Recovered parts and refunds.

[Hidden Gunman]

I admit I haven't taken a good look at this, but it seems that parts that you recover via the Space Centre after a mission don't give you refunds, and don't seem to be calculated into the contract completion process.

I stuck parachutes on stages and pieces I've dropped, recovered them after a mission, and no change to funds. Am I missing something, or is this a development oversight? (The issue being they are big bits, and big bits cost money).

[Taki117]

If you drop them during flight and you are below 22km in altitude and greater than 2.5km in distance they will be despawned and not recovered. If, however, you are greater than 22km then they will be put on rails, and if you are fast enough your ship can be circularized and you can use the map to switch to them and follow them down.

[Kryxal]

I managed some recoveries (and some things just blew up) and received some funds back ... do note that distance is a factor, anything left on the launchpad can easily be picked up for full credit.

[Hidden Gunman]

Cheers for that. Think I'll just put docking ports on the big out of atmosphere stuff and build a tug to drag them back home....being a miser takes some effort

[Kryxal]

I've tried landing my final stage into orbit (I usually leave the periapsis for that part at maybe 40-50km and deorbit when I have "free" time), but it doesn't work too well ... a pair of large 1.25m tanks and an engine usually lose at least one part on landing or splashdown.

[Xavven]

Recovering debris landed at Kerbin does recover Funds but you get no window displaying it. You only get a window displaying how much money you got back if there was a command module or probe core attached.

Next time you go to recover debris, check your Funds counter before and after

[Rus-Evo]

Recovering debris landed at Kerbin does recover Funds but you get no window displaying it. You only get a window displaying how much money you got back if there was a command module or probe core attached.

Next time you go to recover debris, check your Funds counter before and after

So should I attach chutes to all stages and then recover non-controlled items by going to "fly" them later after they have "landed"?

[Kryxal]

You can do a direct recovery, but early stages won't make it to the ground without moving outside physics range (unless you mod that) and late stages will probably lose half the parts to tipping over or splashdown.

[Mast]

do note that distance is a factor, anything left on the launchpad can easily be picked up for full credit.

Yea, except a command module has a cost of 600 and refunds never higher than 588 (98%).

Still not sure how that's calculated though, it doesn't get damaged afaik.

[Xavven]

Yea, except a command module has a cost of 600 and refunds never higher than 588 (98%).

Looks like a bug to me!

[KerikBalm]

The cost of the command pod, like a fuel tank, includes the fuel contained therein.

When you see the recovery screen, it displays the fuel separate.

You got 588 for the pod, and 12 for the monoprop.

588+12 = 600

[liufrain]

+1, seems it's a bug.

Since the contracts update is turned out, there is a need to regain things like boosters etc.

I've just loosed 500K by failing a perfectly arranged return of the first and second stages.

Did anyone sent a report for this one?

[advil]

The cost of the command pod, like a fuel tank, includes the fuel contained therein.

When you see the recovery screen, it displays the fuel separate.

You got 588 for the pod, and 12 for the monoprop.

588+12 = 600

I believe this is the correct assessment. I didn't realize until I created a new career mode file that the base (Starting) command module holds 10 monopropellant. I don't have the ability to use RCS jets on that file yet and kept noticing that I was being refunded for 10 monoprope that I hadn't used. So I am onboard that this is not a bug.

[advil]

A question that was posed to me by a friend was this, If you drop a stage with radial parachutes and later go and retrieve it, do you get money back for that part? It looks like that has been discussed a bit here and maybe you are getting your money back for the part? I do realize that due to distance and whatnot the part can drop off and just go away but my thought was what if you put a small guidance system on the part? So each time you drop a depleted stage it has it's own computer command module and is thus another craft or probe of the main craft, assuming that part survives it's descent, would you be able to recover it for it's full value less the spent fuel and anything that has broken? With the addition of a command module, the part shouldn't drop off as it is technically it's own vessel. Has anybody tested this yet?

[KerikBalm]

This is brought up again and again - no, it won't work in most cases.

Once it leaves the physics render range - 2.5 km, the game stops simulating it in full - all the game does past that point is check its status and calculate its (dragless) trajectory.

The game checks if it collides with a celestial object, and deletes it. The game checks if it enters atmospheric pressure greater than 0.2 (? not sure on this, I think its about 40km), and if so, deletes it.

Only the active craft may be in the atmosphere and "in flight", all other craft are deleted if in the thick atmosphere, and not "landed" or inside the render range.

A quirk of this is you can have things in "stable"/non-degrading orbits at 50km, as long as you do not make them your active craft (at which point, the orbit will decay for as long as it is the active craft), or take your active craft within 2.5 km of them.

If you jettison boosters after 500m with parachutes set to deploy at 50m, the will probably land before you reach 2500m, so you should be able to recover those.

Likewise, if you drop a stage above 40,000, on a sub orbital trajectory, you can put your main craft on an orbital trajectory, and switch back to the stage (which hasn't despawned in the thin atmosphere), thus making it the "active craft", and follow it all the way down to a landing.

Basically between 500m and 40,000m, everything you drop is a total loss.

Regarding the mono-prop, I advise you to remove the monoprop from the command pod if you don't use RCS - it adds weight and thus brings your dV down - on the 1 kerbal lander can, it adds .06 tons- not a lot - but it makes a different on very light lander designs - although its even better to use massless RCS ports and get extra dv out of the stored RCS - but basically, until you unlock RCS ports, drain the monoprop from all command pods.

I had heard that they intended kerbal jet packs to use monoprop, and when a kerbal re-entered the pod and filled up the jet pack, it would drain monoprop from the capsule - but due to some bug this wasn't working - I don't know if thats real, or a rumor -since it was added in .23, I was expecting it to be fixed in .24 if that was really what was intended.

I believe it is what they intended, and thus "get out and push" will eventually no longer be viable for those times when you run out of fuel just before getting your perapsis back in kerbins atmosphere for aerobraking

[advil]

This is brought up again and again - no, it won't work in most cases.

Once it leaves the physics render range - 2.5 km, the game stops simulating it in full - all the game does past that point is check its status and calculate its (dragless) trajectory.

The game checks if it collides with a celestial object, and deletes it. The game checks if it enters atmospheric pressure greater than 0.2 (? not sure on this, I think its about 40km), and if so, deletes it.

Only the active craft may be in the atmosphere and "in flight", all other craft are deleted if in the thick atmosphere, and not "landed" or inside the render range.

A quirk of this is you can have things in "stable"/non-degrading orbits at 50km, as long as you do not make them your active craft (at which point, the orbit will decay for as long as it is the active craft), or take your active craft within 2.5 km of them.

If you jettison boosters after 500m with parachutes set to deploy at 50m, the will probably land before you reach 2500m, so you should be able to recover those.

Likewise, if you drop a stage above 40,000, on a sub orbital trajectory, you can put your main craft on an orbital trajectory, and switch back to the stage (which hasn't despawned in the thin atmosphere), thus making it the "active craft", and follow it all the way down to a landing.

Basically between 500m and 40,000m, everything you drop is a total loss.

I was able to prove on my own yesterday after pondering this question all night at work that if you attach a control module to the dropped section, along with parachutes it can, in fact, be recovered. At-least everything that survives. Some engines and other small parts might get damaged or broken off once the part actually impacts the surface. However, I did not try this with the elevations and distances you have outlined, so I will try again with some more extreme measures. With the control module attached, the part is counted as a probe or individual craft and can be switched to, tracked and even controlled to some degree. I'll build something with more stages and try again from medium and high altitude and something even from sub orbit to see if it makes a difference. Granted, even if I can prove this theory, the addition of radial chutes, control modules and perhaps even batteries is going to increase your ship's cost, not to mention it's mass. But if you can recover everything short of the fuel you have burnt up then maybe it's still a viable solution in the end.

[Seret]

Anything you drop during launch is highly likely to go out of physics range before it lands. The devs have confirmed that there's nothing in the code currently to account for parts under chutes leaving physics range, they're just treated like anything else and are deleted when they land. Not quite sure why they haven't bothered, to my non-expert mind it seems like adding a check for deployed chutes and an arbitrarily low vertical speed shouldn't be too onerous. I guess the issue is modelling the descent trajectory while under chutes, but that's only a biggy for parts dropped at high altitude, low altitude descents could just be fudged.

At the moment the recovery mechanism only deals with controlled landings. Time for some probe cores and spare fuel on orbital insertion stages? Watching Mechjeb stick a powered landing back at KSC is quite fun. Just about bloody impossible to do manually though.

[Jouni]

Anything you drop during launch is highly likely to go out of physics range before it lands. The devs have confirmed that there's nothing in the code currently to account for parts under chutes leaving physics range, they're just treated like anything else and are deleted when they land. Not quite sure why they haven't bothered, to my non-expert mind it seems like adding a check for deployed chutes and an arbitrarily low vertical speed shouldn't be too onerous. I guess the issue is modelling the descent trajectory while under chutes, but that's only a biggy for parts dropped at high altitude, low altitude descents could just be fudged.

There's much more to a safe landing than just landing speed. You can try it yourself: build a big rocket, add parachutes to boosters, switch the control to a booster after detaching them, and try to land in one piece. Repeat this for different landing sites, and see the results.

[Seret]

There's much more to a safe landing than just landing speed. You can try it yourself: build a big rocket, add parachutes to boosters, switch the control to a booster after detaching them, and try to land in one piece. Repeat this for different landing sites, and see the results.

I think that's what's stopping them. I would be happy with a rough approximation (it's better than what we have now), but clearly if they want to implement something a bit more involved if they implement anything at all.

[Bilfr3d]

In any sort of recovery method, your actual craft cannot go past 2.5km below 22km, otherwise it too will be removed. Just be aware of that. The game treats debris and normal craft alike when removing "debris" from the atmosphere. So at this point in time (without mods - on a stock install), spending your time to watch the stages safely fall to the ground, is not really an easy thing to do in any sense, or thing really worth doing (especially if your actual craft ends up disappearing too).

ToTheMun

[Motokid600]

Does the Lazor system mod still work? You could extend the load distance to 99km. Think that'd be enough to land first stages?

[Lukaszenko]

I actually ALMOST designed some nicely recoverable stages, but indeed it does require them pushing my ship (and therefore themselves) all the way to a stable orbit. It gave me a good use for the vernor engines to stabilize the usually long stage while landing ( I, and I wonder if the developers, got the idea from problems experienced and solved by SpaceX). The only thing I'm missing is a good set of landing legs that can survive reentry.

[Zablonski]

So at this point in time (without mods - on a stock install), spending your time to watch the stages safely fall to the ground, is not really an easy thing to do in any sense, or thing really worth doing (especially if your actual craft ends up disappearing too).

ToTheMun

Yep - I let the whole Mun lander shot get out of range while I watched the first stage float down. Bye bye √60,000 too. There was no revert to the VAB once the boosters brewed dropping in on KSC.

[Bilfr3d]

Yep - I let the whole Mun lander shot get out of range while I watched the first stage float down. Bye bye √60,000 too. There was no revert to the VAB once the boosters brewed dropping in on KSC.

It is not a good feeling when that happens, is it? :/ Until SQUAD decides to overhaul the current on-rails physics... thing, 2.5km will stay the longest distance anything can get away from you when in the atmosphere. At least it was only 60,000 funds.

ToTHeMun

[Dragonchampion]

I suggest getting this mod. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/86691-0-24-DebRefund-v1-0-12

This mod will allow you to recover parts after jettisoning them if they have a declining orbit.