Recovering Debris?

[daniu]

Only was able to play one night yet with contract system; I've been putting radial parachutes on the early stages and boosters to be able to retrieve them for the funds.

However, although they landed properly - right next to my command pod, Jeb could have walked there -, when I entered the tracking station, they weren't in the Debris section.

I did see them once, but it seems to not work all the time... anyone else noticed something like that?

Also, I haven't gone into orbit yet so I didn't move too far away from the earlier stages, but is it at all possible to recover first stages which fall back to Kerbin, and you leave Physics Simulation distance from them?

[UmbralRaptor]

You'll need to play with the filters in the upper center/left part of the tracking station display to turn on debris visibility.

If a part is out of physics range, not landed, and above 0.01 atm, it's destroyed.

has found workarounds (notably, not dropping stages until you're fairly high).

[daniu]

You'll need to play with the filters in the upper center/left part of the tracking station display to turn on debris visibility.

Yeah I know... it wasn't there, showed "0" pieces of debris although I saw it lying next to me before the loading screen. Loading into Fly Craft again, it was gone there as well.

I'll keep an eye out for this.

If a part is out of physics range, not landed, and above 0.01 atm, it's destroyed.

has found workarounds (notably, not dropping stages until you're fairly high).

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. What's .01 atm though? (or rather, "where", guessing it's 1% atmosphere)

Edited July 21, 2014 by daniu

[Koemf]

Atm (=atmosphere) is a way to measure air pressure. 1 atm means that the pressure is equal to the atmospheric pressure (of Kerbin in this case) at sea level, so 0.01 atm means 1% of the pressure at sea level. You can find more info about this on this wiki page:

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Atmosphere

[Claw]

Thanks, I'll take a look at that. What's .01 atm though? (or rather, "where", guessing it's 1% atmosphere)

Well, what you're probably asking is that any debris that dips below about 23km around Kerbin and is outside of physics range (about 2.5km from your current ship) is auto-deleted.

[Tweety]

Modding mondays has a solution...http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/87497-Modding-Mondays-DebRefund

[magnemoe]

Use SRB as first stage, they are cheaper than the extra fuel used to make an SSTO, return the expensive core to KSC.

Debris on ground or splashed down don't show up unless you set filter to show them. They will also not show that you get money back however if you watch the fund counter you see you get paid.