Recovering modules in career mode.

[Sheeip]

Hello everyone, this is my first post here. Recently I've been playing career mode, I have yet to get very far on this save having only been to orbit. In my attempts to increase value recovery of my vessels I have been attempting to recover my ascent stage modules and parts that fall back to Kerbin. So far these have only been SRB's, the BACC and RT-10 boosters along with any parts attached to them. As of yet I have been unable to recover any parts that are not connected to the command module. I have been playing around with the parachutes adding extras and changing types, using the MK-2 radial and the MK-16 but I can't seem to recover any. At the end of my flights they are not in the recovered parts tab of the mission summary. When I look at the tracking station there is no landed debris anywhere I am kind of assuming they exploding on the ground or disappear for some reason. I know the physics engine only includes objects within 2 kilometers of the vessel of focus and I vaguely remember hearing that objects in flight that are out of the 2km range and inside an atmosphere are deleted but I can't even remember where I heard that so I may be wrong. So my question is: is possible to recover objects that detach during ascent and if so is it worth taking measures to recover them?

Here is a picture of the last ship I launched, made to complete some contracts and test recovery.

Thanks!

Edited August 7, 2014 by Sheeip

[Superfluous J]

In stock, you essentially can't recoup those losses. Anything flying in atmosphere vanishes from the universe when it gets more than 2.5 km away from you.

If you get the mod DebRefund, it will instead estimate recovery of items that you put parachutes on.

You CAN recover things once you get into space. If you're about to reach orbit and ditch your lifter stage, then circularize your orbiter so it's safe, you can jump back to your lifter and watch it as it goes back down. Assuming it survives the descent, you can then recover it.

[Sheeip]

Ok so as long as I am within 2.5 km of the object as I enter space it stays. Well... that's a little annoying, but I'm sure they will get around the changing it to work for career mode. I'll check out the mod, thanks a ton!

[Kasuha]

The game deletes any parts it finds flying in dense atmosphere (below 23 km) which are more than 2.5 km from the active ship. It is practically impossible to save any parts you drop in atmosphere as you'd need to get them landed before you get more than 2.5 km away from them.

SRBs are cheap and they are meant to be lost in atmosphere. The best approach is to accept the loss and minimize it by not mounting any unnecessary parts on your boosters. Later when you get jet engines, you may start building SSTO boosters that will get serious payload to orbit or near-orbital trajectory with high apoapsis where you can decouple the payload, get it into orbit, and switch back to the booster to follow it down on ground before it gets destroyed by atmosphere.

Note that to maximize your savings, you need to land your booster back on KSP. That usually means it needs to make at least one orbit (more if you launch in the evening and don't want to go landing in darkness) and needs to be controllable during descent.

Below is an image of such lifter I use. It has a probe core, six turbojets and one nuclear engine. I have it saved as a subassembly and just attach it to whatever cosmic stage I need to get to orbit.