time (if they're even in phys range) they should be slow enough the chutes don't burn.

I will also try this.

Thanks

[aristurtle]

I think I found a bug with powered recovery.

I have a manned carrier aircraft launching an unmanned probe, like so:

http://i.imgur.com/lpbcBzY.jpg

When I detached the rocket and switched to it to push it to orbit, StageRecovery recovered the carrier plane. But after the mission, the pilot's level got reset to zero. Does this happen every time?

[Wetapunga]

Powered recovery seems to be working fine for me on the latest dev versions now, the blocked fuel tanks are working properly now

time to build a fully re-useable Mars Colonial Transporter

[Mokmo]

So as i got my first burned stage, i came back here to understand how it works.

I get a part that lands at 5.78m/s but hit the atmo at 2000 m/s.

How does the text in the first post apply to the new physics ?

[futrtrubl]

So as i got my first burned stage, i came back here to understand how it works.

I get a part that lands at 5.78m/s but hit the atmo at 2000 m/s.

How does the text in the first post apply to the new physics ?

The speed when it hits the atmo doesn't matter. It is the speed at the time of deletion.

[Shalashalska]

Are my SRB's that land pretty much on the KSC supposed to be recovered about 1000 km away from it?

[magico13]

I think I found a bug with powered recovery.

I have a manned carrier aircraft launching an unmanned probe, like so:

When I detached the rocket and switched to it to push it to orbit, StageRecovery recovered the carrier plane. But after the mission, the pilot's level got reset to zero. Does this happen every time?

That shouldn't be happening, as SR should be finalizing the kerbal's flight log with a "recovered on kerbin" and should remove the "died". I'll have to look into that more when I get the chance. I'll open up an issue on github to remind me. You may want to try turning off the "Tie into Upgrades" setting and seeing if that fixes the issue with kerbals losing XP.

Powered recovery seems to be working fine for me on the latest dev versions now, the blocked fuel tanks are working properly now

time to build a fully re-useable Mars Colonial Transporter

Technically it had nothing to do with the tanks being blocked. It was actually because it wasn't able to find the SAS module on the probe because the Vessel was no longer loaded. Turning off the "Tie into Upgrades" setting also would have worked, but now that should be working properly in the dev builds.

So as i got my first burned stage, i came back here to understand how it works.

I get a part that lands at 5.78m/s but hit the atmo at 2000 m/s.

How does the text in the first post apply to the new physics ?

The speed when it hits the atmo doesn't matter. It is the speed at the time of deletion.

If you have reentry heating active then everything in the first post applies, and like futrtrubl mentions SR checks the speed at deletion (around 23km altitude). Because KSP doesn't compute drag on unloaded vessels, but does compute acceleration from gravity, it's possible that your stage is going much faster than 2km/s at deletion. The speed at deletion will be listed in the Flight GUI and (probably) in the small message. If you feel that it's too likely for your stage to burn up (apparently the 1.0.2 heating isn't even an issue at 3km/s...) then you can either increase the DR Velocity setting (remember, it's a minimum value above which there becomes the possibility for burning up. It isn't a hard cutoff) or set it to a negative number or zero to disable it entirely.

Are my SRB's that land pretty much on the KSC supposed to be recovered about 1000 km away from it?

Occasionally KSP reports completely false positions for either the vessel or the KSC. I'm looking into it more, but it seems to be more likely to happen if you do non-physical timewarp or use a planet altering mod. I just work with what values KSP gives me, it's a bug within KSP itself.